"Ka pari te tai, ka timu te tai, ka ngaro te tohu i haea. Engari ka mau tonu te wairua.
The tide comes in, the tide goes out, the line will be hidden but not the wairua, not the intention, not the deep significance."
Finding our places in the story.

Dr Hinemoa Elder
Te Aupōuri, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Kurī, Ngāi Takoto, Ngāpuhi nui tonu.
FRANZCP, PhD, MNZM

Without knowing who we are, without knowing our stories, the stories of our wheinga, our old people, without knowing these taonga, we suffer profound loss and grief. Losses without names. Because how do we name the grief and loss of the language, the stories of those who have gone before, that we feel, that we sense, but cannot easily put into words? These stories have been deliberately removed, stolen, seized and denigrated with the express purpose of extinguishing our way of life.

Evidence of the impact of these losses is clear.

We grow up with a blueprint of being fatalistic about life and death, about normalised early deaths and suicide. We are taught that we are to blame for not knowing who we are. We are taught to internalise that messaging. We are taught we are the problem.

Finding our place in our own stories is at the heart of reconnection and our collective freedom to stand in our interwoven whakapapa stories. Our stories are central to reclaiming our own health, our self determined futures, our right to pass on these life giving stories to the next generations.

By design, our tūpuna left us stories everywhere, all around us. Everywhere we find ourselves there are stories about who we are. Recognising that our world is abundant in Māori stories is at the heart of our collective oranga, of our tino rangatiratanga.