Sealaska Heritage Institute: “Māori yesterday, Māori today,Māori tomorrow,” Te Ara Kuaka

Basin jury. Um, just to briefly go over it, we'll be talking about taha tinana, which is our physical hauora, um, taha wairua, which is our spiritual hauora or well-being, taha hinengaro, which is our mental and emotional well-being, and taha whānau, which is our family and social well-being. So this all falls under A whare. As you can see, there are the 4 subjects that we're going to be talking about today, which represents the 4 pillars of a house. So we're in this whare today.

You can imagine taha tinana over there, taha wairua over there, taha hinengaro over there, and taha whānau over here. And they all hold up the whare together. So without one, we can't have the other, and when one falls Soduo. Um, okay, so to begin, I'm going to touch on tahatsinana, which is our physical well-being, or hauora. Um, today I wanted to talk about how— today I wanted to talk about kai, which is our food, and I wanted to pose the question to all of you If you didn't eat for a week, what would happen to your body?

Sorry, you would get weak. Anybody else?

You dehydrate, you get weak, your body would start to deteriorate, right? So same with our internal, we also have our external side of our tinana, which is movement. And nourishing our body through movement, not only internally through kai. So without one, to create a balance, you want to be nourishing your body internally and externally.

So our tupuna, for example, they not only— they lived through movement and kai. So today we schedule time for the gym, right? We don't just do it in our everyday lives. You'll see us sitting here today, right, rather than moving around. While our tūpuna, our ancestors, used both interconnectedly.

So you would have to use movement through play, which is how they pass their time during the day. You'd also have to use movement to cultivate your food. Right, so you stayed fit physically while also nourishing your body internally by going to collect your kai.

Um, I also wanted to touch on things like sleep, so the balance between having your sleep, your kai, and your movement. So when one, when one is out of, out of balance, so when one, one becomes out of balance, the rest can't all be balanced. The same with Te Whare Tapawa that we talked about before being the four pillars of our whare. Without one, you can't have the rest all being balanced.

On that topic, I wanted to talk about our kīmu, or our games, which is what we have here, which is some of our traditional games there.

So again, our tupuna used traditional games through movement to stay physically fit.

I wanted to touch on how our games connected us to Juno here through traditional games with Arctic sports.

So without the basic knowledge of our tūpuna through movement and through games, we wouldn't have had the connections here to Juno, and we wouldn't be standing here today.

So an example of one of our games, kia mu, or ngā taonga takaro, is poi or poi tua. So today I have just a normal poi here. You mainly see it today in kapa haka or performance; however, it came from traditional games or our traditional pastimes. While it looks performative, like this. It was actually created and used by our tupuna for dexterity in your wrists, so they were actually lived things that we would use rather than just performance-wise today.

What I have here is a homea, which we use in a traditional peace custom called Mata mata rongo. Yes, and we'll give you a demonstration here.

You want to place it underneath your neck and then embrace the person next to you to pass, and this also creates a connection through hauora, or your physical body, as you connect to other people around you. Ka pai.

So the importance of having games like this and pastimes were just your physical movement, but also to be able to break ice. If you would go to a neighbouring iwi or tribe, you can take things like the homea as a peace protocol so that they would know you were coming in peace, and then it would also be able to break the ice as you would be able to go around rather than rather than just going around giving somebody a hug. It was also a way to be able to be a bit more dynamic with the way that you would celebrate your games, celebrate your people, and being able to meet others. So she's just going to pass it around if you guys all want to have a feel of it and feel the modi, which is the essence or the life force of the homey.

I want to also pay respects to my father, Hako Brown. He's done a lot in reviving our tonga takoro, which is our traditional Māori games that you would see here, just an example. Without that, I wouldn't know probably much about our traditional games and the revitalisation of that. So I'm very honoured as well to be able to teach and to learn and have the connections here to Juno through traditional sports.

I also just wanted to touch again on how the tinana or hauora actually affects the other parts of your hauora, which is your hinengaro, your mind, wairua, spirit, and whānau, the interconnectedness or family.

Just as a little example, I play rugby, which is quite an intense sport, right? So the way that I look at hauora in a Māori lens or indigenous lens through this framework is I sustained a very crucial injury through rugby.

