Finding my way back, over and over

Writer Emma Hislop reflects on going home to her marae in Puketeraki, north of Ōtepoti Dunedin.

 

It’s the best sort of day. Not a cloud in the sky, and still-as.

We pile into my sister’s seven-seater in the motel carpark, the youngest ones in the boot. It’s early, 9am, but we have to be at the Blue Oyster gallery at midday for our artists’ talk. The gallery is hosting a group show by three of us who whakapapa to Puketeraki marae — me, my sister Ana, and her friend Emily, who’d recently discovered her connections to Puketeraki, at the Kāi Tahu Roadshow in Wellington.

We’re all mums, thinking about what it is that we need, as wāhine Māori, when we all live away from this place we come from.

We have the morning free before our talk, and one of the main reasons I said yes to the show is so we could take the kids to see our marae at Puketeraki, which is in Karitane, about 40 minutes north of Ōtepoti.

“We can show the kids the places in their pepeha,” I say, more than once. Initially, I sense some reluctance in my sis, because of the tight timeframe. But she’s on board now. The kids are already grumbling that they’re hungry, and I could do with a second coffee.

“We’ll stop in Karitane,” Ana says. My teina always has a plan. I often joke she should be a wedding planner or events manager, but she’d hate it, she reckons. The Karitane Store does decent coffee, and it’s down the hill from our marae. We drive out towards the harbour. The water is glistening and so beautiful I catch my breath. My mood lifts. My brother-in-law cracks jokes from the back seat, keeping the kids going with some lollies he’s found in the car.

This opportunity to get our kids to our marae cannot be underestimated.

We’re lucky to live in Taranaki now, but it’s expensive to get to Ōtepoti. My dad, sister and I have visited a few times, but none of our kids have been before.

My tāua grew up in Whanganui-a-Tara, but he came to Pūrākaunui in the summer holidays. He was a first-language reo speaker until he went to school, where they were made to speak English. He and my grandmother ended up in Taranaki as teachers who moved there for work.

In Karitane, we stop at the café, where a big table is already reserved, and we reluctantly break into groups to sit separately at two smaller tables. I order a flat white and the others order the one meal on today’s menu, Tuscan bean soup and ciabatta. The kids get started on gum and sausage rolls and fizzy drinks. A big group arrives, and they take the reserved table — all of them are speaking te reo. I go outside and sit in the sun.

The last time my sister and I were in Karitane and at Puketeraki was with our old man. Ana was still recovering from cancer, back then. She and I walked on the beach every evening, admiring the pink sky and pretending we lived there. Our dad was happy-as, watching Sports on Sky TV in the Airbnb.

I recall the day of the marae visit with Dad and my sister. Ana came into my room, which was small and situated at the back of the house, with bunk beds awkwardly sticking out in the doorway.

“Are you wearing a skirt?” she said, flapping a black garment in my direction. I was lying on the bottom bunk and couldn’t see her face. “I brought a dress, but it’s horribly crumpled from being in my suitcase.”

“Oh,” I said. “I hadn’t thought about it. No, I only brought pants. I think it’s low-key.”

The very first time I visited was the year before, on my own. Our hapū connections are Kāti Huirapa and Kāi Te Ruahikihiki, on Dad’s side. Dad helped me decide on a koha. We settled on pūtea, petrol vouchers and a jar of Taranaki honey.

I was without a vehicle. Mauraka, the kaiwhakahaere at the marae at the time, kindly picked me up and drove me out to Puketeraki.

We started at the waharoa, carved by Kāi Tahu ringatoi James York and Ross Hemara. Symbolic of the three messenger birds, the albatross, the kea and the morepork, the sides seemed to welcome me in like wings.

Mauraka showed me around, and we had a cuppa and some kai. I was nervous because my reo was virtually non-existent, and I felt shit about it. I was giving myself a hard time about not being able to express my gratitude and emotion at standing there for the first time.

I also had another purpose. In hospital, after my son was born in 2014, they threw out our whenua, despite us filling in the forms, talking to my midwife, and reiterating during labour that we wanted to keep it. It had been a source of mamae for me ever since. A friend, Hana, suggested I take my son’s first teeth home instead. “I’ve heard the aunties say that before,” she said.

I tentatively emailed Mauraka, at the rūnaka. “Bit of a strange request,” I wrote.

