Water and Livelihood

Ko Tapuwai-o-Uenuku te Maunga - Benio, Eastern Southland looking towards the Blue Mountains

E kore te wai, e kore te tangata.
No water, no people.

This has been the big issue at centre of attention in every community I’ve worked in and in conversations at International Rural Churches conferences: water.
How crucial it is.
How dangerous it is.
How contested it has become.
And how easily we turn it from fresh water, wai Māori, to wai paru.

Crucial

Without it, the land in Genesis 2 is not yet a seed bed for life.  When water enters the story, the narrator goes overboard describing rivers flowing from all directions. Sheer repetition (cf. the repetition of the phrase “seed-bearing plants bearing seeds” in Genesis 1) pointing to life as proliferation.  

As a Southland sheep farmer’s daughter, I didn’t know much about irrigation.  A few decades back, an old farmer in the Manuherekia Valley enlightened me about the process of going round the farm with a shovel, releasing water from border dyke irrigation. The goal was to get an even flow across the paddocks. He was an expert, never a bare patch on any slope. On the international scene, getting piped water was the priority for churches I met in the Sulawesi mountains.  And in Malawi the priority is community water pumps, USD4,000 ready-made or, better, teach rural youth to be engineering entrepreneurs to build minimal cost versions. 

Water pump constructed by students at University of Mzuzu

Dangerous

Etched in my mind is the Methven community gathered en masse to farewell a toddler who’d got through an open gate and drowned in a water race. It was close to where his grandmother had taken her own life some years before. Crucial for that farming community, but devastatingly deadly.

Contested

Contested for access and control and when it comes to rivers contested upstream and downstream. Between countries – the Indus flowing through Pakistan and India, the Rhine flowing across Europe.  Between States: Australia’s Murray River, from the Cubbie Station cotton farm the headwaters in south-west Queensland, through New South Wales and South Australia, with a contest also between land use and urban use. Likewise the Waikato,  from mountains, through farm land and urban areas, with the country’s biggest city arguing its need for increased access.

Regarding our local rivers the debate is about flow levels in relation to issues of water use and water quality – electricity, farm land irrigation, fishing, algae control, and mahinga kai (traditional food sites). The Otago Regional Council is currently asking us to “Have your say” on Manuherekia River water management scenarios.

Who owns the water?  

Ngāi Tahu’s freshwater claim to the Waitangi Tribunal is not about ownership. Their kaupapa is to design jointly (with the Crown) a better system to manage and care for our precious waterways, for the benefit of present and future generations.  They have their eye on the age to come, and are guided and driven by tikanga tuku iho – principles and values handed down the generations.

This has common ground with whanau Karaiti, people of Christian faith. We who are whanau Karaiti have an eye clearly on the age come and continually remind ourselves of what is tuku iho, handed down to us.  In the biblical heritage, water is gift.  Like the land, it is gift that keeps on giving, so long as we don’t do harm to it or put blockages in the way. 

Don’t treat the soil like dirt, says my nephew.  Even more so with water, on which the life of the soil depends.  To treat it as a commodity and battle over it is not to treat it as gift to treasure.  

Living Water

In John 4 Jesus meets a woman of Samaria at a well and they get talking about living water.  Kathleen Rushton SM reads this text located at Jacob’s well in relation to the ongoing contest for water in her region of Canterbury. For Sr Kath the whole of John’s gospel is best understood in the terms laid out in the prologue in chapter 1, namely the fundamentals of life’s origins and purpose. 

“Water”, she writes, “enables the birth of the stars, contributes to the formation of the planets, the forming and cooling of earth.  Enveloped by water, Earth’s creativity flourishes… Water maintains life by moving nutrients and energy within each living cell and between the cells of the whole organism.”  

As much as we are earth creature from the earth (adam the human being from adamah the top-soil), we are “waterlings from water”.*

In John 4, the woman, named Photina in early Christian references, has been forced to the edge by politics and culture.  Access to water, instead of being open and available to all peoples who may need it, has become exclusive.  Jacob’s well is a Samaritan well, with access closely controlled.  As a woman without a husband, having lost many and at this point not seeking another, Photina is at the very bottom of the economic system working as a water carrier, hard labour and borderline survival wages. Jesus also is at the edge, in his case because he is a Jew who, by rights, would not drink from a Samaritan water source.  But who “owns” Jacob’s well?  Sr Kath describes an image that is in a 3rd century Roman catacomb.  What is significant is that the woman standing in flowing water.  It is gushing out, nothing holding it back. It cannot be contained or controlled.