And because my hauora, my tinana hauora, or physical wellbeing, was then crushed, it also impacted my hinegaro because I was then just upset with myself. I was scared of what was next, whether or not I could move forward in my rugby, which also kind of crushed my spirit, which is my wairua wellbeing, and then it affected my whānau side because I then would isolate myself away because I felt kind of disappointed in myself. Um, so just through one example of— through one example of something happening to your tinana, it can also affect the other sides of your hauora as well. So without one, you can't have the other, and when one falls, so do all. Kia ora.

So actually, this is a photo of the clouds when I first came to Juneau. We came for the traditional games in April, and this is a photo of the clouds before we arrived in Juneau. Yeah, um, and the reason that it's up there with the word 'hēne ngaro' is because, um, 'hēne ngaro,' as Evie mentioned earlier, can be described in English multiple different ways. It can represent the mind, it can represent mental health, um, and in our culture, 'hēne ngaro,' well, it could also represent your brain. But in our culture, in the Māori culture, we have 3 brains in our body.

And first we start off with our pūmanawa, which is located in the stomach. And what you feel from the pūmanawa are things like intuition, or, you know, you can receive guidance from the pūmanawa in terms of Ooh, you know when you're walking in a certain direction and then you feel like, ooh, you can feel something in your stomach and then you know, oh, actually you need to turn back or there's something around you that your stomach is bringing into your awareness as a feeling, as a feeling. So that is the pūmanawa, the hēnengaro of the stomach. Stomach. And then we come up, right here is another brain, and this brain we refer to as 'manawa'.

In English we can translate that to the sacred heart space. And in the sacred heart space, we believe that that is where the spirit or the soul resides of the human being. Most of the communication that comes from the heart space can also be channeled. You can channel your ancestors and you can speak the words or the wisdom of your ancestors through this brain that we call the mana wa, or the sacred heart space. And then now coming up to the physical brain, what we might perceive as thought what we might perceive as emotion, what we might perceive as memory, that's all happening up here.

And so to just link that back to the clouds is that one of the atua of this space up here is our sky father, who we call Ranginui. And sometimes when you're operating from only this brain, it can get pretty gusty. You can get blown around left and right, up and down. You can get your, you know, you can damage your wings if you're up there too much. So the mind, or up here, we refer to this brain as the fatu manawa.

The fatu manawa can be loosely translated in English as the third eye or the pineal gland, absolutely. Yeah, it's where we mainly receive the guidance of the Sky Father from here, and then that's connected to The— what did I call this brain? Can anyone remember? Pūmanawa? Let's say it together: pūmanawa.

The pūmanawa, or the intuitive brain, is connected to the Earth Mother, who we refer to as Papatūānuku. And then right here, between Sky Father and Earth Mother, is us. The, the, the being that they created together. So when we're too much up here, um, we can become, we can become so overcome by our thoughts that potentially we get paralyzed or we go a little bit loopy.

And then when we're operating too much from the sacred heart space or we can become extremely misunderstood, and that can be quite, you know, that can be quite a pain. And then when we communicate too much from the—. From the—.

Exactly, pūmanawa, thank you. When we communicate too much from the pūmanawa, then we may not be able to see into the future. We may not be able to, you know, plan ahead or dream or have aspirations. So what's very important is to make sure that all the brains, all the brains are communicating with each other so that ultimately the hinen garo, um, can— we can tap into the hinen garo space by aligning all these three brains, um, and hopefully that's what I'm doing now.

Um, and the purpose of that is basically to be able to communicate in your full authenticity, um, and to also not to be afraid of what your authenticity is being expressed as. I'm a little bit afraid right now, but yeah.

Two other concepts that I want to touch on in the Henengarō space is our ancestors, they were real clever with the way that they used their language. We have two words, 'pōheua'. Everybody say. 'Pohewa.' Pohewa is the word for imagination. Imagination.

And then we have another word, 'pahewa.' Everybody say, 'pahewa.' That is our word for delusion.

Right? Pohewa and pahewa, two very similar words. And the reason for that is because both the imagination and the delusion come from the same space. And sometimes what we think is delusional right now could be, for example, ages ago we used to think that the world was flat.

And people, then we started to realize that actually it was round, but back then It was a delusion to think that, but now we know that's fact. So this is what I'm talking about. Sometimes different generations, when they come through, we might see their imagination as delusional at that time, but they're bringing in the imagination of the next generation.

