First Nations visiting us here in NZ
Welcome to Aborigines visiting Aotearoa’s iwi
The Aborigines have been in Australia for around 65,000 years. They used land bridges and canoe to make their way from Africa through Asia to settle there.
There are more than 250 tribes and they prefer to be called First Nations now, highlighting that there is not one homogenous people, rather 250 “mobs” with their own unique languages and cultures. They are the oldest living civilisation on Earth.
We on the other hand, left Taiwan some 5000 years ago to arrive here 1000-2000 years ago making us the youngest or newest civilisation on Earth, 63,000 years after the original Australians.
We have one generic language with dialectal differences but understood by all for example “whakarongo” from most iwi becomes “whakaroko” in Ngāi Tahu, “wakarongo” in Taranaki and “hakarongo” in the north, meaning “listen up” to all of us. There are very
few common words among the Aboriginal clans.
Twelve years ago, as chairman of Te Ohu Kaimoana, I was invited by the Northern Land Council, (a council of all the Northern Territory nations), to assist with their new commercial fishing interests. For three weeks we lived “on country, in bush” with the Yanyuwa mob and had no power, no phone coverage, next to the
Booraloola river 1000km south of Darwin — “the Wopwops” — about 100 of us, me being the only outsider of the mob.
The first night in my swag under the brilliant canopy of a billion stars, I started counting the shooting stars, but gave up after one minute when I reached 100 already.
That day we had set 50 mud crab pots using a donkey we shot for bait.
We caught about 600 crabs for sale which were worth about $40 each on the Sydney market or $24k in just one night’s fishing, the first commercial fishing venture in history for Booraloola.
In the morning I witnessed a horizontal tornado swirling up the river, the eye being the sun, the fog pummelling upstream with rainbows and the deadliest coldest winds hurling themselves at our camp.
My minder, Tracker Jack, yelled, “get down Māori mob” and I hugged the ground like the rest of them till it passed over us, bending trees, uprooting tents and trestles and knocking our dunnies flat.
“Mate, this happens every morning,” said Jack, “It’s the gods coming to pick up the deceased, so stop gawking and come to brekky”.
We ate crab, just crab. Delicious! Then when we inspected our mud crabs for the market, there were none. I said to Jack, “Where are they?”
“We let them all go, Māori mob,” he said.
“We can’t sell our brothers, we can eat them to stay alive, but not sell them. Next time we’ll eat the donkey,” he said, matter of factly.
The oldest nation in the world giving the youngest nation a lesson in environmental economics, in relationships and whakapapa. Aue taukiri e!
The next morning after being with them for an amazing three weeks including burning all the undergrowth in surrounding country and on many small islands, and hunting, spearing and cooking a two-tonne dugong, a large sea turtle and a kangaroo, I woke up to deathly silence. During the night they had all packed up and left swiftly and silently. I was in bush alone!
I made my way back to Darwin in absolute awe, caught up with them a year later in Darwin and they sent a delegation hosted by me a few months later.
Today a delegation from the Victorian Aboriginal Council is visiting different iwi enterprises to view the transition from customary to commercial ventures while still retaining cultural integrity and I will host them for a day.
I won’t be feeding them crab or donkey. Kumara and puha, perhaps.
The leader of the delegation is Sara Stuart and we met in Melbourne a month ago at a cultural-commercial conference she was running. We quickly discovered that her brother Jesse is married to our daughter Makere in Darwin. Knock me over with a feather!
So there are many hookups and synergies between the oldest and newest nations in the world, which we are just starting to explore.