At the start of the episode Jacob’s well is referred to as pēgē, a spring. Other words are used as they speak of the well and of living water.  But there is a key point where Jesus uses that word again, saying: “The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to the age to come.”  (v.14)

Water Released – Livelihood Released

Water is released: freed from economic and political control.  So also is life and livelihood.  

Indeed, livelihood is the issue at the heart of life on the land.  That is what farming is about. Viability that gives your household the means for life, a viability that is not just figures on a balance sheet.  In my experience it always was and still is about sustaining the land, to sustain the people.  

At Knox Church last November I told the story of my family’s relationship over the years with a farm in Eastern Southland.**   During my ministry, working with rural church people, I’ve asked them to tell the story of the land they work, as a way of digging into the connection between their faith and life on the land (this works with home gardeners too).  With my family – as with many other stories I’ve heard – it is a story of change and of care.  In our case, four generations deeply motivated to till and to keep (Genesis 2:15), learning with the times, making changes for the good for the land as they have understood it.  

The current situation in relation to water and farming relates to the pressing need as a nation to prevent further degradation in water quality and to work to restore waterways to a healthy state for the future. “Farmers fear new water rules could push them under” was a headline from earlier this year.  Regulations have always be the bane of their lives because farmers are fiercely independent and don’t appreciate a heavy hand from above.  Also because, as is the case in many spheres of life, one size does not fit all.  Farmer-driven plans and targets for meeting agreed goals in the local context would work so much better than blanket regulations.

Rural/Urban Divide

What hasn’t helped the conversation is the gap in understanding between rural and urban people, something that has become greater over recent decades with fewer town families now having relations living on the land and therefore a chance to experience rural life. 

I stand in two worlds, with rural origins plus continuing contact and rather many years of urban-based university education.  Thirty odd years ago the Association of Presbyterian Women’s magazine Harvest Field got me to write an article on the urban/rural divide, a matter that was already a growing concern then.  My key point was that the distrust (and sometimes disdain) works both ways.  On the receiving end it felt like a case of “judge us before you know us” but I was, and am, aware that it works rural to urban as much as urban to rural. A clear case of othering – what is not our own kind is “other” and therefore alien. The step that follows on from this sense of alienation is fear of the other, the source of most if not all conflicts in our world.

Living in Northland I came to articulate the urban/rural divide in terms of two languages.  Rural people, as well as speaking their own lingo in country contexts, can change out of working clothes, go to town, and speak in terms urban folk understand.  Country people have always interacted as equals with business and professional people and those who have practical skills like they do – in trades and in manual work.  With improved mobility and technology, plus the cultural dominance through the media of urban perspectives, rural people now live in two worlds.  We are, effectively, bi-lingual.  

I got to know a lot of te reo speakers in the Far North, many who only learnt English when they went to school.  Maori is their “heart” language. Even for those who have learnt te reo Māori second to English, the intonation and the concepts of the reo touch their spirits in ways te reo Pākehā never can. And yet the dominant view has been that, if they can speak English, why should anyone bother learning Māori. I thought that was changing but after returning south I’m hearing it again.

What is the benefit of people, including Pākehā like me, learning Māori?  It is in discovering how “the other side” sees the world.  It gives insight into the ideas and values that drive them, the internal meaning of their words, their understanding of what counts as best practice, and their aspirations for the future.  Learning te reo opens up one’s understanding of the other and they become less “other”.  No longer to be feared. No longer felt to be a threat.   

Likewise when urban learns “rural”. 

Water is perhaps the conversation topic that needs urban and rural voices talking together and learning to understand each other’s “reo”.  Not talking past each other, but, in the words of Nelle Morton, hearing each other to speech.***  

Speaking because the other is listening. 

Based on a presentation to the North Otago Dunedin Regional Presbytery at Palmerston on 25.05.2021

Footnotes:

* Kathleen Rushton SM, “Waterlings from Water: Exploring a Cosmological, Eschatological Reading of ‘Living Water’ in John 4:4-42 amidst the Braided Rivers of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand, in Creation and Hope: Reflections on Ecological Anticipation and Action from Aotearoa New Zealand, ed. Nicola Hoggard Creegan and Andrew Shepherd, p.92

** Knox News December 2020 January 2021

***Nelle Morton, The Journey is Home

 

A Māori Girl from Gore?

A good friend in the North, Wimutu Te Whiu, would often refer to me on local Marae as “the Māori girl from Gore”.  True, I was born in Gore, but I can’t claim any ancestry other than Scottish, Irish, and a little bit of English.  Nā Kotirangi, Airangi hoki ngā tūpuna, often out of solidarity not including the imperial Ingarangi in my mihi.  Matua Wi bestowed something very precious to me and yet I feel very hesitant to claim it and risk stepping into arrogance.  He affirmed a belonging among the whanau whānui (the family at large) in the Whangaroa area of Northland. Somehow this was so, perhaps because I was there with them in many different places as one of their ministers for tangihanga (funerals) and at significant hui; away outside my comfort zone, willing to be totally governed by tikanga and te reo Maori (customs and language), and stand and do my best to speak if and when I was called on. 

