Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Remembering Tua Hekenui
For Tua Hekenui, who lived his tikanga, challenged ignorance with laughter and has passed on
Wharenui
A look inside the wharenui, always from the outside
As a pakeha practicing psychiatry in a kaupapa Maori setting, I do not posses the mana tupuna for this whaikorero. My mahi, however skilled or virtuous, bears the scars of colonialism. The concepts of mental illness and wellness, ingrained in me through my American culture and subsequent medical training, bear laughably little resemblance to the increasingly lost ways of the tohunga. In Aotearoa, those who care to look around--instead of only ahead-- cannot help but notice the fragmentation of the things that connect people to the the language, the land and one another. I am not Maori, but I can see when something is sick. Still, I am perfectly at home at Te Whare Marie, where the meeting house and clinical offices sit side by side, where we begin the day with mihi, karakia, waiata . . . and checking the fax machine. And so it is that this Frankenstein's monster of a mental health service picks up the pieces, mending nga tangata with whatever is at hand: a prayer, a comforting word, a safe place to sit, a meal as often as a medicine.
In our practice at Te Whare Marie, I am guided by the example of Dr Allister Brown and Wiremu, who through years of work together no longer struggle to reconcile the different processes by which they "heal," to the very great benefit of their tangata whaiora. There is still a part of me that cannot help but interrogate the space between them, in the spirit (I tell myself) of anthropological investigation, but in the end no more than a puriri moth stuck and dying on a collector's pin. Against this habit of treating things not fully understood as specimens, I have asked kaumatua Hemi Pou to extend his korowai so that I may move briefly under its shadow as I pass through the marae-- for its protection, and mine.
There are now many didactic resources available to define Maori words and concepts. This is not one of them. Rather, it is an attempt to create a sense of the experience of working, training and seeking care in one small corner of Te Ao Marama.
As a pakeha practicing psychiatry in a kaupapa Maori setting, I do not posses the mana tupuna for this whaikorero. My mahi, however skilled or virtuous, bears the scars of colonialism. The concepts of mental illness and wellness, ingrained in me through my American culture and subsequent medical training, bear laughably little resemblance to the increasingly lost ways of the tohunga. In Aotearoa, those who care to look around--instead of only ahead-- cannot help but notice the fragmentation of the things that connect people to the the language, the land and one another. I am not Maori, but I can see when something is sick. Still, I am perfectly at home at Te Whare Marie, where the meeting house and clinical offices sit side by side, where we begin the day with mihi, karakia, waiata . . . and checking the fax machine. And so it is that this Frankenstein's monster of a mental health service picks up the pieces, mending nga tangata with whatever is at hand: a prayer, a comforting word, a safe place to sit, a meal as often as a medicine.
In our practice at Te Whare Marie, I am guided by the example of Dr Allister Brown and Wiremu, who through years of work together no longer struggle to reconcile the different processes by which they "heal," to the very great benefit of their tangata whaiora. There is still a part of me that cannot help but interrogate the space between them, in the spirit (I tell myself) of anthropological investigation, but in the end no more than a puriri moth stuck and dying on a collector's pin. Against this habit of treating things not fully understood as specimens, I have asked kaumatua Hemi Pou to extend his korowai so that I may move briefly under its shadow as I pass through the marae-- for its protection, and mine.
There are now many didactic resources available to define Maori words and concepts. This is not one of them. Rather, it is an attempt to create a sense of the experience of working, training and seeking care in one small corner of Te Ao Marama.
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