“What is strange, mate, is Covid!” he replied. “To your request though — tino pai rawa atu! — unique and innovative! Aroha nui tonu!”

So I carried the teeth with me in a tin. We didn’t speak about it, but near the end of the visit, I pulled out the tin and showed it to Mauraka. He nodded. “Take your time,” he said.

But on that next visit with Dad and my sister, I was apprehensive for another reason.

“I’m nervous,” Ana said.

“Same.” I flashed her my palm, covered in lines of biro scrawl. “My mihi.”

Ana made a sympathetic face. The night before, Dad had asked me to speak on our behalf. This wasn’t Dad’s first visit — he’d been to a hui some years before. My reo is still basic.

We got in the car, even though it was early. It was as though everyone wanted to get it over with. I was more nervous last year when I came by myself. I’m a slow reo learner. I’ve had five attempts at beginner courses, and I’m still only at level three this year.

Puketeraki hold regular reo wānaka, and I always look at flights from Taranaki, but they’ve always been too pricey. One day, we’ll make it.

We didn’t grow up with lots of reo at home, although we always knew we were Māori and Kāi Tahu, mainly because Dad carved. Whenever we saw Keri Hulme or Tipene O’Regan on TV, Dad would say: “You’re related to them, you know.” We knew that was something to be proud of.

When I was little, Dad ran a sole charge school with mum’s help. Together with a friend’s mum, who is also Māori, they instilled te ao Māori in the curriculum. We were taught basic reo, tī rākau, and waiata. Most of the rest of the community had Dalmatian and other European whakapapa. Sometimes Dad and the locals put down a hāngī. As an adult, I lived in South London for over a decade, and it’s only been in the last five years that I’ve made a conscious effort to learn again. I’ve hit many stumbling blocks, mostly big feelings associated with being a beginner. I’ve been lucky to have incredible kaiako along the way, and Māori classmates who get it.

When I knew we were coming to Puketeraki, I got in touch with my kaiako, an amazing husband and wife team, Koka Anahera and Matua Haare. They kindly checked over my mihi. I never want to let those two go. I sent Dad and Ana three songs we already knew

(“He Honore”, “Te Aroha” and “Tutira Mai”), and told them to practise. Briefly, I felt annoyed this was taking so much energy.

“You’re early,” Mauraka said. It was a gentle reprimand. “I was just getting everything ready.” I looked at my sister: I told you so. I gave Mauraka a hug, and Dad and Mauraka leaned in to hongi. Mauraka extended his hand towards my sister, who he could see was full of nerves and emotion.

He took us into the wharenui where the chairs were lined up in rows. Dad sat at the front, my sister and me behind. As it should be. Dad stood and replied, speaking mostly in English, saying he never grew up with the reo, but it is in his heart. It brought tears to my eyes.

Our dad holds all our stories. I felt a huge sense of relief that I didn’t have to mihi. I sat, listening to Dad speak and looking at all the photographs on the wall. At the end of that trip, I asked Dad what the highlight was, and he said, simply: “Talking to Mauraka, hearing all the stories.”

And now, here we are, three years later, standing on the porch with the kids at Puketeraki. My sister points out Hikaroaroa over there. And that’s Waikouaiti. We look in the windows. Mattresses cover the wooden floor, and beds are neatly made.

“Must be a noho on,” my sis says, longingly. The kids are more interested in checking out the playground, built not long before. They race over and scramble up the bank, near where I walked with the tin on my first visit. I watch them climbing. Their faces are happy, and I feel at peace.

Leaving the marae, our kids protest as we get back in the car. “Huriawa or Pūrākaunui, Em?” Ana asks. She stops the car at the end of the marae driveway. “We’ve only got time for one.”

I’m never good at quick decisions. Left or right? There’s kōkōwai at Huriawa, and I love the way the water swallows the rocks, leaving black circles dilating on their surfaces. Pūrākaunui was home to our tīpuna, and some of them are buried there.

“Pūrākaunui,” I say, because I have to choose one, and she turns right.

“How far till the next playground?” the youngest ones want to know.

“Or Wharauweraera?” I say. Last time, Ana and I left Dad talking to some locals and walked right to the end of the beach. Our Kāi Tahu people once lived along this stretch of coast and had a kāika mahika kai.

Ana checks the time. “Bit tight. We’ve only got an hour before we have to be at the gallery.”

