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Darling, tēnei au – I am here
Essay by Natalie Robertson
Darling, tēnei au—I am here, where you are, back here.
The scene is so familiar—I feel instant recognition, stirring recollections of swimming in the same river, in the exact same place where Darling lies on the riverbank. Tarawera is both mountain-woman and river-woman; Tarawera, the river of Tūwharetoa ki Kawerau, the river of tears spilt when her partner Putauaki headed off in search of hot, steamy love embodied by Whakaari, who lies out at sea. I feel deep bodily memories of heading to the river which bordered our school, Kawerau College. On hot summer days, during lunchtimes, we would jump into the cool waters in our blue-checked cotton school uniforms then lay down on the rocks to dry off before the bell rang.
Darling, you lie on the sand, reclining between foetal position and ‘thinker’ pose. I wonder what position I was in when I emerged from my mother’s womb, at the temporary maternity hospital in Waterhouse Street, on the banks of the same river.
Darling, a river of aroha flows between you and Aunty Hera, enters her camera through the exchange between you, imprinting into tender images of belonging to this awa, this whenua. Darling, your powerful body created its own whenua within your whare tangata, your womb, from which you have birthed the next generation of this river. Standing in your motherly strength, a child’s hands wraps around your neck, your bare skin etched with names of other babies birthed.
Darling, the river swallows you up, holding you as if you are in your own amniotic fluids, eyes closed, resting and arresting. I could cry, looking at your face, in all your vulnerability and strength, wearing your moko kauae, a reclamation of your rights. The skin of the water beads around your face, a shroud for your bare head. Are you submerging or emerging or merging?
Darling, an apt name for the lead actor in this love story, you stand poised like a madonna on rocks while water surges up behind you—the cascading tears of Tarawera Falls, shed by a mountain-woman wronged by her lover. The mists rise up surrounding you. Your hands become wings, fingertips feathers, about to take flight. From deep within, a flock of manu fly out of your mouth in the form of karakia. Darling, you are birdwoman. Tui, tui, tuia!
Ooh, Darling, those eyes! I see you have powers of transformation, of travelling between worlds. The wake of the water forms a portal for your body. Like Tiana in the Witi Ihimaera novel The Dream Swimmer, who while sleeping, paddled her feet to take her to other realms, you paddle down into the awa, to let it release you, to take your heaviness, to forgive you and return you to the earthly realm renewed and strengthened. Tiana is Diana is Artemis who is the Greek goddess of the hunt, of water and springs, of chastity and childbirth. I see Tiana, and I see Parawhenuamea, our atua of alluvial waters. I see the twin spirits Te Pupu and Hoata who as two parallel streams of fire emerged as geothermal energy at Whakaari and Tarawera linking them, before travelling on, transforming the land as they went.
Hera, we stand in rivers with our cameras poised, you in Tarawera, me in the consuming waters of Waiapu—our shared desire to make images in a river makes for its own bodily current. I have such a sense of wonder for a 1/125th of a second to hold that portal open, an aperture between air and currents, or to hold your eyes open, Darling, unblinking so we can swim into their pools, and follow your gaze skywards to our atua ancestor Ranginui while you bathe in the river.
Putauaki, the handsome volcanic cone that dominates the landscape of these plains, the male figure of the sad story of love lost and love unrequited, is not visible in these photographs. He is out of view, but his presence is in the words in the pepeha, accompanying the photographs.
Tarawera, the river—an ever-presence in this series—is Darling’s awa, and her ancestors and descendants, it is her fluid kākahu, rippling off her shoulders. I may have been born there, by Tarawera, under the shadow of Putauaki maunga, but this is not my awa, nor my maunga, who is a mountain that does not move. They are the river and mountain of those tribes whose lands were taken by the pen, under the Public Works Act, and other sleight-of-hand laws. It is the river that flows around the edge of the township here, through behind the former Tasman pulp and paper mill, passed the warm, sandy waters of Onepū and out to sea, that carried the burden of toxic chemicals, the chlorophenols, dioxins, furans and metals of industrial waste. Uncle Tasman, you provided jobs, homes and skills that we all benefitted from. Uncle Tassie, you gave with one hand and took away with the other.
Too many of my Kawerau school friends didn’t survive into their thirties due to cancer. It is hard not to point to toxic chemicals as a potential factor. This one woman and her cancer, raises up all the reasons why, or why not. There it is — the mamae, the pain of colonisation that led to such a violent disregard for the ancestral river of tears.
Darling, you stand looking relaxed on a tree above the river, perhaps about to dive into the waters again. As you hold your carved bone taonga, eyes meet the camera with steady directness. Defying the history of representation of women, defying the male gaze, Darling’s eyes see through to her beloved Aunty Hera’s eyes behind the lens, Hera, whose same people also face their ancestral mountain Putauaki, from their river Rangitaiki, there at Te Teko, not far from Kawerau.
Darling reminds me. There’s nothing overtly political about this intimate portrait of one woman and her awa, of her, yet everything here expresses Mana Motuhake, and as Darling says, “I submit and let my awa swallow me. Through that comes my real power.” Darling, tēnei au, here I am, I am here.
References
Ihimaera, Witi. 1997. The Dream Swimmer, Penguin, Auckland.
New Zealand Government Te Kāwanatanga Aotearoa 2016. New Zealand Government Treaty Settlement Documents, Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Te Kotahitanga O Ngāti Tūwharetoa and The Crown. Deed of Settlement Schedule: Documents 14 December 2016
Park, Stephen. 2007. Bioaccumulation of Organochlorines in the Lower Tarawera River.
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