Yeah. I think that's all I'd like to say about Henengaro right now. I'm gonna pass it over to Haname.

Kia ora koutou.

So, wairua. We've gone through the journey of the body, we've journeyed through the three minds, into wairua. Can anyone think of what wairua might be, if you can recall from the first slide? Spirit. How do we share in spirit?

To speak on wairua, something that is so beyond words, something that is so beyond sound, something that is beyond body, beyond mind, but somehow encapsulates all of those topics into one. When we were deciding which topics we would do, I'm like, 'Ooh, wairua! Please, please.' And these whakaaro, these thoughts that we have on all of these topics, They are a representation of our people as we are representations of our people. They are representations of our ancestors as we are embodied representations of our ancestors. But they are our interpretation and our expression.

So as you hear it, receive it that way, and know that there are many people who will have different kōrero, different whakaaro, about these kaupapa as well, about these topics. So I thought the best way that I could share with spirit about spirit, about wairua, is to journey inwards and share a little bit of a pūrākau. A pūrākau is a story of origin that helps us to connect to our atua, our atua, our deities, our gods, these natural beings that exist that tie us into nature. So we're going to do something a little bit different for this. We're going to connect to our breath, we're going to connect to our energy, and we're going to do that by— I'm going to invite you all to close down your eyes for this.

So just take a second and turn your focus inwards.

Whatever you've been wondering about, whatever you've been thinking about, just lay it down for a moment and return to the focus of your breath. Be here now in your body and just observe your breath.

Now all together, we're going to share in 3 deep breaths. First, breathing out your breath where you're at, breathing fully in— and out. Breathing fully in, even deeper. And out. Breathing fully in.

And out. Observing our breath. As our life-giving force.

In our story of creation, in the beginning, before there was light, before there was life, Ranginui, our sky father, and our earth mother lived in a tight embrace, an embrace so tight that no life could get through, no light could get through. There was darkness.

Between them, the atua fought and quarreled, some wishing to divide the sky and the earth to let light in, to let more life in.

After much fighting, they decided it would happen. Our atua Tāne, he laid his feet his hands to the heavens and his head to the earth, and he pushed and he pushed and he pushed. And he separated the sky and he separated the earth. Ranginui, our sky father, he wept, his heart broken, as he gazed down at his love, Papa Tuanuku.

The atua wished to lay upon the land kaitiaki, guardians of the sacred place. To keep the Mother Earth comforted.

They decided to create humankind. Humankind. They took the soils of Kura Waka and they formed an earth-formed maiden, Hineahuone.

But earth alone was not enough to bring life to this being who would protect these sacred lands.

They needed something else, something beyond just the physical matter, something beyond just the mind. They needed wairua, they needed spirit. So Tāne, he went to the heavens, he went to I o nui, I o roa, I o matuatēkore, Creator. And bestowed upon him was the wisdom and the life force to bring forth Wairua to Hine Ahuone. He came back down to Papa Tuanuku.

He met with this earth-formed maiden, and he gave his nose to her nose in the sacred hongi, a greeting. He breathed in, 'Aaaah,' Te Hei Mauri Ora. Let there be life. And life was given through the breath of the Atua, from the Creator. Beyond the physical, beyond the mind, there was Wairua.

Beyond the physical, beyond the mind, within you all there is Wairua. There is spirit that drives you beyond.

I invite you to feel inward. Into your body.

Notice the physical that is there.

Notice the area of your tinana, of your body.

And notice the beyond.

Notice the depth, infinite in its nature.

Recognize your breath as your life-giving force. Your ha, your breath. Your mauri, your life force. All of these elements that make up your wairua. With your tinana, your body, with your hinengaro, your mind, you are almost complete.

But we don't exist just as ourselves, no. For we are part of a greater whole. At the most microcosmic level, at the most macrocosmic level, we are all connected. We are all connected. I want you to notice that you can feel the space around your body, that wairua is not limited to just internal.

That you can feel the area around you, feel the wairua in this room, shared wairua, shared spirit of the land, of the skies, of the earth, of each other.

Within our being, it is necessary that we maintain these connections and recognize each other not as separate but as connected. The space between us does not divide us. It connects us.

