Te Kāreti o Neirana - Our Waka Story
Nayland College - March 29, 2023
In the centre of the model there is a ‘wharewaka,’ the place where canoes or waka were built. They were designed, lashed and then also housed there, sheltered from the environment when they weren't being used. If the waka needed upgrades, this is the place where they would come. They could be fixed or made bigger, whatever needed to happen could be attended to in safety and shelter.
For us, the school is the wharewaka, and it is a metaphor for the way that we want to care for our students and their journey here at Nayland College. Students are going to come, and grow, and learn new skills, and those skills are going to help them to develop their potential as they move through the year levels. We want to see every student prepared and supported for when they leave our wharewaka to go out into the world.
Inside the wharewaka, there are four waka: Omaio, Ngā Whatu, Waiora and Manukau.
Omaio
The first thing a speech maker (kaikōrero) might do is to acknowledge our atua, our supreme, natural kaitiaki (guardian) of our environment and of people. Examples of atua could be Tāne, the atua of the forest or Tangaroa, atua of the moana.
When we break the word Omaio down it is O-mai-io, it’s the place of peace and tranquility where Io resides. For some iwi, Io is the supreme Atua, the beginning of time and space in the universe. And so Omaio is a peaceful and tranquil place where Io resides and that is the ingoa Māori (the Māori name), for the Stoke area, for the land that we stand on today.
Omaio is really important because atua are important in whakapapa. Everybody in this room has a whakapapa, layers upon layers of genealogy and connection to each other, and also to our environment. In Te Ao Māori, our whakapapa goes from our first ancestor, all the way to our atua, and then our atua connects us to Io. And so Omaio connects us to our whakapapa and the beginning of time.
But also you can look at Io as the beginning of the universe. And so if you think about the beginning of the universe, there was nothingness (te kore), there was darkness (te pō). And then suddenly, there was this big explosion, which created the universe. That explosion allowed us to have Ranginui and Papatūānuku, our sky father and our earth mother. From there came our Atua and from there came humankind.
The Kaikōrero might then acknowledge those that have passed on, our mate (deceased).
Ngā Whatu
Ngā Whatu is in Stoke and is an important part of our history and our story. It is a place that looks down over our kura and was signficant for Māori as a food bowl.
Ngā Whatu is also about the story of Kupe, the Great Pacific navigator from Hawaiki that discovered Aotearoa when he and his fishermen sailed to chase a wheke (octopus) in the islands that was eating all of their fish. Kupe and his fishermen chased it all the way across the Pacific and ended up in Aotearoa. They caught the wheke at Te Moana o Raukawa, which is the Cook Strait. Kupe was finally able to slay the wheke.
Some iwi talk about the eyes of the wheke bursting out and landing at the end of the Marlborough Sounds and if you're traveling on the ferry, you can see two rocks before you exit the Marlborough Sounds.
Other iwi here in Whakatū, talk about how the eyes flung all the way over into Ngā Whatu Valley at the back of Stoke, and that the eyes sit up there.
Ngā Whatu is about the exploration of Aotearoa, the wonderful science, mātauranga and bravery that our tupuna showed to travel across the biggest ocean in the world, Te Moana a Kiwa, to find Aotearoa. We are reclaiming the name Ngā Whatu and giving it mana again through the narratives.
Waiora
When you break down the word Waiora, ‘wai’ is a body of water and ‘ora’ is life. Water is important to all of humanity. We need it to survive and we’re made up of mostly water ourselves.
Poorman’s Stream is the closest flowing water to our kura. However, there is no ingoa Māori (Māori name), for Poorman’s Stream. So we decided to choose a name that represents all of the bodies of freshwater that flow through the Omaio whenua (land) by calling this waka ‘Waiora.’
Waiora is also important because those rivers gave iwi sustenance, and they continue to give us sustenance today. Rivers and streams were 'pataka kai,' food cupboards for our tupuna. There were things like tuna (eel), freshwater kōura (crayfish) and inanga (whitebait) that resided in those places, so they were a food source. There is a kōanga of inanga down at the bottom of Poorman’s Stream where they breed, so it's a breeding ground.
Manukau
You might know this place as Monaco but 'Manukau' is the original ingoa (name) for this place, which is on the western border of our kura.
When you break down the word Manukau, ‘manu’ is bird and ‘kau’ is to swim or to bathe. Therefore, Manukau is the place where birds swim and bathe, and there are heaps of birds that reside in the estuaries down in the Manukau area.
Manukau connects to the waka in the sense that canoes (waka), came in through this estuary inlet at Manukau to access the Waimeha flats.
In the picture, you can see that there are some little manu sitting or bathing down at the bottom and those are the Kuaka which are an important tohu or symbol in the kura. The Kuaka make the great migration from Alaska all the way to Aotearoa, the greatest migration by any animal in the world.
Just like the kuaka, our students will depart the kura and the wharewaka, after all of the learning and discovery journeys that have occurred over the years at Te Kāreti o Neirana, for the big wild world.
Conclusion
On the left hand side of the image, at the top, you can see the whetū (stars). Those stars have colours because they represent our old houses and the constellations that those houses represented. They are forever part of our whakapapa and therefore they are forever part of our kōrero and our story.
When you look to the right side of the image, there are yellow stars, representing the Matariki stars, which are really important to Māori. They appear in the sky to signify the beginning of a new year and give a reminder and an opportunity to reflect on the past and set goals for the future.
Our new waka system is all about having a sense of identity, connecting to the past and finding a sense of turangawaewae (a place of belonging) while students journey with us here at Te Kāreti o Neirana. Each of the names of our new waka connect to the whakapapa of the kura. The names have cultural significance to the area, with the exception of Waiora, which pays tribute to all of the waterways that once flowed across the land. These waka names are our turangawaewae, the place where our kura / the wharewaka stand.
Our waka model will help us learn the narratives, stories and histories that connect us to this place, our whakapapa and the environment around us. This is all Mātauranga Māori.