The World Village
Raymond Tekorako Ruka, Elder of the Peace Nation of Waitaha,
(The Water Carriers), Aotearoa, New Zealand
In times of Old,
I remember
There was another type of village.
We are the Family of Ruka Tekorako
We are of Waitaha
The Water Carriers
We are Older than Old
Taheke to Waimamaku or even, Taheke to Kaikohe, or to Rawene, for our grannies and papa’s, aunts and uncles, mums, and dads to go share their ancient stories of peace with the people who sat waiting, yearning their weekly arrival. Little extended settlements with the only common denominator being each little village had a Marae or Family Ancestral Meeting House.
Marae, in European terms, consisting usually of two halls, one for family or public meetings, entertainment, eating and the other for more formal purposes, ceremonies, ritual, oratory and sleeping. The Marae has as its exclusive mission, the welfare and wellbeing of a particular family ancestral lineage.
Any person who can trace their ancestry to the eponymous ancestor names to the Marae, and that person’s subsequent heirs, can forever more, by right and without exception, be accepted as a beneficiary of all the privileges of that particular Marae. A full family member, and with that acknowledged kinship comes community and the responsibility that that entails.
One for all, and all for one!
Because of the unique swirling, interwoven nature of Maori whakapapa – genealogical lineages, an individual can quite correctly claim a heredity
“right” to several different Marae throughout the tribal areas of Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Approximately thirty or forty miles at the maximum I later found out – the distance of their circular journey when I’d began to understand about numbers and things.
Not a very long way, a mere hop-step-and-jump, in the mind of a quiet nine-year old child who gauged distances by his only reality, the unfathomable mystery of the night sky.
Having already woken us kids by the lighting of their hissing kerosene lantern to witness their never-ending-it-seemed, pointless early morning, ghostly, shadowy movements reflected on the walls of the communal sleeping house, their whispered rituals, and then…always…the part I looked forward to most of all…their beautiful, synchronized chanted intonations.
I could always picture it. Being in Love with an unimaginable Possibility!
From a youthful age, I had always asked myself, what, where, and who were the progenitors of those incantations? Even when I had grown, I had not heard its tones repeated anywhere else in all my travels, national or international.
It was not the Anglicized reformers with their protocols and certainly not the Catholics with their sonorous supplications, for these chants were earthenware from the bowel of Papatuanuku Earth Herself. Guttural, yet silky-sublime, male throated, yet feminine in form.
Aboriginal – our next-door-neighbors? African? Buddhist? Pacifism? Mysticism? Or were our humble Waitaha, Grannies and Grandpas, Mothers and Fathers, these walking, talking relics, of the Ancient Water Carrying Nation, acting alone and sluicing in their own magical way the molecules of moisture in the morning’s virgin air and dancing with the sublime – when – in truth, they were giving us these precious glimpses into our very own statecraft magic, that we thought in our childhood impatient innocence was simply, pointless repetition.
Aue, Aue, Aue. Woe, are we, Woe are we, Woe are we.
To our Beloved departed, in our childhood innocence – Please forgive us for at the time, “We knew not what, what we did not know.”
Up before the creeping hint of day to offer their unyielding gratitude to that majestic Fireball of dynamic Cosmic Energy whose penetrating fingers of the new-dawn were completing the time-allotted task of picking up the last stragglers of the twilit landscape.
Better, He wasn’t overhead otherwise someone got the timing wrong – always one of the poor papa’s, never a granny got the grumpy growling!
Every morning without fail…a gentle whisper…E ara mai moko, me karakia tatau…Me tono a matou nga korero ki te painga me te whitinga o te Ra-tere atu moko! Wake up Grandchild, its time to say our prayers. We’ll send our good thoughts to this New Day – quickly now.
Afterwards, off they would go, quietly chattering and giggling like a group of youngsters aboard their camouflage green ex-army bus piloted by one of their generous brothers, one of their own.
