You will find Perseverance Road
in the rohe of Te Tai Poutini. The road has little meaning for most visitors,
but it means a lot to Coasters. It is a road into hope, disruption and lost
hope. It symbolises that ‘start again’ ‘she’ll be right’ attitude of the West
Coast. It once led to a cluster of stamping batteries, which would crush the
rocks coming down the awa of Inangahua in the search for gold. But Inangahua
doesn’t carry yellow gold. It weaves its way through mountains which share in
both te Ao Māori and te Ao Pākehā a story of mass disruption. Nga pae Paparoa
once sat in Fiordland but journeyed north to its resting place of Kawatiri
turning upside down on the way and exposing to the world the black gold of coal
that was once buried deep within. It is this black gold that nga awa of
Kawatiri are known for. This talk is a sharing of disruptions, from the
perspective of a person from Kawatiri. It is a reflection of what matters most
in times of disruption. Kawatiri, or Buller, is a landscape rich in disruption
– from upside down maunga to last year’s floods, Pike River, Cave Creek, and
the journeys of Little Biddy, Brunner and Kehu. It is through these stories
that we learn the importance of keeping the flax seed protected, of
understanding relationship matters and the importance of perseverance.
Tēnā koutou katoa
Ko Fiona tōku ingoa
He kawhakahaere mo te ako, me te
auaha, me te rangahau mo te Kura Matatini o Whitireia me Te Whare Wāngana o te
Awakairangi
He mihi nui ki a koutou te iti me te
rahi
Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou tēnā tatau
katoa
When you think about research what
is it? Is it a bunch of white men in white lab coats lifting up test tubes to
the light. Is it Indiana Jones, or Laura Croft, exploring exotic cultures and
dehumanising the indigenous voice? Is it a bunch of nerds behind a computer
playing with data? Is it the lonely philosopher sitting beside a fire, hair
greying as they seek to explore the meaning of life?
You will note that the bulk of my
questions will create a very western picture in your minds of research. And
this is intentional. For too long we have framed research with a western lens. And
within that lens a scientific understanding of truth. And as such, we have both
limited research and limited the types of people that can engage with research.
I want to disrupt this notion.
You see, I want to argue that the
essence of all research is storytelling. And not just any storytelling. It is
the telling of truth stories. And an essential problem with the tradition of
research and storytelling is that these stories include and exclude. I also
want to argue that in the pursuit of a good story, that Te Pukenga sits in a
very unique space and time in history. We sit on the edge of disruption. And it
is at this edge that a disruption to truth and story telling can occur.
So, let’s start with a story.
Ko wai au?
Tēnā Koutou Katoa
Nō Ingarangi tōku tūpuna mātua
Kei Isle of Wright te Turangawaewae
Ko Inchinnan, ko Mandarin, ko Oriental ōku waka
Ko Paparoa nga pae maunga te rū nei
o taku ngākau
Ko Kawatiri te awa e mahea nei aku māharahara
Ko Te Tai-o-Rehua te moana e whakamarie toku wairua
Nō Kawatiri ahau, terā tōku turangawaewae hou
Ko Ngāti Apa ke te Waipounamu te iwi taketake (or mana whenua)
Ko Fiona tōku ingoa
Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou tēnā tatau
katoa
My home has imprinted itself on my
identity. For most New Zealanders, I come from the West Coast of the South
Island. But on the Coast, I come from the mighty Buller. The home of Ngāti Apa
ke te Waipounamu, gold seekers, coal miners, fishermen, hunters and people
hardened by the elements. I grew up in a State House in the 1980s. And while I
could share with you all a story about the 1980s, I will limit my story to just
this. The conditions at home were not the best and I spent the bulk of my
childhood hiding from the elements under the Buller Bridge. One of the only dry
places in Westport on a cold and wet winter day.
The closest town to Westport was a
smaller town called Reefton. On the odd occasion, we would journey to Reefton
and each time a certain road sign would fascinate me. It pointed from the main
road into nga pae Paparoa. Its name – Perseverance Road. As a kid I would
imagine a raft of stories for the reasoning of the naming of the road. And most
would resolve around a history of gold and coal. The road, itself, was named
for a number of gold claims up into the ranges. None of the claims resulted in
much gold – hence the name – perseverance. And the reality for some, no matter
how hard you work, even with perseverance, you might not get your reward.
