‘I Lived In Two Worlds’
Tuhoe author Kat Maxwell on straddling two worlds and cultural awakening
Ilived in two worlds. One had cream cakes, lace doilies, plastic covers on the couch and fluffy swan mobiles, a place where children were seen and not heard.
The other had mattresses on the floor, 15 kids around the table, fighting, laughing, crying and boil-up.
They called me half-caste. My 5-year-old brain had a fair idea what that meant. It meant God had got a mould, poured half of it Maori and half of it Pakeha. Simple.
Those two worlds merged at primary school, like oil and water.
One had school stationery, full lunchboxes, shoes and pretty hair ribbons.
The other had last year’s leftover books that still had unused pages, onion sandwiches and the aunties’ spare shoes.
In my doily world, there were strained smiles with pink doily cousins who snickered and giggled behind my back.
“Say something Maarri to us,” they would chortle and we would stare back blankly, wishing we could teleport to our boil-up world with our onion-sandwich cousins, who would play war with us, make guns out of wood and nails.
The realisation of being “a” Maori happens when you are exposed to others who aren’t.
Most have a preconceived notion of what “a” Maori is, having learned from their non-maori parents, who had low opinions of those lazy Maarris down the road, always at the pub never at work. And their belittlement was deliberate. Their pink skin gave them a sense of authority, of command, a sense of conquest. We must defeat, we must diminish, even the Maori who had lace doilies and plastic covers on the couches. They told you that you were “a” Maori. Nanny told me I was Tuhoe, not “a” Maori and she wouldn’t teach us te reo, having witnessed her own children’s struggles in a Pakeha world.
But she taught us whanaungatanga, the treasure of family, manaakitanga, the gift of giving. It has been instilled in us from birth. It is our heritage. Growing up with those taonga woven within our everyday lives, we tended to forget their potency.
It was natural, like learning your ABCS in the doily world, Nanny’s weaving was our boil-up world’s ABC and we took it for granted, ignored being Maori when we could, dying our hair and daubing cosmetics to make our skin look less brown, hanging out with Pakeha friends but avoiding taking them home.
They had their own beds in their own rooms, while we top-and-tailed with four sisters in a wire-woven double bed that had a slump in the middle. Whanaungatanga, most of my siblings are actually my cousins.
My children were born with blond hair and blue eyes, fitting in well, I thought, with the fluffy swans, their lunchboxes full, their shoes shiny and new, but the weavings of my tipuna screamed to be released and there I was watching my children struggle in an unwavering battle between lace doilies and mattresses on the floor.
Their skin colour never gave them instant access to the cream cake because they are Maori. They accepted it.
They woke me up.
My grandmother’s handiwork is evident in my household, my door has always been open, manaakitanga is a creed we live by. I smile at the wrinkled black and white class photo from 1972 — standard 4 at Marton Junction School — where my awakening began (I’m front row, second from left). And I see my long journey to the portrait of my husband, Dennis, myself and our blended family almost 30 years later (above left).
My battle with light and dark, with brown and white, lessens with every generation I survive. My mokopuna embrace their heritage with their fair skin and green eyes, excelling in te reo and kapahaka, and their nanny … she’s a Scottish Tuhoe Maori, who serves cream cakes after the boil-up.