In those times, rural country roads were winding and narrow and the common courtesy that prevailed in their lives did not stop at the roads edge. Farm and wild animals were frequent users of the unsealed, metaled roadway attracted especially at night to the warmth left by the precious day’s heat. By-laws, requiring adequately fenced properties abutting minor roadways like ours, were hardly ever observed by the locals, or enforced by the authorities. So, a watchful eye and a kind heart were also extended to our four-leggeds and their young as well.
It always appeared that whichever dad or uncle was driving, he always exuded confidence and by his demeanor wanted all his passengers to now he was in full control of the situation and all his attention was on preserving the safety of his family and the wellbeing of the other road users that included those innocents from the animal world.
All the animals, I ever remember that touched and passed through our lives, domesticated or not, were given their own name by our fathers and some of those animals had even been named after their own children. Apparently, in the eye of that particular dad, that child and that animal showed a similar behavior or heart characteristics.
We kids got a good chuckle out of that, because some of those names were so aptly placed. We learned very early how healthy it was to laugh at ourselves and especially at oneself without that awful poisoned-needle-poke of self-deprecation one secretly reserves for one’s most brittle self. Most importantly – we learned how NOT to dress up an intentional hurt as a joke at someone else’s expense, for in those caustic gibes that we construct, intentionally or not, there lies at its root, a cowardice to confront.
It was a nice teaching from our dad’s, in how eyes that loved us – saw us.
Delivering honesty at all times in our life is a heavy burden to bear, especially, at its most needed time of delivery. But a priceless gift nonetheless, repeatedly, once delivered it’s proven to be.
There is an age-old adage for telling the truth. You don’t ever get caught out for telling it and the memory of its giving will be forever stenciled in stone.
As children, we grew up with an abiding, lifelong love for these gentle giants of peace-loving men. Don’t get me wrong, they tripped and fell and scraped their shins as we all do.
Men, with the exception of their beloved baby brother, who refused to go and kill other men, women, and children in those other foreign men’s wars.
We knew we could trust these men, and especially the baby one, implicitly with our lives and they knew, that we their daughters and sons, would follow unwaveringly in their gentle, almost imperceptible footprints, so light was their walk.
Rather, our fathers chose to stay home on the land that their forefathers had bequeathed them. And, as those ancestors previously, so did our fathers use their skills, to plant and grow healthy foods from the healthy soils to build their children’s young bodies into natural forces that in all aspects resonated with the therapeutic energies of Mother earth.
Poor we may have appeared by definition in the eyes of Material Seekers, but rich indeed were we, in the Mineral Wealth of Wellbeing and for that we celebrated and shared the bounty of our Elder’s gardens with all who were without.
In the Matriarchal Philosophy of Shared Good Health is Wealth no one that met us along the traveled road of Life missed a ride on our Green Bus.
Getting somewhere in the exact same physical state you left somewhere else, was an accepted principal of good common sense. Getting to that destination with the same degree of mental wellbeing you held when you started off wasn’t even a question that was raised.
In today’s modern world of speed, recklessness and mental stress, the resulting carnage on the roads is, but a symptom of a society unable to abide by its most basic moral contract with each other. That is, to keep one another safe and free from harm.
Now as a society, we have become so removed from the horrendous reality of these tragedies. We now accept death, injury, mental stress, and trauma related illness’s resulting from our own contractual failure with each other.
Simply, as a consequence of the modern conveniences and privileges that we enjoy, and that apparently outweigh, what really should be, the extraordinary part of our shared common humanity, be telling all of us, to stand up and simply say, “Enough is Enough.”
Instead of becoming those Sentinels, we have instead, chosen silence!
Woe, indeed, is us!
Oh, for the Days when we had a steady hand at the steering wheel of our ex-army camouflage green bus. When steady as she goes, was a contractual writ, a solemn oath one takes in the quiet space of her or his conscience to uphold the sanctity of Life and all that that involves.