As soon as I could, I ran away from
the Buller. Most school leavers from Westport end up in Christchurch, but I
wanted nothing to do with my home town and ran up to Wellington. My aim was to
go to Teachers’ College and change the lives of many children by teaching them
what was not taught to me – how to sock it to the system.
It didn’t take me long to learn that
schools were actually part of the problem. It also didn’t take me long to learn
that there were many research stories – things called theories – and that these
stories didn’t always have a place for me in them. One such story came from a
theorist called Abraham Maslow. Maslow had devised a triangle to picture a what
he called a hierarchy of needs.
At the base of the triangle was
basic physiological needs – food, shelter and sex. Maslow argued that once
these needs were fully met then safety and security needs could be met. Once
this group of needs were met, then an individual could focus on belongingness
and love. The tip of the pyramid was the need for self-actualisation.
Maslow’s theory just didn’t seem to
make meaning of my life and his theory, therefore, might not have felt right
for others in my class. But it was presented as Truth and as Truth we had to
accept it and then apply it in our assignments and teacher practicums – if
little Freda played up in class, it was because her basic needs weren’t being
met. For myself, I spent much of my childhood not knowing if I was going to be
sleeping in the house or under the bridge – but I felt that I had achieved
other levels of the hierarchy. It just didn’t ‘feel’ right – oh yeah ‘right,
feelings don’t matter in the science, and story, of one Truth.’
Later I would go onto complete a PhD
with a poststructural application of theory to conceptions of youth crime.
Without going too far here, in short, poststructural research looks at the
history of language, words, meanings, theories and truths. It explores the
whakapapa of concepts to unveil the effects of words, theories and truths
today. What I learnt was the theories that underpin our understanding of youth
crime have a whakapapa that draws upon racist knowledge. It shook me in a good
way, I would never again accept the theories I had been taught as a teacher as
Truth. I would see them for what they were – stories often created by bearded
white men in Europe and America.
And while I could do the same to
Maslow’s theory right here and now. I am not. Instead I am going to take an
autobiograhical approach to disrupt his theory – I am going to tell a series of
stories to suggest that his theory may not stand up as soundly as it appears to
in a textbook of teaching and learning.
This story starts in my childhood
and with my Grandfather. While, I may have had a hard childhood, I did have a
grandfather who deeply cared and loved me. His approach to being a grandfather
was storytelling. He would always mix fiction in with truth and our role would
be to find the truth – if there was any. He had dated Cleopatra – who was a
little strange as she insisted on milk baths. He had courted Florence Nightingale
as well – but decided not to take the relationship any further as she was a bit
obsessed with cleaning.
The one person that he didn’t date
but he admired was Little Biddy. Little Biddy was just as her name suggests –
little with the proper name of Bridget. She had come to the Buller in the
late 1800s from Nelson. She lived a man’s life. She searched for gold in Lyell
and then made her way to Reefton. She lived rough, not really having the
shelter that Maslow insisted needed to be present. She also probably drunk more
gin than ate food. But the people of the Buller loved her.
She died a pauper and the community
of Inangahua rallied together to insist that she have a grave with a stone that
meant that generations would remember this hardy woman who fought the elements,
and the men, to make a life for herself. Little Biddy now has a gin named after
her and her grave is kept clean by the people of the Inangahua district. Looking
at Little Biddy’s life through Maslow, she didn’t even have her physiological
needs meet. She had the perseverance of the road in which she would have
wandered down once or twice, she had demonstrated long-term survival and found
a place to belong in Inangahua. But Maslow doesn’t have a place for her in his
pyramid. We can never say she realized her potential – but who are we and who
is Maslow to say her life was a failure. Little Biddy demonstrated how a community can
come together in the disruption of the gold fields to remember and acknowledge
someone special – someone who persevered and someone who had a place in a
community of nobodies. I know to this day that Grandad shared this story as a
point of encouragement so that I wouldn’t give up in a world that might seem
against me at times.