So slowly, I invite you to open your eyes and come back into this space.

Seeing around us all shared wairua, shared spirit, connection to each other, to self, found through the breath, found through awareness. Found through presence. I'm going to pass you along to Joshua, who's going to talk to us now about whānau and touch more on those relationships that are integral to who we are, integral to what make us who we are, contextualise us in reference to the past, in reference to the future, that guide us as a map of who we are, where we are, and where we're going. Kia ora. Thank you.

Kia ora. Kia ora to te ara kuaka, my sisters. Thank you so much. As was mentioned, I'm Joshua, ko Joshua re whātuku nua.

There's a saying my mum has been drilling into me for like the last 10 years, short and sweet. You are the dreams of your ancestors. They had this strange understanding of the world that we are in now. They had a strange set of tools that were handed down.

Their intergenerational knowledge, things that are intangible like wairua. That are far beyond. I have experienced them so many times, unique gifts, expressions of people who I didn't meet, expressions of my other family members, and I've got to see those expressed in places that were in completely random spots in the bloodline that I didn't expect to see them. For example, I see one of my elder cousins in in my sister's daughter, and I see it really clear, and it's not something that I ever thought I'd see.

Ngā re, we are all connected.

I'd like to share a short concept. This concept is pepeha.

So it'll be a bit bilingual. Kopu hangatuhora, mirako mangamanga o kumonga. My mountains, apu hangatuhora, and 'en rakau mangamanga'— ko mangatawa toku awa— my river is Mangatawa. Ko pio whairangi toku moana— my ocean is the Bay of Islands. Ko pukerata me tira whiti o kumarae— my clan house is called Pukerata.

And also called Te Rāwhiti. Kongaitu te Auru me Patukeha oku hapū.

My sub-tribes are called Ngāi Tū Te Auru and Patukeha. Kongāpuhi no I tonu te iwi. Ngāpuhi is my tribe.

These are not things that I own. These are things that I belong to. We all carry these things. These were gifts that were granted, one from my mother's father, one from my father's father. They are things that I inherited as birthright.

We all have these things. I like to imagine ourselves as our pepeha. We have a mountain, sits right here in the middle of our face. We have a marae. This part here on your forehead is referred to as the aarai.

You have a waka, you have a boat. It's this, and you'll travel all of the seas in this waka. You have a river that flows through you. It's in your blood. Our word for our sub-tribe is hapū.

It's the same word that we have for a woman who's carrying a baby. And our word for our tribe is iwi, which is also bones. So I have some bones that I belong to, they're inside me too. I have waters that I belong to, they're inside me too. For Māori, I have a maunga, they're all inside me.

There's a phrase that my mum— my mum gave me so many great gifts, but there's a phrase she gave me which is simply, "I am my marae. I am my village." Wherever I go, are with me, the ones that are here today, the ones that went before I arrived, and the ones that are coming after I go. They always stand with me. Just like in this room, you all have this. There is a great power in knowing these things.

But I brought all that up in pepeha simply because I hungi a lot. I have Māori friends, I have non-Māori friends, and I went through a loss of a friend, and I realized that Simply saying words like "I love you" to people that you love need to be done. It's a practice we need to get better at as living beings. Because even though people might have an awareness of your love without you speaking it and showing it, it's all just a hypothesis. But we like to hungi.

I'm gonna choose my sister out of all these folk.

Home, our waka are coming together. This is my waka, my boat. That's her waka, her boat. We're now sharing a boat. Our bloods inside are meeting in here.

That's our rivers coming together.

When I come close, my adai and her adai will meet. Our marae, our villages, our maunga will come together. They will meet as well. Then the bones and all of the people that are coming from before the bones and the ones that come after the hapū, they will all be meeting all at the same time and we will share what our friend Hanamei talked to us about, which was the breath of life.

It's a simple greeting, but this is the traditional greeting.

I suppose I'll just say it, I feel this great guilt because they seem to have taken it from women. It's something that majority men share with men, but as she said earlier, Tāne had done it with Hineahu and it was a man and a woman first. So, ngāri, take what you will from that conversation. Also, to go back to whānau, as you can see, these people have a shirt that matches hers. These are people that I'm proud to call whānau, friends, people I've built relationships with, people from all over Aotearoa, New Zealand.

