Tripping
Travelling up north again after all these years of being away my eyes feel fresh, eager to see and vociferously guzzle in the sights. I feel like I’ve been in a desert these past few years, the backside of it! I’m going to Haranui, to the marae of my great great grandmother Moewaka Jane, I’d be lying if I said it was just another trip.
We left Hawke’s Bay round 8.30am last Friday morning, my two sisters and me in one car. In another vehicle driven by my cousin Hamish was a keen sprinkle of female cousins, all anticipating a road trip that would add more pieces to our family puzzle, our whakapapa.
Whakapapa
‘Papa’ is anything broad, flat and hard such as a flat rock, a slab or a board. Whakapapa is to place in layers, lay one upon another. Ergo the term Whakapapa is used to describe both the recitation in proper order of genealogies, and also to name the genealogies.
The image is of building layer by layer upon the past towards the present, and on into the future. The whakapapa include not just the genealogies but the many spiritual, mythological and human stories that flesh out the genealogical backbone. Due to the modern practise of writing whakapapa from the top of the page to the bottom the visualisation seems to be slowly changing to that of European genealogy, of “descending” from our ancestors.
Te Here Tangata or The Rope of Mankind
The Māori term for descendant is uri, but its more precise meaning in terms of Maori mental processes is offspring or issue. The term ‘Te Here Tangata’, literally The Rope of Mankind, is also used to describe genealogy. One might imagine oneself with their hand on a rope that stretches into the past for the fifty or so generations that one can see, back from there to the instance of creation, and on into the future. “In this modern world of short term political, social, economic and business perspectives, and instant consumer gratification, Te Here Tangata is a humbling concept.”
It was a great day in the Bay, the heavens had been taken to the cleaners. Freshly pressed with all the right bits starched up and crisp clean lines straighter than a die to make a front crease. Driving out through Eskdale I was reminded that time had moved on, the grapevines had matured in my absence and many more vineyards had sprung up throughout this picturesque part of the Hawke’s Bay region. We were finally tripping and it felt good. I began to feel the tension in the rope, our tūpuna (the Māori word for an ancestor, especially a grandparent) was hauling in the line.
