Follow the Leader

We are a society of followers following the leader. There is so much potential out there, but most people will settle for just cruising along following others! I understand this because I’ve been there, but wouldn’t it be the coolest if everyone lived to their full potential and brought to fruition all those wonderful ideas […]

Shaping Our Future

I’ve always been of the mind that we shouldn’t shape artists, but rather, give them the tools to explore and find the artist within themselves. Miss 6 year old Teia, she draws these amazing pictures of people that have limbs that stretch all the way across the page or curl around to reach up to […]

Totara Tree

Yesterday I heard a version of the waiata ‘Totara Tree’ (composed by Wiremu Nia Nia) sung by the beautiful Maisey Rika. Here is a link to that version. http://bit.ly/mIC9zO I’m not normally in the habit of posting words by other people, but I wanted to share this waiata as it is everything I want to […]

Ka tika ra

To make it right. One of our pahake told me, this is what ‘ka tika ra’ means… I understand fully how our tūpuna felt when their land, their foundation was taken from beneath them. Every time I return home to Taranaki, I feel that mamae still, I see it in the land and I see […]

Science or Observation

I was having a conversation with a friend via email and she asked me about science in relation to the observational learnings of my ancestors and how I might see modern science and the ‘science’ of my ancestors working together. I was always a curious child who questioned everything, and according to my sister, very […]

Rua Kumara

I was watching this koroua on Māori TV tonight and he was sharing his knowledge about how our people used to live. He talked about a special way of preserving kumara and in the end I figured out it was the same process (but done in a different way) of dehydrating food that we know […]