Now that I have returned to the south, I know that something got added to me during those years with the people of Whangaroa and Northland, something that can never be taken away from me.  Yet returning home, I return also to my “Pākehātanga”, to the social and cultural ways of southerners, friendly yet reserved, close-knit and pretty comfortable, content with their world and in no hurry to change.  These are the kind of people I grew up with. As noted in an earlier blog, it has been a “dislocating” experience.

Rural Eastern Southland in the 50’s and 60’s was very monocultural and that is not just the white faces.  The heritage was predominately Scottish (Presbyterian) or at least from the British Isles. It wasn’t till High School that I knew anything about the reasonable sized population of Māori living in Mataura for its employment opportunities. But it wasn’t close contact because the school had 1,100 pupils and the Latin class I chose to be in was unsurprisingly all Pākehā. It didn’t help that I was hopeless at sports.

What made up for lack of interaction was the philosophy and cultural attitude of the home I grew up in. I was aware that my family consciously stood apart from the mainstream in being respectful and accepting of other cultures, be it the Chinese greengrocer or people who were Catholic, or Māori the first people of the land. Through church involvement they got to know people of many different cultures. My father’s war experiences contributed to the overall inclusive attitude, and also his father’s independent thinking and non-conformist stance on many things that he inherited. My mother’s proto-feminism, as it could perhaps be called, added to it. She was the oldest in a family whose father had died when many of the children were still young. She didn’t accept gender stereotyping. Nor did she consider fitting in with others more important than thinking for herself and staying true to her values.

So philosophically there was an underpinning of the worth of all people, regardless of whether they were like us, “us” feeling we were not really mainstream anyway. Also philosophically, the Christian faith I grew up with was clearly articulated as practical Christianity, primarily about ethics and justice, caring for people and caring for the land.  For my father, to be a farmer is to be in relationship with the land – and the weather. Living with the variables – that is faith. Words like animal husbandry, agriculture, and pastoral farming all carry connotations of working in relationship.  Not objects to be managed and manipulated, but living beings to nurture and look after.  

Ethics and justice. Conversations at the dinner table introduced us to the inequities in society, and around the world.  Conversations continued into teen and young adult years and through the 1970s this included injustice for tangata whenua, with the hope and expectation that we would change as a nation. We thought that the next generation would all learn Māori in school and that the Treaty of Waitangi would be taken seriously across the board. As that was very slow to happen there continued to be the question “why not?”  What is getting in the way?

In the years that followed, and particularly when I took on church ministry, my learning increased exponentially. My philosopher’s brain maintained a high level of curiosity and a drive to expand perspective. An innate shyness helped me willing to keep silent and hold back my point of view and listen. Listen to people who knew the negative consequences of colonisation and loss of land and identity and thereby get a glimpse of truth from a totally different place than my own.  

It was while doing ministry in Mid-Canterbury and attending a training event in Sri Lanka that I had the Kiwi classic overseas experience of feeling the beauty of belonging of te reo. During a Christian Conference of Asia service, all the languages represented in the gathering were used during a prayer.  When it was the turn of Aotearoa, I was deeply moved and tears came to my eyes. Once home I got advice about learning Te Reo, whether it was right for me as a Pākehā to do so and whether the Correspondence School was a good way to go. The answer from a kaumatua (Māori elder) I served on a church committee with  was “yes”.  So the journey began, with the help of a Tūwharetua kaumatua living in Ashburton. The local church was not all that receptive to the use of the reo – there are no Māoris [sic] in our church – but there were occasional community events, like prayers for a Play Centre Conference, where the tikanga of the organisation was to acknowledge the Treaty. A formative moment was when Rotary held their national conference in our town and asked for prayers first thing on Sunday morning. I planned to end with the grace in te reo, which I had committed to memory as part of my study course. In the front row of the gathering was Hiwi Tauroa (former Race Relations Conciliator).  As I spoke the words, kia tau ki a tātou katoa…, I saw a huge smile appear on his face. Even though my pronunciation was atrocious!  