We stop on the estuary in Pūrākaunui and point out the urupā on the island to the kids. It’s low tide and they walk out on the mudflats, before hitting another playground.  Next time I come, I want my mate Talia to take me to get cockles. She says she makes a mean vongole and will even do one for me minus the wine.

On the way back, I recall how the café at Karitane was full of people speaking reo.

“Must have been those noho peeps,” says Ana, and again I hear the longing in her voice. There is never enough time here.

*

Back at the Blue Oyster, it was time for the artist talk.

We’d called on Rauhina Scott-Fyfe, whanauka from Puketeraki and an archivist at the Hocken research library, to guide us as our tuakana. Rauhina helped us come up with a title for the show. After a lot of kōrero and thought, we settled on Ko Rawaka, roughly translated as “everything we need”. I’d made an audio recording of me at home, having a kōrero with the pīwakawaka in our māra, and speaking my basic reo to my partner, Muzz, and son, Lenni. And I recorded my dad telling stories.

A decent crowd showed up and our kids sat in the back row. We were asked to introduce ourselves and I self-consciously recited our pepeha.

Ko Hikaroroa te mauka

Ko Waikouaiti te awa

Ko Uruao, ko Araiteuru, ko Tākitimu kā waka

Ko Kāti Huirapa me Kāi Te Ruahikihiki kā hapū

Ko Puketeraki te marae

Ko Kāi Tahu, Waitaha, Kāti Māmoe kā iwi

Ko Emma Hislop toku ikoa.

As I spoke, I could see my niece’s bright face through the gaps in the crowd. She was nodding like, “We know those places.” The kids sat through the whole talk.

In the summer holidays, me, Muzz and Lenni go camping again at Okoki, in North Taranaki. It’s super cheap at $8 a night and on the grounds of a closed-down rural school with a pool. Lenni made friends last year, and we barely saw him.

There’s no internet reception, and we read books and talk. This year, we have Lenni’s best mate, Jack, with us. Jack wears pounamu, and Jack is doing kapa haka with Lenni at school, and Lenni has told me that Jack is Māori, too. “He might be Kāi Tahu,” he’d said, excitedly. “Then will we be brothers, Mum?”

As an only child, he is super close with the cuzzies and sometimes dreams of a sibling. “We will definitely be related,” he convinces himself. I said it was a possibility, but that I thought Jack’s dad came from Hawke’s Bay.

“But it could be like us, Mum, being from Ōtepoti and living in Taranaki?” I nodded my head. Yeah, totally. Not everyone knows their iwi. It’s only recently that he has started talking about being from Puketeraki. You need to see places to feel like you know them, I reckon.

I get talking to a camping neighbour. She tells me she used to attend the school. I point at the hill and say the kids are up the top there. “It’s good to see the bush has regenerated,” she says. “It used to be covered in gorse.”

The sound of a haka floats down through the trees. The woman’s face lights up. Lenni and Jack are in their last year at primary school. They’re desperate to make the performance group this year. It’s highly competitive. My boy practices in the shower every night.

They emerge from the bush. I bet they want a swim, and I do too. “Haere mai, kōrua,” I say.

I’m still self-conscious using the reo like this. I have to make a conscious effort to speak my own language outside of my wānaka class, where we all flounder happily together. The whakamā I initially felt has lessened because we’re in it together. The struggle is collective, which lightens the load. We know each other now, help each other along, laugh a lot.

“Speaking Māori,” Jack says to himself quietly. Then he says to me: “I’m Māori. And I never take this off.” He clutches his pounamu.

Jack puts on plays in the evening in the old school. He spends a good hour preparing, dragging the furniture around the room and organising props. He has a book for writing plays in, and that night we gather under the tree to listen to his scary story.

When we get home, I text Jack’s mum: “Do you guys know what iwi Jack comes from?” She replies immediately: “Yeah Kahungunu, on his dad’s side.”

When I tell Lenni, he says: “But we could still be cuzzies, eh, Mum?”

“Probably not,” I say. “Just best mates.”

“Best bro kapa mates,” he says.

 

Emma Hislop (Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha, Kāi Tahu) lives and works in Taranaki. Her first book, Ruin, was published in 2023 with Te Herenga Waka University Press and won the Hubert Church Best First Book of Fiction at the 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. She was the recipient of a 2024 Arts Foundation Springboard Award and is working on a novel.

E-Tangata, 2025