My mum, her sisters and brothers, my dad, his brothers, his sisters, their parents, their families, our people, all at one time, drove our bus and took us there safely. They moved our hearts and in doing so, taught us all about the sanctity of life and our moral duty to care for it in each of us, especially, in the least of us.
I remember Kaikohe was that town I heard had a picture theatre though we never got to go there. It was a waste of money we never had, the grannies
said, better we all go to Opononi, over the hill, on our green camouflage bus and watch the sunset settling into Te Tai o Rehia, The Tasman Sea, while sitting on the beech for free! Learn not to say anything they said, just watch and enjoy.
Now I’m married to Jenny who owned a movie theatre and I still prefer to stay in the peace and quiet of our home and its tree-lined surrounds, and the huge overhead Ohio sky and watch the colors and the forms of un-known, un-named things dancing and jiggling in the quiet…
As a boy, I still remember imagining that, from that old village of ours the big city Auckland may have just as well been on the other side of another planet. Soooo fantastic had it appeared in the stories we were told by our relations who visited us. So whenever a very special trip had to be undertaken, no one could be left behind. All the families had to go, even the small children and babies because in those days the term babysitter – hadn’t been invented yet.
In our culture, babysitting wasn’t a specific term because SOMEONE was always in the house. Traditionally, a house wasn’t considered a Thing. It was merely an extension of the Marae in which the people affiliated through ancestral lineage resided. Both sides of the family, the wife and/or the husbands and therefore the house, was always assured of company as well. That person, “The house warmer,” automatically was aware a baby was either sleeping, going to get up soon, or sometime, and was available to become, “The Parent,” or go call a responsible adult.
In my opinion, the greatest anathema to Maori Family well-being has been the European framing of what constituted the ideal Family Model., the White Pickett Fence, which was defined as dad, mum, and the kids, or even better still, dad, mum, and the kid.
Respectably, looking at our own historical record, Hogwash!
In Maoridom, if not still lodging communally in the Ancient Marae, we still lived under one roof, irrespective of the numbers. On average that meant three generations, but it also allowed for the possibility of a fourth-generation members as well.
People at the same time were always clustered close to their Marae, usually within a fifty-minute walk at the most. Walking then, was still considered a pleasure, a recreational one. I remember, on those ancestral lands, there were large houses on average that had eight bedrooms. Or large houses that had many sleep-outs placed strategically around the large property for privacy purposes.
Not every family had a vehicle of their own. There just wasn’t the money available and traveling for the fun of it cost money, so it wasn’t on anyone’s priority list. Kids like us, still preferred to ride our horses and swim in the river, all at no cost, besides, it just wasn’t fashionable to have a car of your own parked outside. Where outside? Everywhere was considered outside!
That time hadn’t arrived, and no one cared about flashy things! People WALKED and TALKED to each other, and still got to where they wanted to go in time, but no one cared about that either. In time, meant when you got there.
No one missed appointments either or shrieked about it, or became upset or panicky, as if their heart had been attacked – cause no one would have understood what it meant. The only appointments that really counted were with the nurse or doctor, but then again, you never had to worry about those because the nurse and the doctor came to the Marae one day a week to see anyone who needed to be seen – for free.
That was our free Public Health System in New Zealand, set up in 1938 and still is viable today.
The quaint title of, “Retirement Homes for the Elderly,” could, very well have been applied to the Marae complex. For Grannies and Papa’s would have metaphorically held the position of Queen Bee of the Hive, in the buzzing, interactive, community model that I know, and not the hapless, spent, bewildered worker Bee in the other that has sprung up around the western world where its primary client equates to that of the healthy beating heart of financial data.
Those were still the days that if an elder had a question to ask a child, they
exercised their prerogative to address it directly to the child themselves and not seek permission from or use the parent as a conduit. However, if the parents requested, they could remain alongside their child, listen, question, and learn without embarrassment.
As well, if it were a babe, a grandaunt, or granduncle, didn’t have to claim a right to hold and cuddle that bloodline descendant, because in truth, the babe was more theirs then, was anyone’s.