When a parish in Northland became a possibility in the early 2000s, a large part of the appeal was how different it would be from the south. I knew I would be challenged and that my world would have to expand. I look back on it as an amazing experience, a real blessing. It has been a gift that keeps on giving and what I may have given back will never match what I have received. As teina (younger sibling) to them as tuakana (older sibling), I sat at the feet of the hapū of Whangaroa and their many relations around the wider district. The College students laughed because of my accent when I first led karakia at Assembly, but as I listened, spending many days in many hui and tangihanga, slowly things got better and with every affirmation for my reo, I could sense that they were proud of who they were helping me become. 

Patient listening was my commitment and that came from two directions. One was simply tikanga Māori. That is the way to learn: ideally starting in childhood, being present, absorbing, and then, when directed to, standing and contributing. I was starting later in life, but I was determined to make the most of the time living in the North.  The other basis for this commitment to listen stemmed from what I learnt working as a church minister. Being counts as much if not more than doing in the role of minister. Just being with people. Not racing round solving problems. Not necessarily even knowing the right words to say, but simply being a companion on their life journey, whatever it is that they are facing. Using words  to draw out from people what is important for them; hearing them to speech to find their way forward. 

But more significant than what I might have contributed myself to this learning experience in Northland was what was given to me.  The manaakitanga – the welcome, the inclusion, the kindness – of the people of Te Tai Tokerau. The atawhai nui – the amazing grace – with which they received the halting attempts of a Pākehā Southlander to do justice to their tikanga. I was never growled, rather I was mentored. I got feedback all right, but it was always focused on the future, giving the expectation that I’d be back and the understanding that I would always be welcome. I learnt to stay silent during kōrero until it was my turn – if there would be a turn. Even when assumptions were being made about me because of the colour of my skin, I just let be, knowing that opening my mouth would make it worse. The best way was for people to get to know me on their terms. 

I sense that many Māori have had the proverbial gutsful of Pākehā talking back (“yes, but…”), of wanting to establish the truth as they see it, and requiring resolution and agreement on issues before the end of the day. An example of this became apparent as we worked together in Whangaroa to mark 200 years since the tragic events surrounding the ship “The Boyd” in 1809. Widespread antipathy among local Māori towards holding an event stemmed from their expectation, based on past experience, that it would be Pākehā driven and for the purpose of settling the problem of the Boyd.  Pākehā would say “sorry”, forgiveness would be expected to be given in return, at which point the pain and the disagreements would be history.

But for 200 years the only known history of the raid on the Boyd was based on Pākehā records, which contained known inaccuracies and conflicting evidence. The history and the māmai (pain) tuku iho (handed down through the generations of local Māori) had never been heard, with the result that their mana continued to be trampled on.  That was the key issue.

Our Remembrance event focused on the word “healing”, seeking as one of our committee put it “the peace of understanding”. As that was understood, more and more got involved for what was in the end very much a joint effort, Māori and Pākehā. On the day, as we listened to kaumatua and kuia share what had been handed down and speak of the pain that had ensued, we felt our whole community take a step forward towards that peace of understanding. We together felt the wairua of Whangaroa – a new spirit which was reflected in many subsequent events. Like a funeral of an elderly Pākehā woman whose family were invited to bring her to the Marae next door to her home, en route to the service at our church. The funeral director got a bit schedule-anxious as the time drew on, but what was happening was much more important than any schedule. The family were totally embraced and we all treasured it as a moment of journeying together as two peoples united in loss and friendship.

Again we experienced this journeying together in our commemorations for the centennial of the World War 1 battle at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 involving the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). From April 2015 each year through to Armistice Day 2018, we gathered as a whole community, weaving tikanga Māori and Pākehā formalities to create a distinctively Whangaroa remembrance. It is a spirit of remembering that feeds into the present, giving our young people – and all of us – a clear understanding that what matters is how we give of ourselves for the sake of all people. 

A sign of the patience mentioned earlier, in listening and working through concerns until there is peace of understanding, is how long it took for one remaining issue after the 2009 Boyd Remembrance events mentioned above to be settled. It was the issue of the plaque.

An Historic Places Trust plaque had been put in place in 1994, but got damaged and ended up in somebody’s shed.  Our committee recovered it during our preparations and put it in a safe and suitably tapu place (a local church), until it could be decided what to do with it. In 1994, consultations with local Māori had been rushed, with a decision presented almost as a fait accompli. Subsequently many were not surprised that it would not settle where first laid. Patience was clearly required in order to get a genuine resolution. It was not until 2017 that agreement was found among all who held mana in the harbour or who had a significant stake in the matter. Finally we were able to settle the plaque in place in Whangaroa.

For photos of these events, click here 

Māori and Pākehā working together, we did not give up: Mā pango mā whero ka oti te mahi.

That has become my story. Even here in the South, I live and think and feel that drive towards true partnership that we continued to strive for in the North.