What Stopped, and What I Chose
Between Nōpera and me are generations whose full stories I still have to learn. I know the violence and poverty I resolved to interrupt in my own life. I picture an inheritance in the unopened case, whose contents were not always named: something handed on while knowledge, strength, and gifts also found ways to survive.
I try to imagine Nōpera at Te Rāwheoro, with his son and the future of its teaching before him. I can’t know what he decided or what he felt. But his mōteatea for his son keeps drawing me back to the lineage it holds. One day I want to travel the East Coast, visit marae and churches, and seek the records and kōrero that may tell me more. Until then, I can honour the questions without making him carry a story I can’t yet verify.
I am the one opening those cases in my generation.
I declared it plainly: the cycle of violence and poverty stopped with me. I chose to take forward something different. That declaration is the hinge on which the whole account turns —the point where a closed circle becomes a line moving somewhere new.
Rōpū Whitu brought me into Mahi Wairua learning, while Te Wānanga o Aotearoa has strengthened my reo, level by level. Te Pīnakitanga — Level 7 — lies ahead. To me, these paths are a return to living knowledge, even as the history of Te Rāwheoro still asks for deeper research.
Manifestation
What I have recovered is becoming visible in my children. I call their place Generation 8, Full Manifestation: the gifts no longer held only as a hope in my own hands, but taking shape in theirs. I won’t tell their stories here; they are theirs to tell. But I can say what it means to see knowledge, identity and possibility travelling forward. It is the line that has sat at the heart of Te Poutama Ora from the very beginning: when I am well, my whānau is well.
Two promises sit underneath this for me. My grandfather made a promise to God about his descendants, and I promised my dad that he would live on in my children. I see both promises when I look at my tamariki.
My grandfather’s promise is the rākau my Mum passed to me — a metaphor, a responsibility, carried hand to hand the way the knowledge itself was meant to be carried before the closure of Te Rāwheoro made that impossible for six generations. It sits in my hands now the way this whole account does: something that survived being unable to be spoken and arrived anyway.
Nine: Closing That Opens
One layer remains, and I did not expect to find it from where I am standing.
My mokopuna will be Generation 9 in this count. My hope is that what I had to seek, and what my children can now carry, will simply be part of the world they grow into. I may complete Te Pīnakitanga near the beginning of their generation, and that timing speaks to me.
Nine is also woven through Te Poutama Ora’s dimensions. For me, it names the next step: that my mokopuna might grow up fluent in both Māori and Pākehā worlds. They will have their own challenges. I just hope they won’t have to begin by searching for the same doorway I had to find.
That is the shape I can see now: Generation 7 choosing recovery, Generation 8 showing me the gifts in motion, and Generation 9 beginning with more of those gifts already within reach. The circle opens forward. The earlier part of its history still calls me back to the whenua.
Objects in Motion
The seven-generation shape is the long argument. A shorter one runs underneath it this year, telling the same story at a scale I can watch happen in real time.
Last September I published the first article and blog in this body of work. This September brought the Whakapapa of Colonisation series further along, and I completed a diploma begun two years ago. New study toward registration lies ahead. These milestones came close enough together that I can feel one chapter ending as another begins.
My Mum was born on 12 September. Her middle name is Iwa — nine. Long before I gave Te Poutama Ora nine dimensions, that name was part of my family. I find meaning in recognising it now. It reminds me that the work I call new is also in conversation with people who came before me.
I have learned to notice when a pattern helps me ask a better question. Whitu asks what I chose to interrupt. Iwa asks what my mokopuna may inherit. Neither question closes the search for Nōpera, Te Rāwheoro or the knowledge held in his Mōteatea. They give me a reason to keep going.
When I travel State Highway 35, I want to listen and look more closely: at the marae, at church records, and with those who hold kōrero about this lineage. This piece marks what I understand now. The journey back toward the sources will be its next chapter.
One cycle ends so another can begin. Seven generations help me name where I stand; the eighth shows me gifts moving forward; the ninth gives me a hope worth tending.
This short animation shows how inherited burdens can gather across generations, and how I understand the work of recognising what belongs to me, what does not, and what I want to pass on.
I leave you with an invitation, the one Te Mana Iwa asks. What are you holding that is not yours to carry? What are you carrying forward that doesn’t reflect the life you wanted for you and your tamariki? Have you paused, or got stuck?
And are you ready to find a way forward? That is what Te Mana Iwa is asking.
For further information or to view published articles related to Te Poutama Ora, please see https://www.iantemo.com/publications
This post is part of the Whakapapa of Colonisation series, a companion body of work to Te Poutama Ora (TPO). The academic companion article is The Closed Circle: Seven Generations, One Declaration.