There was a time when elders weren’t stranger’s to children, scary things to be avoided. Rather, they were revered counselors to go to where confidences would be held in safety and young opinions were listened to and valued. Life’s lessons taught and learned.
When the child becomes familiar with an elder’s strangled cry, their hobbled walk, their emaciated state, when that child has lived under the same roof, eaten at the same table, partaken of the same food…
When she has heard the most beautiful language being spoken for the first time in her life come out of the mouth of the old woman across the dining table from her and can repeat those sounds effortlessly and found that those same sounds come to her instinctively – unconsciously, she is recognizing her birth language.
We should all have that sacred gift, the language of our ancestors – our birth language, and the language of the land, and we all should be fluent in both. Bi Lingual.
Our birth language; this language is the root of self-identity and awareness. It is your native tongue and somewhere in each of our beginnings, we sprang up somewhere, indigenous to someplace. Until you find your language, you will merely acquire the ability to hum the melody but never remember the words.
Secondly: The language of the Land. This language survives among a very few tribal groupings.
In the late 1950’s an enterprising uncle put a tender in to the New Zealand Ministry of Defense when the Ministry found they had a surplus of wartime vehicles. He offered to take three of their buses from them and gift them to his local community as a public transport and offered 6 Pounds (Pounds, Shillings, and Pence were the currency at the time in New Zealand) as his tender. Six months later he was notified, that because of the community aspect of his bid, his tender, though not the highest, or lowest, had been accepted.
Our meager needs had never ever warranted concern from government. Our people never participated in politics or became ensnared in the plague of belief systems that came from other lands and voices. Our people didn’t believe in war or the taking of life. We never voted and those in charge of the local and national government monies with the wherewithal to teach instruct or inform, never bothered bothering us and we never bothered bothering back.
In retrospect, we must have been the ideal constituents. We took care of ourselves, our community, never complained and paid Caesar his dues. Albeit – in fortnightly installments.
It was only later that our uncle Horomona, a younger brother to my father, found out that all the buses were painted camouflage green. He and his brothers had a really good laugh about that and decided on the spot that they would not repaint them. They would all remain Camouflage Green.
Later as a grown man, my uncle shared with me that he flirted with the idea of having them painted a pinkish-red when a large quantity of the paint came into his possession while he was a painting contractor, but he gave the idea away when his sisters and sisters-in-law threatened to throw him off the bridge and into our family river.
I remember there were always two buses certified roadworthy and able to travel on the road that were available to our local community and the other one was used for spare parts. It seemed to us kids growing up – they were an integral part of our lives.
All my uncles and papa’s loved working with each other, fixing something up. Something always seemed to be “needing to be fixed up,” on one of the buses. If they weren’t gardening. In our family vegetable gardens, for that’s’ where their skills really shone, one, two, or three of them would be fixing up or tinkering around with one of their beloved buses.
We kids thought our green, ex-army camouflage buses were the coolest of the cool, for there was nothing to compare them against in our tiny backward world, and none of us had ever been on a normal, everyday, ordinary bus. But alas, for us, our city cousins saw them for what they wanted them to be, circus rides for those clowns from the outback.
What, with our pinned together, patched-up, hand-me-down, falling apart clothes, and now our…green camouflage ex-army buses! We were innocent lambs being sent to the slaughter by the deadly, razor-edged tongues of our cousins.
Our Mums and Dads, Aunts and Uncles, Papa’s and Grannies, could not have dreamt up a better test for their children and grandchildren if they had spent their time devising a plan themselves. And here it was, in the form of, two green-camouflaged, ex-army buses that were taking us all to the big bustling City of Auckland.
The elders still had to hold a special hui or meeting, to plan the event so no one got lost and wandered away, for they knew what most of us “daydreaming” kids were like!
This was going to be a six-day trip with three overnights in Auckland and one along the way, and one on the way home.