And this is what whānau looks like in a physical world. I'd like to think that we're all whānau here after sharing, that we've created a connection. I like to think that people like her father, Hako Brown, and like Kyle Wall, who have a shared passion of traditional games, even though they haven't met, there's a strong relationship that already exists.

I suppose I should also mention whakapapa. We have so many concepts when it comes to our interconnectedness and our connected well-beings.

If you were to live in a toxic environment, your wellbeing would fall apart. You know, your wellbeing relies on the wellbeing of people around you. The people's wellbeing around you relies on your wellbeing. It's a shared experience, this life that we get to live.

Engari, whakapapa. Everything has whakapapa. Whakapapa is is loosely translated to genealogy, but everything has it. Everything has a mauri, an energy, a life force. We could take, for example, these timbers in this room.

They weren't always a whare, they weren't always a house. They once stood somewhere, they once done something completely different, and this won't be their final form. Who knows what they'll transform into? Who knows what we will transform into? We have our things, like our poi.

Its whakapapa was to train warriors, and now it's become a tool for dance and expression of self in a completely different way. Everything that exists has a mauri, therefore everything that exists has a whakapapa, has a story of where it's come from, where it's going, and we're all connected to these things. Even the simple things like the rocks outside, the small ocean out there that connects you guys to us, the big, great, mighty Pacific Ocean. Our name, Te Ara Kuaka, for anyone that doesn't know anything about Te Reo Māori, it is the path of the kuaka. The kuaka is a— I believe they call it the brown-tailed godwit.

It has one of the largest migrations of any animal species in the entire world. It only lands in two places. One place is Aotearoa, New Zealand, the other place is here in Alaska. It doesn't stop on its journey, and it knows exactly where it needs to be. It doesn't go at the same date every time, it goes with the wind.

And it has an incredible sense of self, of community, and of its purpose. So we sat together trying to come up with what is a good name for what we're doing, and it was something that had a, one, a beautiful ring to it, but two, I think summarised our experience over April when we were here at the NYO. Again, I can't thank the people who got us here enough. I have been lost in the West for like the last 6 years, but there was a small ember inside me that just coming here, you guys managed to reignite. I'm so thankful.

I've gone back to my marae again. It's something I haven't done in years. I've been just getting back into this, taking care of my whānau wellbeing, getting to know my communities again, laughing with people that I should have been laughing with a decade ago. Engari, time waits for no man, right?

So in closing, thank you. Thank you to the Tlingits, to the Haidas for opening up this relationship. Thank you to the people of Greenland who invited Evie over there so that she could represent mana wahine Māori at the Arctic Games, which started this relationship. Thank you to all of the people who have been working hard for the last, I believe, 9 years building the NYO up over here. Thank you to the people before me who started to revive games, myself, Hannah-May included, Eve included, Ariana included, for the revival of traditional games, because that's what's opened this relationship up, such as our lineage, such as our whakapapa, and such as us as whānau.

Ngā re kura tātou katoa. We've got one last— ah nee?

Before we do our closing, which is called kotipito, it's really important for our group Te Arakauaka to acknowledge Rosita. Rosita Worl, we see you, we thank you, we see you, we thank you, we see you, we thank you.

So we're gonna close with a bit of a prayer and acknowledgement that's called 'Ko te pito'. And we thought we would close with a bit of a song or something to go over all of the elements of well-being that we've discussed today. So I invite you to stand if you would like to, or you can try and do it from your seats, but we're gonna go through through this. We'll go through it all together.

Yeah, do you know the actions? Yeah, okay, well, follow along. Okay, so we're gonna follow along. Um, kote pito. So yeah, I've only got one hand, so do it with two.

Ki te tahamawi.

Ko te tsu tamatane. Tamawahine.

Ko te pito.

Piritia te mauri.

Hayoranga wairua.

Hayoranga hinengaro.

Hayoranga tinana. Hayoranga whānau. Ko te pito.

Hoki whakamuri.

Me anga atu, kenga atu puna.

Hei oranga, munga uri, whaka heke.

Ko te pito.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. You guys may be seated.