Later I would find myself working at
Granity School just north of Westport. Well not really working, as I was on
Taskforce Green. Taskforce Green was a scheme in the 1990s by the government to
get people at risk of long-term unemployment into work. So, I was at Granity
School answering the phone and the 3pm news came on the radio. It was April 28 in
1995. A platform had collapsed in nga pae Paparoa at Cave Creek. There were
causalities and the emergency services were struggling to get to the site. We
had no rescue helicopters on the Coast. It would take two hours for the first
emergency responder to get to the site.
Names would be released later that
day, what was known then was that the affected groups were from Tai Poutini
Polytechnic. The town of Westport knew at this point and time that we would be
affected. At that single point of
disruption, we all knew that we were connected, affected and involved. Maslow’s
hierarchy of needs fell out the door. Our disruption shook us to our core – our
core cried for connection, a need not found on his hierarchy.
The bush telegraph, or gossip line,
was going quickly. Our first call out wasn’t for the physiological needs but
the call to connect to know what had happened, to grieve and find answers. Soon
after Task Force Green stopped as a scheme. No one ever said why, but we knew
in Westport that the platform had been built through this scheme with no
expertise and no understanding of cliff dynamics. Cave Creek sits heavy on the
shoulders of the community in Westport even today.
And I want to emphasize this. The
story Maslow created was not a story for understanding our response to the
needs that arose from the horrors of Cave Creek. This would be reverberated
even further as my own story developed another chapter.
It was soon after Cave Creek that I
moved to Wellington. And a few years later, another event and another
disruption. Soon after miners were rescued from a gold mine in Chile, we had
our own massive mine disaster. The disruption of the event brought it home. My
hubby and I were eating out with a friend on Friday November 19, 2010. I got a text message from the NZ Police –
there had been an explosion at Pike River. Our friend not being from the Coast
was – oh it will be okay. But my husband and I knew that it wasn’t okay. We had
many family and friends connected to the mining communities of the Buller. We
knew that Pike River came with danger pay for a reason. Some of our family had
started to work there because it gave the highest wages on the Coast. This was
the danger pay of Pike River.
We finished the meal quickly and as
we were driving home, we madly texted and rung all of our family connected to
Pike. No one was answering. Saturday came, names were not released. No one was
answering our calls. We were becoming worried. Sunday came and some names were
released. The phone was answered, our family had been staying with those families
whose men did not come home. Their instant reaction did not align with Maslow;
their instant reaction was to provide connection, comfort and spiritual safety.
While we did not lose immediate family that day, we did lose family.
We also saw the need for connection
was much deeper than story-tellers like Maslow could see. We went back home to
the Coast for Christmas and joined our community in the Christmas Parade. That
year, 2010, it was not a parade of celebration. Instead, we all wore ribbons of
yellow and yellow ribbons covered lamp-posts, doors and windows. We wore a colour
of hope for our men to come home. They never would and never will. Nga pae Paparoa have claimed them
home, but in that moment of the Christmas parade we learnt in moments of
disruption, connection is so much more real.
But this takes me to my final story,
a story that suggests that Maslow missed something further with his story of
human need and the lack of connection present. July 19 2021, I was at work when
I got the message that Westport, Kawatiri, the town and river I was most
connected to was in a red alert. I said to my team as I left the office Te Awa
Kawatiri can take a good flood. A quick look on Wikipedia will tell you that
the river claims the highest flood flow in Aotearoa. But my grandad’s words
were echoing in my head as I said to my team – it is not the Te Awa Kawatiri we
have to worry about, it is Te Awa Orowaiti, the Orowaiti River. If that river
breaks its banks the town would be in trouble. This is a message that my grandfather
gave me all my childhood. The Orowaiti serves as an overflow for the Buller
river, and it had not been looked after all cared for by the community. Grandad
was aware that awa are living and if they are not cared for they will speak.
And my grandfather was right. There
was some flooding on the Friday night. I rung my mother that Saturday, mum
lived in the middle of town. She was fine. The rain was heavy, but flooding in
Westport does not come from the rain on the town but on the rainfall in the St
Arnaud Range and the flow coming into the river from Lake Rotoiti. By lunchtime
Saturday, the lake was in full flood.
Then the news hit, the Orowaiti was
rising. By 1pm the Orowaiti, a small estuary river was swallowing up Westport
from behind. By 3pm mum’s little rented flat was completely flooded. We stayed
connected all through this time. And Maslow was right, mum need flood and
shelter – but again he missed that important aspect of connection.
