Where is Emma?!

Where to begin...



My plane landed in Aotearoa before sunrise and I very sleepily dealt with a minor immigration situation that could have been a very large one. I was unaware that in order to enter New Zealand I needed proof that I would be leaving New Zealand. From my impression these are not strictly enforced guidelines, but I have been informed by several people now that I am lucky they let me through. All I was really required was to wait for two immigration officials to come talk to me and then prove that I have enough funds to purchase an exit ticket (which I did with a wadded up atm receipt where my account balance was reported in Bolivianos, which I then needed to roughly convert for them) and promise that I would do so before my three month visa expired. After making it through immigration and agricultural inspection I received my first true culture shock: the airport bathrooms. After four months of using toilets that more often than not would flush (sometimes requiring a bucket or two of water), but under no conditions could handle toilet paper and after adjusting to the practice of throwing away used toilet paper in a bin near the toilet, I probably would have carried on and done the same in the airport bathroom if the rubbish bin wasn't the excessively technological do-dad that it was. For my convenience and guaranteed sanitary-satisfaction this rubbish bin was sensor operated to open just as I reached toward it... which scared the crap out of me (not literally, ha). Upon closer inspection this waste bin also does some kind of sterilization process within itself as well. So, I thought, wow -- I'm in New Zealand.


Karina Walters and her family had kindly invited me to stay with them in response to the "I'm coming to New Zealand and have no idea what I am doing" distress email I had sent out. At this point I knew Karina only through several meetings that we both attended and a fabulous presentation she gave on historical trauma that also included really interesting myth (more like oppressive social construct) busting facts to counter stereotypes that privilege western science. So after getting ahold of her, taking a shuttle to her home but writing down the wrong address number and taking a long walk along the shore to get back to her neighborhood, I got a chance to put down my pack and relax. I don't know how to describe my first few days in Auckland. It was a dramatic transition from the last four months of my travels, and I was pretty worn out. On my second day in New Zealand I attended a meeting that took place in the beautiful Marae that was focused on possibly policy changes at the University of Auckland that would dramatically impact Maori students. I don't really know how much I should say about this, but what I walked away from this meeting thinking about (that is not specific to the issues discussed at the meeting) is how desperately we need a Native American Center (learning house, long house) on our campus at the University of Washington. Seeing the potential for that Indigenous space, a place to be heard, understood and supported. Seeing the no-nonsense way of dealing with what was going on was refreshing as well, so often Universities are the places with the most activism, but also the places where faculty, staff, students can be broken down into inaction over time. Another aspect of this meeting that sparked my attention was the consciousness and familiarity with policies at educational institutions in the US, Canada and Australia... "good on them". These are all the beginnings of things that I would see to greater degrees in my time in New Zealand.

Karina introduced me to Mere Kepa, who then sent me on one of the most unique adventures of my travels: Tagging along on a 9 day school trip with a Maori-only speaking primary school, Te Kura Mana Maori O Maraenui. So basically, after a short time being somewhat bewildered by my opportunity to communicate in english, I was suddenly in the back of school bus immersed in te reo Maori. The group was made up of students from ages 5 to 13 or so, parent chaperones, teachers and elders. After experiencing my first Pohiri and spending the night with them on Marae Orakei, I went with the group all the way along the east coast of the North Island up to Cape Reinga and back down to Auckland on the West Coast. Along the way I got to learn about the land and history with the kids (as much as I could from the translations graciously given to me by whomever was closest to me at the time) and experienced/visited:

-The first pool with a wave machine I have ever been to, I spent most of my time as a sort of floating device/ climbing toy / diving board for some of the smaller kids in the group.
-A whole new level of eating, you could never go hungry with this group. I could not bring myself to eat the classic New Zealand breakfast of spaghetti on toast, but during the trip I was urged to try a warm fermented corn and cream (and who knows what else?) dish, and as we traveled up north along the coast there were clams, oysters and snails gathered and cooked up. I am not a shellfish person, I can imagine plenty of coastal natives (TYSON) being in heaven with all these kind Maori women working shells open and offering them for their "American" guest. I could not decline, ofcourse, but for the record I would rather eat snails over oysters.
-Learning songs and dances that the kids performed in Kapa Haka for their hosts.
-Visited and watched Nanny Blue in her Harakeke (flax) weaving, she made me a bracelet and was so good to me on the trip. My Nan away from home!
-Waitangi, where the treaty of Feb. 6th 1840 was signed.
-Hundertwasser's Kawakawa Toilets :)
-Cape Reinga, the tip of the North Island where the Pacific and Tasman sea meet and the last part of Aotearoa that Maori see before their spirit leaves this world.
-Involved in some skits too ridiculous for me to begin to describe.
-I went to a funeral, a Tangi, when we stopped to pay our respects at a Marae we had planned to stay at before the death.
-I saw the ways that missionaries impacted the Marae buildings, their strongest hold being in these northern areas we were visiting.
-Visited Tane Mahuta, the god of the forest and largest tree I have ever seen. A beautiful Kauri.
-Visited a reforestation project area, Trounson Kauri Park, which was a chance to see the dramatic difference between the way the land that is now farmland used to be. The kids loved this, and I really loved the poetic trailhead information along the paths. For example, part of a poem at the start of the park reads "-in the white wings of sailboats, whalers and sealers and sailors and saviors with family, with God and guns and liquor and lawyers, migrants and merchants with money, breaking the land"
-Visited Kaipara Harbor