So I'll just go through a little bit of what that meant for any of those who want to know quickly, and then we're going to take some questions. I'm not sure how much time we've got, but if anyone has any burning questions, you can ask. So ko te pito atua center, tu wheramai ki a ranginui, opening up to the sky father. Tamarua ki a Papatūānuku, and our Earth Mother. Ki te taha mātou, we acknowledge our masculine side.

Ki te taha māui, we acknowledge our feminine side. The sides that comprise us. Ko te pito, returning to our centre. Piriti atemori, taking hold of the life force. He oranga wairua, for the wellbeing of spirits.

He oranga hinengaro, for the wellbeing of your mind. He oranga tinana, for the wellbeing of your body. Hei ora ngā whānau, for the wellbeing of your whānau. Ko te pito, returning to your centre. Hoki whakamuri me ana atu kinga atu puna.

Hei ora ngā munga uri whakahike. We acknowledge our ancestors who came before us, and we acknowledge our descendants who are yet to come. Ko te pito, we return again to our centre. So that was our ko te pito practice. Yeah, and as we close down, just thank you all so much for coming.

Thank you for being a beautiful audience. If anyone has any burning questions, Please fire, fire away.

Are you okay? Oh gosh.

Thank you.

We're all right.

Goonasheesh. You know, I cannot tell you how much, you know, we thank you for coming here. I have to acknowledge that it was really my grandson Kyle Worl that invited you over for the traditional games, and you were such a hit. Everybody loved you and everybody wanted you to come back, and I said, we've got to figure a way to bring you back. And what you've brought back to us is showing us your world, your inner world, a beautiful world.

And I could see that we share, you know, many of the same elements in our society where we have our current generations that are connected to our ancestors and also have responsibility for future generations. I could see that also it's important for you to have balance, to have balance in your life, and believe me, this is something that our society is just now beginning to understand, the balance between humans, between humans and animals, and animals and animals. And I mean, this is, I'm telling you scientifically, you know, that You know, when they did studies of our indigenous knowledge looking at the wolf and the deer populations, the biologists got it. And so you're bringing that world in real life, you know, to show us. And, you know, I very recently heard a TV show talking about how lonely Americans are, how we as a society are lonely.

And they cite different reasons, maybe because our children are always on computers or everything like that. But one of the things that the individual said, the scholar said, is because we have lost ritual in our lives. And if just what we went through together just this few moments ago, that was ritual, and that brought us all together in the same movement, in the same energy. So these are wonderful gifts that you are giving to us and bringing back to us, so I thank you for that. But I also want to thank you for something that you gave us decades ago.

It was the Māori people who led the way for language revitalization.

Yes. I know that it was the Hawaiians who acknowledged that they learned it from you, and we learned it from the Hawaiians. It was not just methods, it was the power, the determination, and also the realization that we could revitalize our languages that were almost extinct. We won't talk about the reasons why they became extinct. We know that because right now all we want to do is to celebrate that they are coming back.

And it's to you, to you, the Māori people, who begin to show Indigenous people in the world, throughout the world, that this was a possibility. So we thank you for that. We thank you for bringing your spirit here and your worldview and for teaching us some of the things that we may have forgotten as a people. Guna tūjou.

Thank you so much, thank you so much. And we feel so similarly, it's been a beautiful symbiosis of energies, and we have these, this mātauranga that we hold, but there's this wealth of mātauranga that is held here that we do not have templates for the way forward. And the way forward looks a lot like the past, but with all of these components of all these different people coming together and sharing and connecting and doing exactly the things that we're doing. You know, I bump into a Māori here, I bump into a Māori here, and they've just come back from over there, over there, over there. So it's happening all over the place.

So it's been an honour to be a part of, and we are so grateful for everything that we have received and learned and shared from you all as well. So thank you. Are there any other questions, or?

For those who are far away from your lands and for those who want to visit, or in our case move there, is there a way that we can honor the Māori and support the local iwi in a way that we might not know about something?

Yeah, that's a really great, great question, and the fact that you already hold that question in your hinegaro is already an honour. It's already you honouring what we refer to as iwi takitake, the Indigenous people of of any land, your curiosity is also an honouring of it. Also, this is so exciting!

We really hope we put blessings on your journey to Aotearoa. I see your t-shirt there, Aotearoa hip-hop.