In the following weeks I returned
home. Westport, even now, is not the same. The beauty of the town is still
there but for many living there, and for myself, the connection to the land
between the two rivers is broken. Every time it rains, fear enters the air. My
mum’s little flat has since flooded again and she has moved away from Westport.
Maslow never really understood the depths of connection and how over time as we
journey down Perseverance Road, connection deepens branching out to people,
relationships, time, space and place.
At the end of the day, the act of
research, is an act of story-telling. Often some stories are seen as more valid
than others, and it is in these moments of disruption that we can question
their validity.
And what does that mean for us? I
want to suggest that connection is even more important now as we occupy a space
and time in which disruption, no disruptions, are so much more evident. Not
only can connection enable us to navigate and find our ways through
disruptions, connection can help us see our role in the disruption and connection
can help us tell another story.
In the disruption of climate change,
connection serves as this two edged perspective. It is the reality that we are
all engaged in little things that feed into a warming environment that is
heating the planet and tit is a reality that each one of us can do something to
slow that warming down. Each action connected can have a massive global
response.
In the disruption of covid-19, we
have all experienced the need for connection. Whether it be the experience of
lock-down or isolation or tiredness of the novelty-worn-off of Zoom and
Mircosoft Teams classes, many of us have carved opportunities for authentic
kanohi-e-te-kanohi conversations. Some would even argue that the covid
tiredness that is affecting workplaces like our own is simply due to the
intense thinking that has had to go into how to keep connections going when
disruption is oh so well.
And for most of us here, there is
the reality of 2023 and the months coming up to January as each of our
workplaces find a disruptive change to becoming one with Te Pūkenga. Now, hear
me here, I am not saying that disruption is bad; rather any form of change does
bring disruption and when that change comes with uncertainty then the
disruption does bring uncertainty.
So what does this opportunity of
disruption bring? Well, I would like to suggest that it brings one thing but
necessitates another. It does bring one thing, and that is the disruptive
opportunity to write a different research story, with different writers, voices,
and people. The beauty of this time in history is that the birth of Te Pūkenga
comes in a context of greater change. Not only is vocational education changing
but the recognition of key research funding sources – the PBRF and a variety of
other MBIE mechanisms are changing. These changes are, on the surface,
intentionally bringing Te Tiriti o Waitangi to effect, enabling and recongising
rangahau, decolonizing methodologies (and stories), and privileging voices that
have previously been suppressed. And while the intention of all this, at this
point, is on paper. We have an opportunity as Tangata Whēnua and Tangata te
Tiriti to come together to enable and enact the intentions of this movement.
This can only happen if the
necessity within this disruption is met. And, hopefully, now you will know that
in talking needs, I am not taking my source being first Maslow, but rather the
lessons I have had along my own Perseverance Road, that of connection. There is
an important whakatauki which is often reduced to the last sentences, but says
so much more up front. It is the same whakatauki that underpins the operating
model of Te Pūkenga:
Hūtia te rito o te harakeke, kei
whea te torimako e kō? Ka rere ki uta, ka rere ki tai
Kī mai koe ki au, he aha mea nui o te ao?
Māku e kī atu,
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata
If you pluck out the centre shoot
flax, where will the bellbird sing? It will fly inland, it will fly seawards.
If you ask me, what is the most important thing in the world? I will reply, it
is people, it is people, it is people.
For Te Pūkenga ākonga and their
whānau are at the heart of the operating model. They are te rito, the centre
short of the harakeke, the flax bush. I would like to suggest though that if
this whakatauki represents Te Pūkenga, then the remainder of the harakeke leaves
are the kaimahi. It our these leaves that protect te rito. The important thing
here is that we are all connected.
In the journey along our
Perseverance Road, we don’t have a guarantee of finding gold at the end, but we
do have an opportunity, we have an opportunity to connect, we have an
opportunity to seize the disruption and begin to enable other stories to come
to the table. Stories, which will, in themselves enable a disruption of sorts
to occur. Stories, which will not just question the mainstream stories of
yesterday, but create an opening of hope for the stories that will come
tomorrow.
No rei ra
Tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā tatou
katoa