I met incredible people, had great conversations, I can't possibly share them all, nor would I even if I had the time or the patience. So many of the lessons in Aotearoa were very personal. Things I struggle to put into writing, especially writing for the whole world to see. Writing in retrospect is especially difficult because now I feel more like describing the themes than the detailed acounts of how they were raised.

Traveling with this group meant being asked several times each day by students, teachers and chaperones about whether or not I speak my language. Over and over I was explaining that I only know a handful of words in my language, and at first I would even try to explain to the children's blank faces historical reasons why very few people in my family know any of the language. I began to think about how awful it would be to be giving this same explanation to my future children or little cousins when they are wanting to learn something from me. The repition of this question combined with speaking to chaperones and one of the head teachers, Robin Mohi, about learning their language as adults and their love for te reo caused me to reflect more on my relationship with and feelings about my language. I began to recognize that when I think about my language I am always caught up in thinking in terms of colonization and the depressing influences of residential schools, discrimination, genocide, alcoholism, internalized-racism, devalueing of cultural continuity, everything that has separated me from my language. This victim response is a valid one, but it is not a place that I should allow myself to stay when there are ways to learn more of my language. I feel pushed into action, and as with many of my experiences during and after the school trip, I feel more aware of the ways in which I need to connect more with home (and all that home evokes for me) than I ever have.

The students were fascinated by my journal, asking to page through it, asking questions about my drawings and gathering around whenever they caught me writing. On the last day of the trip, or what was to be the drive home and drop Emma off in Auckland day, one of the busses broke down. We spent about 7 hours in the playground of a small town waiting for the bus situation to be sorted out. I helped with talking groups of students to the store and to the bathrooms, but mostly I was feeling a bit anxious about getting back -I had a flight to wellington the next day. I was also reminded every time that a student or chaperone mentioned wanting to go home that I would be returning to Auckland, but I would not be returning home for a long long time still. It wasn't until I was in New Zealand that I fully felt how much I missed the land where I come from. I miss my family, I miss my friends, but little did I know how much I would miss the land, the dirt, the sage brush, the pine, the lakes, everything that makes up my ancestral home.

Home, I want to pull those hills close like pillows. Bury my face and soak up the scent of sagebrush. Gather up the greasewood willed by _____ into being and make them my bed.

When we found out that we wouldn't be returning to Auckland that day, I became determined to make the most of this extra time I was given (as ungrately as I was for it) with the group. I was going to find a way to do a journaling activity with the kids. I walked down to a store that I had walked past earlier and had noticed they had art supplies. They were just closing, and when I explained I was just looking for paper for the group with the broken down bus the woman behind the counter pulled out a big stack of scrap paper she had already stapled together into notebooks and handed them over to me. Could it have worked out any more perfectly? I brought back the notebooks and got pens from the other bus and back at the park I openned up my journal knowing that it would be all I needed to do to spark some interest in what I was doing. I began the first lesson I have ever given in journaling, passing out a journal to each student that was curious about what we were doing. I explained the ways that I go about journaling from the very start. Journal stratagies: writing about the "event" of the day (what happened, how it made you feel, what it made you think about) and drawing a picture to go with it. By request I showed students step by step how I would draw a bus. Soon there were beautiful journal pages, some in english, some in maori and most with illustrations of a bus breaking down and their favorite toys to play on in the park. It was so fun to see them take off in different directions with the project, we took a break for "tea time" and ate fish and chips off of newspaper (a very New Zealand experience I am told) and then journaled a bit more before we were all off to the nearest Marae to stay the night. That is the wonderful thing about traveling with a maori student group, there is always a Marae somewhere nearby for you to stay.

More soon (I hope)