From where our village was in the far north, Auckland was about 180 miles away. Considering the state of the roads, it would take us, if we were even a little lucky, two days to drive there and two days to drive home! Things would be made easier because we had relations with Marae who would host us along the way. It was a time of big organizing and we little one’s made sure we kept out of the way otherwise, the elders would ask us to scratch their backs or rub their feet, cause organizing, and checking bus engines and the other host of things attached to buses was complicated stuff especially
with the screw drivers and spanners and those other spannery things that made all sorts of body parts sore and got the people you loved tired.
But sometimes we kids got so excited watching, we forgot and got caught and had to scratch and rub, which we didn’t mind at all.
We poor innocents thought we were the smartest looking convoy ever and wondered why so many people – strangers even, were stopping along the way and waving and hollering and laughing and clapping as a dad or uncle drove one of our two green camouflage buses through their towns.
Apparently the grownups were later saying that the crowds could have mistakenly thought we were army people returning or going to a rally. It was our kids turn to have a really good chuckle about that.
We were not army, but were called Conscientious Objectors, Pacifists, words we hadn’t even heard of at the time, or didn’t even know the meaning to. For neither of those foreign sounding things were of our language, or vocabulary.
Rather our people were of Rongomaraeroa, the Ancient Goddess of Peace of whom we followed. We were mistakenly applauded because we were traveling in war-buses given to us by the Ministry of Defense, for the grand total of six pounds, because our duly elected Government wouldn’t provide adequate public transportation for us to travel as free people in our own free country.
Our Dad’s and Uncle’s, all men of Peace, just kept driving through it all, waving out and smiling to everyone. They’d heard it all before. Their belief in our ancient Goddess of Peace, Rongomaraeroa more enduring and steadfast than a belief in a foreigner’s political statement that said, “A War to end all Wars,” uttered in 1919 at the end of a murderous World War One when they were, like us – mere kids.
But finally, after all the scratching, rubbing, and organizing, it all came together, and we all arrived in the big city of Auckland. Without breaking down once!
Our city cousins laughed at us, their country-bumpkin relations when we proudly emerged from our green camouflage painted buses then openly mocked us.
It made us sad, so we linked arms and squeezed tight and felt the sadness loosen it’s grip on our throats and our hearts, then dissipate. We sought guidance from our Nan’s who reassured us with wide loving smiles – but never said naught.
Our Grannies smiles and calm were infectious. Where we wanted words of encouragement, they merely gave us their smiles. And that was all it took
One of my older brothers, Mackie Boy brought a large container of water and placed it in front of us and retired into the background with our elder siblings. We all knew what was in the container, Fresh Spring Water from our sacred Mountain Puhanga, The Spouting Whale.
We were still saddened because of the laughter and gibes, so we kept our own council and followed the example of our elders. We all gave our attention to the contents within the container of water, and that immediately took each of us back to its source. We lifted our heads to the light, then slowly closed our eyes, and imagined we were the brightest rainbows we each, could ever be. We were bringing fresh water from our mountain springs to our relations and especially our city cousins who were mocking us because we looked different on the outside to what they did in their nice city clothes and shiny bright shoes.
I remembered their pretty footwear because I knew, that unlike our bare feet, those shiny-bright leathery things, imprisoned theirs. Theirs, that would never be given the opportunity to purposely step into warm horse or cow muck on an icy, winter’s morning and sense that healing feeling that our bare feet and awakened spirit constantly did.
Neither would our cousins appreciate the pure sensuality of walking in natural meadows filled with luscious blackberries and a wide variety of native birds flying overhead within arm’s reach. And fields that had never had the green of their lushness, or the cream coloring of their clover violated by the slashing blades of a rampaging man-directed machine.
The simplicity in which one so young, can be moved so permanently into a state of everlasting grace with nature, was so overwhelmingly beautiful and I silently wished this grace upon all our city cousins.
