The essentialness of whakapapa in New Zealand social work

This korero is about decolonising who you are, waking up or as I call it ‘coming home’ to the Self. I talk about connection, wairua and whakapapa… the concept of whaia te iti kahurangi…the recognition of the little blue light in all of us, our higher selves that we draw from when working with whanau in need.

How many of you really know what whakapapa is, how to chase a child’s cultural connections or indeed how important whakapapa is to the healing of our people? Really, how do you competently investigate those connections when you don’t value them? When you enter into working with a whānau, you are saying that you are competent in working with them. You understand and value celestial connections to tipuna and atua: all that is, tika, pono, aroha, tapu and noa. Do you even recognise that to sever a child from their whakapapa connections is an act of colonial violence upon that child? You are killing their light potential and interfering with their soul purpose? And No colonisation never stopped, nor did Māori cede sovereignty. Take for example the confiscating and non-return of Waitara lands, what you do to the land you do to the people and on selling our babies to private owners and changing the law to prevent any challenge to have those babies returned. Removing tamariki placement protections from the Act is a direct attack upon whakapapa. The source of our connection, the high wire direct to the atua, and a child’s personal power. This strategy is a racist, ignorant, short sighted plan for the wellbeing of our children. Remove the strategy and remove the advisory panel who conceived it.

Many Maori leaders have stated don’t work with our people until you know yourself. Look your past in order to know where you are going in the future…so we avoid making the same mistakes. Not just our past ‘in this life’ but in other lives lived. In social work, your back-story, is everything. From a Maori perspective, who you are and where you come from is essential to working with us. That is the ONLY shining badge that you flash, not your BSW degree or your SWR card. Think about it, you study 4 years about Western modes of social work whilst barely touching on the historical oppression and genocide of tangata whenua in Aotearoa. White-is-best anything has never worked for tangata whenua…yet they keep on trying to Maorify or Indigenise introduced models that have absolutely no applicability to Māori.

“My Ngāti Porou forebears talk about coming from the love of thousands. We carry their blueprint image, substance, resonance and thus, their embodied lived experience. Everything in the universe is energy matter that cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transmuted. There is no separation between the individual and the collective. Everything exists in a state of harmony or is moving towards harmony and thus every movement creates its opposite. Cause and effect. As with the concepts of Mareikura and Whatukura (sacred feminine and masculine), no one thing is without its complementary reflection, or twin soul.

Thus, in the physical we are linked to our tīpuna. Our DNA is a physical storage medium and the human brain is its physical processing device. The library in which our collective experience, knowledge of old, our eternalness, the secrets of the universe, are held.  Of how creation works, which includes epigenetic and neurosciences of molecular change and sound vibration as ways of healing, of cleansing and clearing. Hence, the importance of rituals, of celebration, of mindfulness, meditation, and karakia to be able to draw from that storage device and bring it into the physical form.

Trauma happens when there is a physical injury where blood ceases to flow, such as with the severing of a limb. Papatuanuku herself experiences the trauma because we are not separate from her and the memory of it is passed on through our DNA. Trauma can be passed on through the grief of loss, of land, belief systems, language, self-determination, and stolen children; it is passed onto the babies, who are then genetically pre-disposed to the effects of colonisation. We have historical trauma responses showing up in our whakapapa.

It also builds up in the physical spaces we occupy, our environment and leaves a residue signature that hooks onto the esoteric, energetic and pain bodies. It is held in the subatomic particles of matter, the air and in water. Crystallised shards of psychic waste collect like rubbish in our cellular memory, thoughts, behaviours, and environments. It can only be cleared through breathing it, healing it back from the living present moment.

Thus, accessing tīpuna or celestial energies in any healing process is essential because both tīpuna and unborn future generations are being attended to. This is where the critical power of healing displacement occurs, particularly for a person who has been severed at birth from their collective bond. Thus, there is no healing of a physical wound without blood flow, ancestral flow, otherwise it is performative and ephemeral” (Moyle, 2015).

We have extensive Kaupapa Māori research available to us that talks about this science and healing potential. That clearly provides evidence to show that imported white-stream interventions do not achieve significant positive life outcomes for Māori. There are solutions being advocated both nationally and internationally, that are grounded within Māori and Indigenous approaches. Why does the white-stream continue to deny this research in favour of their own? Because they think what we are talking about is a load of hocus pocus, superstitious non-sense, which is why their only solution is to repeat themselves.

