Matua: Tippy Haeres of a Principal Carver
When they buried our friend Haami Moeke Snr QSM, it was entirely fitting that he should be taken to his final resting place in his aging diesel van. We friends, Juliet and I stood next to each other watching as the pallbearers carried him between a garland of fierce young warriors performing the haka.
Their strong young voices hung themselves around his coffin with respect and honour. Both of these he fully deserved. We cried and laughed all at once, for our matua and ourselves.
We beamed knowing smiles as we watched his mokopuna (grandchildren) wriggle about inside the van, juxtaposing themselves, filling its small space with further garlands of childsome giggles and commraderie.
He loved young people for their youthful energy and infectiously honest natures. He always used to say, they had no agendas, he loved their guilelessness.
Going Tippy Haere
Haami would have loved seeing them there, watching and waiting. Waiting for their koro (grandfather). Watching as his casket wend its way toward them. Plus he was going tippy haere again! It means to go on walkabout, to roam around like a gypsy. I’d been on a few with him. I’m secretly betting when he’s got his digs sorted, matua’s gonna go tippy haere to Hawaii. True! He always wanted to investigate carving opportunities there. Oh the Places you’re gonna go matua.
Speaking of going tippy haere, after he’d finished up at Kohupatiki Marae, Haami became the carving tutor at Te Poho o Tangiianui Marae, often referred to here in the Bay as Baden Batt’s Marae. It’s located in Taradale. (Of course, to say a Marae is one persons is misleading. Maori are collective, Marae will always be, in my opinion, built and maintained by many people).
During this time he taught young people to carve and shared with them his knowledge of tikanga whakaairo (the customs and art of wood carving) and tikanga Maori. That was around 1990. Interestingly, while he was teaching, Matua himself was learning still. Many who knew him well know that learning was a life long practice for him. We could do ourselves no small favour by following his lead. Never give up learning and never underestimate who life will send to teach you or where it may choose to have you learn.
Carving Tutors
His own carving tutors had different teaching styles, some were theoretical, others not. Some had free-ranging styles, others were replicable. They all played a part in helping Haami explore and develop his own style and methods of carving. While he was working with John Hadfield on Matahiwi Marae he’d begun to take notice of John’s original style embracing both traditional and contemporary art.
In the beginning, people were fairly reactive to John’s work, it shocked people to see a green meeting house with carved figures and carved human heads placed in front of the meeting house without bodies. Acceptance for John’s work came later but through being ‘in’ that process, Haami learnt the lesson that ‘originality’ was fine but you needed a plan.
Kaupapa
In Haami’s mind, a plan provided a foundation for the carvers. Without a plan there was no kaupapa (a term that describes the traditional Maori ways of doing, being, and thinking, encapsulated in the Maori world-view or cosmology). Without a kaupapa, the work would progress without meaning.
Inside his old waka (van) his mokopunas touched his coffin lightly. They sshhhed each other gently but firmly in keeping with the solemnity of the occasion. They leaned against his coffin, as they might have leaned against him when he was in life.
For the young, death is perhaps less discriminating. There is no shutting out of sick memories, or last days memories. There are just memories of times when. I can hear matua say, “Yeah, yeah!” in my memory’s ear. His famous double positive figure of speech.
“Those kids can teach us older fullas things! Yeah, yeah!” They can matua and they do.