We took no offense at their ridicule because they were our kin…their blood was ours. Their put-downs – teachings, we each would take to heart and convert with graciousness and humility and give them back tenfold manifested in our behavior to every one of them, our beloved Relations.
With our missing buttons and un-tucked shirts, our strings for belts and our patches on trousers that didn’t quite patch or match, we had hoped that they might forgive us our wretchedness. That in accepting us for who we were, they could then accept the purity of our mountain water because it held the same gem-like quality as our love and that they were both gifts from the beautiful Rainbow and the Mountain.
Which in truth was theirs as well.
There is a majestic waterfall within the Mountain Ranges, as the water crystals are raised aloft in the sweeping mountain draft they are refracted in the light. This refraction causes a permanent rainbow – Aniwaniwa, The Mother Rainbow.
Aniwaniwa sits partnered eternally atop our sacred Mountain Puhanga, the Spouting Whale. The Rainbow and the Whale, our Ancient family’s sacred totem.
One of our Granny’s stood and told the assembly that her grandchildren had gone up the mountain and brought ten containers of the spring water especially for the Auckland Elders and asked that the people pass our love on to them.
Much earlier in our teachings we had been taught about the cycle of rainwater in cities. It made all of us cry when we first heard it and every time we shared the story with others. We found it hard to hold an animosity against our relations and against anyone who had to live in big cities and have to drink its water.
Our Papa began the story by saying that most cities experience problems
with the excess run-off when it rains because all the oils and chemicals and other business and industrial waste that lie scattered and discarded around the streets and in the gutters, find the ideal, non-discriminatory, sweeper-upper in the falling rainwater.
Everything gladly hitches’ a ride as the now stream-rolling current, powered by the locomotive called gravity, finds all the lowest and the deadliest points of the city’s infrastructure thanks to the water tables. Finally, with its cargo holds jammed packed with the accumulated poison of the city’s surface area, the swollen, gushing storm waters enters the only receptacle’s able to accept its volume – the city’s open drinking water reservoirs and the sea.
Mother Ocean, with all the might and ferocity of the Waves at her beck-and-call, is simply powerless to resist. She tries her best to protect her water-children from the poisonous onslaught, but the “least” of Her children easily succumb once again, time and again and the cry of the Sea ebbs and flows in Her misery and the only place Her aching Heart can find sanctuary is in the merciful, eternal arms of Time and Tide.
Meanwhile, time-and-again, the city’s overloaded and compromised water supply is tapped out to its ever-trusting, rate-paying residents.
At the big powhiri, or the official welcome the next day, our elders were invited onto the stage as the senior manuhiri/guests and, we their children, and grandchildren, accompanied them. We mostly sat on the floor of the stage our backs nestled against the legs of our sitting elders and parents.
One of our mothers had said earlier that people had told her there were at least six thousand people present. They were all here to see us and earlier, at breakfast, one of my cousins, Jimmy, had quite innocently inquired if we children could go to the zoo instead of the welcome. With the scolding looks he got from the grans who heard his feeble asking, we were all glad it wasn’t us.
But his brave hearted request did bring a grin to each of our collective cowardly conscience. Secretly, I know we all wanted to go see the new lion babies but had seen those scary looks too many times before to even think about it.
After the hosts had completed their speeches of welcome, they invited the grannies and grandpa’s to reply.
Smiling, our senior kuikui, or grandmother, on behalf of her peers, stood and approached the microphone. Still smiling she spent awhile looking the crowd over, nodding silently, acknowledging those she knew and even those she didn’t. The young kids especially.
Our Granny looked so regal, we kids knew her as a defining symbol of love. She represented all that was good and decent for all of us.
Several brave young smiling girls ran up to the stage, climbed up and ran over to her for a hug and were invited to sit with us.
When things settled down, in her beautiful whispering voice, while looking up into the sky as though speaking to some ethereal entity, she advised the gathering that each of her mokopuna/grandchildren would stand in turn before the multitude and deliver a short mihi/speech on their grannies and papas behalf, thanking everyone for their hospitality, grace, and generosity.