Another thing is, it's really easy to identify, like, similarly here in Juneau, you know, there's so much cultural expression that's out there in the public to see. So inter— we also have the same thing in Aotearoa, and interacting with those types of cultural expression is another way. But the hardest way of all, but the way that's really worth it, is to really like Josh and Evie demonstrated, the hongi, is to really connect your— where you come from and how you feel and how you think— to connect that with the local people, I guess, by— yeah, with your curiosity. Yeah, it's— it's—. It's—.

Curiosity will lead you to where you need to go to make those types of connections. And I will say that most Māori in Aotearoa are so friendly and so open to sharing our culture. Yeah, okay, does anyone else want to respond to that question? Just another tidbit, it's becoming very like mainstream to get access to learning and the language, if that's something you're into. From every side, like from the Western and the Eastern philosophies, both sides are like all for it.

It's possible to get— if you're into tattoos, it's possible to get— they call them kiritahi— to find an artist who will design something for you about your story and put it on your body. It wouldn't be the traditional thing, but it would have traditional themes. But it is like widely accepted, widely shared more so than— I'm 36 years old, it's much more widely shared than when I was young, and it's way more widely accepted. It's like, I remember maybe 5 years ago, I hadn't watched a TV in like a decade, I'd flicked on the news to see what was happening and they would use random Māori words, which they never used to do. And then if Māori words came up, they would say them like very incorrect.

So it's nice to see people who care and just give it an honest try. No one cares if you do it badly. They care if you do it badly on purpose.

And we can teach you all actually a Māori word right here, right now, that ties in beautifully to the kaupapa, to the topic of our kōrero today, and that's kia ora. Kia ora. Kia ora. Often translated as 'hello,' but you know, sometimes you lose the depth of our language when it's translated from one form into English, because 'kia ora' is not 'hello.' 'Kia ora' is 'to be well,' to be vital, your vitality, you know, it's your life force. So 'ora, ora,' 'kia ora.' So that's your first one you can do when you get over there, 'kia ora.' Maybe one last question?

Yeah, any last questions? Oh, there's so many questions. Yeah. Oh, just keep going. Not a question, just a very deep heartfelt thank you.

You guys are lovely, exciting, interesting. And you know what I'd like to hear is just a real quick little song that you might do, because I know that Māori sing beautifully. Tinaya? Tinaya? Tinaya?

We'll do one more question.

Just have very simple question. Why do you decide to be barefoot here in such cold climate? Yeah, did you have answer? Yes, we take Traditionally, when you enter our clan houses in Aotearoa, you take your shoes off. So that's one part of the reason.

However, I'll let Josh respond to some other parts of the reasons.

I didn't used to like standing in front of people and talking, and something I used to do to calm myself down was to ground by physically putting my feet on whatever the ground was. I find that I can connect with the audience, myself, and my thoughts way easier. And I don't think shoes are the reason, but somehow they, um, somehow they've become the blame. Yeah, so there's this kōrero as well in our culture that when you go to any new place, if you go to a pā site, which is our old village site, so where people used to live, that if it was your first time going, you would— well, back then you would always go barefoot because we didn't have shoes. But now today, when you're going on new earth, you're going to new spaces where you haven't stepped yet, you step barefoot.

And Rosita was speaking on, you know, scientists sort of catching up with modern kōrero to back up our ancestral wisdom. And you now, like, you stand on the ground now and you're discharging negatively charged ions from your body, so it helps with inflammation, it's good for you, get your dogs out, guys. Can I just say one more thing? And then one of our kaumatua, his name is Kipa Mano, and he's well known for going around barefooted. One time I asked him, 'Papa, you know, why are you going around to all these events with no shoes on?' And he says, 'How am I supposed to communicate with my mother if I can't feel her?' He's talking about all of our mother, the earth.

Yeah, maybe one last question.

Her husband is—. He's from the—.

I think they're called Menton Clan, which is a wolf tribe. And this is from—. Place comes from an island which is the most northern part of our territory, from my grandfather, who was a chief warrior, his name was Ugoosagwakaya, who's now known as 717. So that's a connection to the land. Thank you, Father.

Enjoy the Grand Massesina for reminding us of our special ability to connect.

Thank you so much. Thank you so, so much for honoring us with this song. And thank you for coming in, for bringing all of you and all of us into this space. We see you. Thank you.

And now we shall finish with our requested song.