Written by André Ngāpō
Ngāti Tamaterā, Ngāti Porou ki Hauraki, Ngāti Pāoa, Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Wehi Wehi, Raukawa ki uta ki tai, Ngāpuhi · BSocSci, DipMedArts, DipTeAupikitanga, GradDipTch · Brainwave Trust, Learning Designer
Our tūpuna cherished their mokopuna and they understood that the experiences held within loving relationships influence who a child grows to be. Drawing on mātauranga Māori and the wisdom of our tūpuna, André reminds us that children’s wellbeing develops through relationships and everyday acts of care. The experiences tamariki hold in loving relationships become part of how they understand themselves and their place in the world. These four pūrākau from whānau, gathered during our wānanga – He Hīkoi Mahara – explore what our tūpuna understood about the experiences that stay with a child long after the moment has gone.
The words tūpuna and mokopuna carry this understanding within them, for both hold the word puna – a spring of water. Tūpuna can be understood symbolically as the ever-renewing spring, the source from which knowledge, love, and continuing whakapapa flow. Gaze into the still surface of that spring and a face appears, mirrored in the water – and this is the mokopuna: the likeness of the spring reflected back, the source appearing again in the next generation.1 We are all mokopuna, and in time we all become tūpuna. What flows from us, flows on.
He Hīkoi Mahara is a wānanga developed by Brainwave Trust Aotearoa in which whānau walk together through memory and remembrance, surfacing the parenting taonga of their tūpuna. Repeatedly, what whānau bring to the surface are the small moments – in this case an afternoon at Nan’s work, a bowl of cereal, a voice at bedtime, a task on the marae ātea. Seemingly unremarkable at the time, yet each one settled into a child and never left.
Our tūpuna understood how this happens – how a passing moment settles into a child and becomes something carried for life, and in time, something given onward. It is captured in a cosmological chant recited by Te Kohuora of Rongoroa.
Nā te kune te pupuke,
nā te pupuke te hihiri,
nā te hihiri te mahara,
nā te mahara te hinengaro,
nā te hinengaro te manako,
ka hua te wānanga.
The chant describes how being itself unfolds, step by step: from a first stirring of life comes growth, from growth comes energy, from energy comes memory, from memory comes a sense of self, from that self comes longing – and from longing, knowledge bears fruit.2
It is a chant about how life comes into being, yet the same unfolding can be seen in the life of a child. A moment of care is planted in a tamaiti (kune) and grows within them (pupuke). It carries its own quiet energy (hihiri) and settles into memory (mahara). Memory, held long enough, shapes how the child comes to understand who they are (hinengaro). From that grounded sense of self comes a reaching outward – a longing, an aspiration (manako). And in time, what was received ripens into knowledge that bears fruit and is given onward to those who follow (wānanga). Each of the pūrākau here moves along this whole path, as you will see, so that what was once received is, in time, given again.
He mahara hōhonu ake…
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