Then without fanfare, she turned and went to her seat and sat down. After a moment, still smiling, our nan closed her eyes and bowed her head. Following her lead, the rest of our elder group folded their hands in their laps, bowed their heads and closed their eyes as well.
After a minute or so, the silence that had begun emanating from them became a little overwhelming, and then a moment or so later, almost overbearing in its living embrace as it began moving tangibly from our beloveds, onto us, then from the stage like a large growing invisible shawl, it began to gently bring the body of the gathered people together in oneness and with the same essence of quiet.
It doesn’t matter where you go and who the people are. In cities, people tend to have a better tolerance to noise levels than their country kin or friends. Things that go Snap, Crackle, and Pop in the city, for country folk is surely the beginning of World War Three, where on the other hand, is merely breakfast cereal for the city-accustomed dweller.
Silence on the other hand makes those same city folk, uncomfortable.
There’s no guide on the side or sage on the stage directing them, even our city relations were visibly losing their cool. Unsure of what to do, they began looking to each other for support, or was it comfort?
Our beloved grandmother could choose the most inopportune time, or was it, the most appropriate time, in this instance, to setting the stage.
In our time of studentship, we all recognized the subtle steeliness within their relaxed, meditative state-like postures. These crafty peace tohunga/priestess’s/priests would tolerate no opposition from each of us to their request.
So, in our First tongue, the Language of our Ancestors and our Second tongue the language of our Visitors, fluent in both, we began.
We each would all stand in turn to speak, in either one of our choosing.
Being the youngest of our group, I sought no ones permission and stepped forward. I knew, as the youngest, the responsibility fell on my shoulders to start the process moving and I knew my beloved kin would all be doing their own mental calculations as to who would follow next, and so on…
Girl, Boy, Girl…Girl, Boy…etc., etc., etc.,…in my own mind’s eye I had already seen all eighteen who would follow, and the order.
There would be no hesitations, not one iota of self-doubt emoted outwardly by any of our family group in our right to stand as voices for our Nations Ancient Waitaha Peace Message.
Our Elders were the remnant direct descendants of those original voyagers, some say, Time Travelers, who had arrived at our shores millennia ago and had not wavered in their pursuit of realizing the dream of: One humanity, One Universal Family.
One Truth!
Ragamuffins we may have appeared to the outside, but within – our minds had been primed with the knowledge of the Old People from the fertile, rich, lands of the Dreamtime whose names have long been lost to memory, but their love story has been carved into the stonewalls of the Ancient Pyramids
known to our people as Rakai, Pakau, and Kurawaka, the three signature stars of Orion’s Belt.
The Three Founding Tribes of our People of Peace – Waitaha, The Water Carriers.
Standing before all our relations in our raggedy clothing and betraying not one hint of our awkward childhood mannerisms, from the youngest of nine years through to our eldest of sixteen years, we each one of us accepted the invitation of our senior matriarch and, on behalf of every Elder, present, and past. We presented the true nature of peaceful youth emerging from our Waitaha Nations Chrysalis of Hope for a More Peaceful Future.
That aspect of the true self that cannot be diminished by ones designated place on the merry-go-round of circumstance and whether that happenstance might be of privilege, pomp, or poverty.
The multitude fell silent, including our city cousins who began tearing up at the emergence of the Waitaha Butterflies.
And now in this New Village…
This New World Village
The Granny’s and Papa’s still travel
And it still takes a few days
Sometimes in Two’s and Three’s
Sometimes on Our Own
No longer on Rickety Rackety old Army Buses
Painted Camouflage Green
But On Jet Planes
It is our inherent duty as stewards, to keep waking our grandchildren up for those early-morning, never-ending, pointless, rituals. So they may one unexpectedly early morning, spy a particular Sunrise or Rainbow and be one of the chosen few to taste its Confectioners sweetened colors.
Raymond TeKorakora Ruka
Son of Waitaha
24 November 2020