Yet, it's still happening.
My whiteness.
My beautiful, olive skinned complexion.
My whakapapa running through my veins.
My feet resting firmly on the shoulders of my tupuna.
I'm lifted up.
But yet, it's somehow not enough.
I know my ancestors would be proud of me, how far I've come.
How I recognise all aspects of my whakapapa.
How I travelled and pilgrammaged to Prague, Guernsey and waahi tapu throughout Te Rohe Potae in the past year.
Yet, I was asked a question during my appraisal hui whether my struggles this year getting my leaders in my bi-lingual class, and therefore the rest of the students, to accept me, might have had something to do with my whiteness.
But I know that not all of their teachers are "visibly Māori" as my appraiser put it.
We've discussed this issue here on this blog at length.
We've discussed my need at eight years old to do a haka on my grandfather's dinghi.
I've shared and shared and shared the plethora of strategies I've used to belong in the classroom, to have success as Māori in the classroom but also and most importantly, to feel safe in the classroom.
Because our learning spaces are not just for our students. They're our workspaces too. We need to feel safe in ourselves there too.
Yes - I am white. My grandmother asked me last year whether I knew that. I looked at my skin and said, "Yes, I know I'm white. But I'm also French, Irish, Scottish, Czech, etc AND Māori too."
At that time she had shared some frustration with the fact that I'd made a joke to my sister about there being a dead hawk in the freezer that she couldn't eat. That I'd be plucking it to use for my korowai sampler. Which I did. Under karakia and guidance and mentoring by my kairaranga last year.
I've made so much change and development in my life to find belonging and understand who I am.
I was brought up in a French whanau, who chose not to learn French. Who were and are quite happy with being all the good and all the bad parts of being a Pākehā New Zealander.
They never appreciated or acknowledged I was Māori... until that one time Tainui owned the Warriors. Then, my Grandad shared my Māori-ness to some random stranger at a sporting shop in Matamata.
They came to my kapa haka performances. They also came to my netball and basketball games. I think they just loved me and watched me do whatever I was doing.
They thought I was cute. Being one of the only 'white' kids in the roopu. Mum fought for me when a girl shoved me up against the wall in A block corridor at my high school and told me I was too white to do kapa haka. I tell people that I was the kaea. I'd like to think that my singing was that sweet. I don't know anymore whether that was the truth or a lie I've grown used to telling to make the story better. I tell people that she did this because she was from a gang family. That she would have been brought up a certain way, to not think much of me in the roopu.
I wonder whether my whiteness was just too much for her. No matter that my whiteness hadn't been an issue since I was five and was in the roopu at primary school. My whiteness wasn't a problem when I performed in front of Te Ariki Dame Te Ataairangikaahu at Turangawaewae marae. Nor was it a problem when I became a Māori Mentor for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Waikato University. Because I belonged.
From a young age I was taught the 'Pākehā way'. My Grandad caught eel, fish, whitebait, trout. He hunted for boars and stags. He shot many ducks and Canadian Geese. He was an inventor. He always had a green thumb and could grow nearly anything. He knew many names of the trees and brush in the bush. He had Māori friends. He taught me many of these skills.
I learnt from a young age how to do Native American chanting. How to make medicine sticks. How to use sage to bless a house. How to use my naturally born wairua to impact on others.
My mum thought this was okay.
I do not. Learning an appreciation of another culture is great. Making it our own, is not. That's cultural appropriation.
I grew up, as my readers know, without my dad. I did however know my dad's mother, Mary who I now call Gran. My Gran sent me photos often of my beautifully multicoloured siblings who I didn't know.
My Gran would share her whakapapa with me. She would share her stories with me. She would share her trauma with me too. Because it's important to share who we are, where we've been and where we will go to next. Who we might become.
My Gran won't get to see this in person, but I know she's rooting for me. That she's supporting me, guiding me, being there for me.
I know that she always wanted to go back to her grandmother's marae. Her marae. My marae. She insisted on waiting, for the right time. I have been assisted by my marae and trust board to get through University. I intend on going back there for wananga. I've invited my dad to come with me. He may choose not to. But I'm still going. Because it's my birthright. Because that's where our tupuna were born. That's where I will find our urupa filled with tupuna in our whanau.
My grandfather Colin, was French. His father came to NZ when he was three years old. He was born in the Channel Islands. Grandad's grandfather Francois came to NZ with his brothers and father Jean Francois Le Long and mother Marie Nedellec.
I know my whakapapa.
I can quite happily recite strands of it back six or so generations. Some I can go back further.
Maybe this new agitation is what was needed to build and stoke that fire within me once again.
I don't need to prove to anyone who I am.
I am me.
I continue to learn, to appreciate, to grow.
I once thought that my wings had been clipped. I don't think that any longer. But they were restrained. I needed that fighting spirit once more.
Ngā mihi 🙌🏼
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