Historical trauma or whakapapa disruption, like chalk, is not suddenly wiped from a blackboard with empathy, some counseling, or holding the space, or when we’re told to get “over it”. It doesn’t go away when you experience the barrage of racism on a daily basis and told your people are to blame for their own demise, because they are violent, criminal, lazy and dumb. Our babies are carrying that self-hatred, passed on even before they are born into this world, and we wonder why suicide is so high globally across colonised peoples. They haven’t had time to heal from the last colonising hit before they get another. We need to practice holistic healing that address historical trauma and non-Maori modes of right now pati-pati round the garden as in child-centered practices do not cut the mustard! No matter how much you want it to. No matter how well intentioned you are.

So what is whakapapa and why is it essential in social work? There are many meanings provided by far more enlightened minds than myself Ranganui Walker, Irehapiti Ramsden, Moana Jackson and Leonie Pihama. But I am sharing my story to act as lights along the runway, to encourage you to OWN your potential and what you bring to the social work table…because none of you have the right to stand in the way of your own greatness and ability to work well with our people.

I grew up in state care. We had to attend Sunday school and I learned about the power of talking to Jesus. So one night I did. The response I remember getting from Jesus was like when you are starving hungry and you finally get to eat that delicious hāngī that has been infiltrating your nostrils all day long. The way the ‘warm full’ feeling rises up from your belly and envelopes your whole being. In that moment for the first time I heard a primal call of “e tū my girl” and so I did. From that time on I never stopped trying to whistle blow about the abuse we were experiencing from those charged with our care. The way an adult hand slides across your mouth stifling the cry, the breath and the voice. There will always be those who do not want you to whistle blow, be truth tellers.

I have found over the last few years that, like the child who tries to whistle blow about her abuse, there are many in social work that intentionally silence Māori voices speaking up against oppressive practice. Called tone policing, we hear that non-Māori (and some Māori too) would listen if we just changed the words or the tone we use. As if the WAY a person talks about the racism they experience is much more important than the ACTUAL racism they experience. It can make monocultural practitioners or colonised minds uncomfortable. They want to deflect the attention away from their racist actions and refocus on how wrong the uppity native Māori is for pointing out racism. We have to have the hard conversations about racism in all of its facets and guise because it decimates whānau. The e tū call is the stepping up of a warrior, who will not be silenced so that others can remain comfortable.

I have come to realise that everything that I have ever done in this lifetime has intentionally prepared me for this work. In essence I chose this journey, this life and my purpose, just as I chose my parents in order to access this life. I speak out because of resilience, purpose, faith and hope…because of the essentialism of whakapapa. Life does not happen to you as in externally…it all happens from within. So you find you Pou’ness, be pou before you work with our whanau, my whanau!

Whakapapa disruption impacts the spiritual part of ourselves, and is held in the physical, passed on until it is healed. Cultivating a sense of spirituality can help people in their sense of identity, meaning and purpose in their lives, as well as a sense of contentment and belonging. We find this most significantly in the relationships that we have with one anther, with whānau, friends. Connection helps us navigate conflict / adversity a whole lot better; the impact of it it is distributed and we experience life more fully. Meaning we are fuller contributing human beings, and it’s through spiritual wellness that we become aware of our emotional wellbeing, and our mental health.

I am not just a social worker. I am not just the physical body I occupy; I am connected to all that is, the sun, the moon, the stars, the awa, the maunga, the whenua. I come from the love of thousands of my tīpuna. I am the reason they lived and to them I will return. Life and death are doorways we pass through. We are here by divine choice, divine right; we are divinity itself. That is what whakapapa is and why it is precious for our mokopuna (the offspring of wisdom,of knowledge, and of many generations flowing in their blood). Quite simply, if you do not ‘get’ the celestial infiniteness of whakapapa and the healing knowledge contained within it, then you are not qualified to work with our people. If, you fear Maori, if you do not feel confident in your ability to work with whanau, the problem is not with them it is within you.

Finally, your purpose in this life is not what you do, to bring home your paycheck. Your purpose is what you were put on this earth to do, with such intensity and passion, that it becomes a spiritual calling. KNOW that a healer is not just someone you go to for a reading or a mirimiri – in the same way social work applies, it’s someone who flips the switch in you, that wakes you up to your own ability to heal yourself, to be free from a colonised mind and in doing so your light transforms others. So it is important to know who you are, why you are here, doing what you do; what ever it is, it is not enough to just do it. When you know your own greatness, and you are able to follow wairua without hesitation “whaia te iti kahurangi” you have all the tools you need to change anything.

BE ALL THAT AND MORE.

Mauri ora koutou

Email Paora at: pmoyle2@yahoo.co.nz