He paraikete whero, he kōrero toa: Resistance in the face of erasure
The heart of Te Papaioea beats with the strength of mana wāhine.
It was more than a workshop. It was a gathering, a remembering, a resistance.
Wāhine from across the motu came together at Square Edge on an autumn weekend, some strangers, some sisters in cause, united by stories of survival, sovereignty, and solidarity.
As I stepped into this kaupapa, it felt both deeply personal and defiantly political.
I realised, almost immediately, my own trauma would sit vulnerably at the surface – visible, exposed. Yet as each wahine stood and spoke her truth, I began to hear my story echoing in theirs. Because this is personal.
I am the second generation in my whānau without te reo Māori as our first language. My tamariki are now the third. The shame of that sits heavy on my heart – a silence inherited, not chosen.
It’s not just the language we’ve lost, but the way we once knew who we were. The kōrero of my iwi now exists only in fragments. The stories that once defined us have faded, along with our land and resources.
Within those walls our experiences, once held in isolation, began to piece themselves together. We were not alone.
We all carried the weight of a 184-year battle – a battle that began with colonisation and continues in policy, in prejudice, and in silence. And we bore the scars, the inherited grief, the gaping wounds left in its wake.
I watched as kōrero began to take form in the shape of red blankets, paraikete whero, stitched by hand and threaded with truth.
This wasn’t about craft. It was about whakapapa, about the stories we carry in our bodies and blood – the ones colonisation tried to unpick but which we continue to repair.
The wānanga was led by Frances Goulton (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Hine), a weaver and activist who understands the power of threads to tell what words sometimes cannot.
Her Paraikete Whero project, rooted in te ao Māori, uses traditional raranga (weaving) to ignite a contemporary movement of resistance. Here, art is not a luxury – it’s a necessity. It is healing. It is protest.
Each wāhine created her own blanket, regardless of experience. The act became a source of therapy. Every stitch held a story – of grief, of strength, of tūpuna.
Together, we didn’t just sew fabric – we bound ourselves to a shared purpose. Strangers became whānau, fastened by a common thread.
Goulton’s connection to this mahi traces back more than a decade, to the Waitangi Tribunal hearings in Whangaroa.
“We were looking for a way to have a voice in that space,” she recalled.
“We put blanket patches and needles and wool on the table ... people just picked them up and started stitching.”
What began as a spontaneous gesture has become a national kaupapa.
“Primarily, they’re women who want to make their own paraikete whero [red blankets], they’re just looking for someone to lead them out, because the story is already in them,” Goulton said.
The symbolism of red, the warmth of blankets, and the communal act of sewing together memory and mana have become a vehicle for political expression and ancestral healing.
For many, like the women in Te Papaioea, this was a space to be seen. Goulton emphasised how often trauma rises in these gatherings.
“Some are still carrying trauma from generations back. It comes up, comes out – and then it disappears. It dissipates into the air,” she said.
And in that air, I could feel my own mamae shift. The ache of disconnection from my whakapapa, my missing language, the names I stumble over – all of it stitched into that red wool, no longer hidden.
The symbolism of the red blanket is layered. At the time of Te Tiriti o Waitangi, red blankets were gifted by British officials to Māori leaders, sometimes in goodwill, sometimes as manipulation. Now, the red blanket has been reclaimed, a statement of sovereignty, not subservience.
These paraikete are taonga, sacred and heavy with meaning. As we stitched, we spoke of the threads that tie us to our tūpuna and the responsibility we have to our mokopuna.
That responsibility was on full display at this year’s Waitangi Day commemorations. When ACT Party leader David Seymour addressed the crowd at Te Whare Rūnanga, wāhine Māori stood silently and turned their backs.
Draped in red, they formed a striking wall of red between Seymour and the haukāinga [people of the marae].
It was a protest without a word – and yet it roared. The blankets, associated with blood, tapu, and protest, carried centuries of resistance on their shoulders.
It was a quiet refusal of Seymour’s proposed Treaty Principles Bill, a policy widely seen as an attack on Te Tiriti and Māori self-determination.
Ngāti Wai leader removed Seymour’s microphone, twice, after Seymour spoke against the wishes of the hapū.
It was a moment that cut through the political noise. Wāhine standing in red, refusing to be erased, reminded everyone that Te Tiriti is not up for negotiation.
What Frances Goulton and the Paraikete Whero movement have built is more than art. It’s space – to grieve, to rage, to remember, and to assert tino rangatiratanga.
As the day at Square Edge unfolded, the cloth sewn into each blanket grew heavier with meaning. One woman hoped her mokopuna would hold her blanket one day and know that “Nan was doing something active”.
Another spoke of not being accepted by either side – not Māori enough, not Pākehā enough.
Goulton affirmed these tensions: “Being Māori is not an easy journey. Being Pākehā in a Māori world isn’t either. Being both and not knowing either strong, that’s not easy either.”
But it is within these layered identities that the strength of the paraikete whero lies. Each stitch, each story, each conversation is a form of gentle resistance.
“We do naturally have this mana inside us,” Goulton said. “It can be moved to the background, but it can’t be taken away. It’s about moving it to the foreground.”
This movement continues to grow. Goulton has been invited to run workshops in Melbourne and Sydney, the movement spreading by word of mouth and social media.
“It’s not something where you sit down and have a vision and say, ‘I’m going to do that’. It’s just been a naturally evolving kaupapa.”
That weekend, I watched hands move in rhythm, laughter mixing with tears, and old pain softening in the presence of a newly formed sisterhood.
We weren’t just sewing blankets. We were stitching ourselves back into the story – on our own terms.
As we folded our blankets and packed away the threads, the room felt charged with something invisible but real, a sewing together of past, present, and future.
“Because if everything’s good for all mokopuna,” Goulton reminded us, “it’ll be good for your mokopuna.”
He whenua, he whānau, he wāhine — ka whawhai tonu mātou. For our land, for our families, for our women — we will continue to fight.