Where Did Tiwaiwaka Start?
We are Rongoā practitioners, traditional healers. We work very closely with the whenua; that is where we draw our healing and our strength.
To us, looking with healers’ eyes, it seems that the whenua is losing the power to heal itself. The plants we look to for healing are becoming harder and harder to find, and we are seeing many other signs. It seems that the state of New Zealand’s environment is even worse than the experts are telling us.
Aotearoa/New Zealand has a very dynamic landscape. It is a land of earthquakes and floods, volcanoes and fires, constantly changing and restoring itself. The landscape has an incredible power to heal itself. Each disaster that strikes leads to a new burst of life and new energy as the land begins again to restore the life that has been damaged or destroyed.
But that seems to be changing; the Earth is losing the power to heal itself. Slips and landslides remain bare years later, or covered in nothing but weeds; rivers and lakes no longer come clear after a storm; the coast never overcomes the pollution that is constantly seeping in; life once so abundant and so diverse is fading; so many different signs that even the most unobservant are beginning to notice.
How can we be well when the whenua is unwell?
Ka ora te Whenua, ka ora te tangata.
The time has come to step back and begin again, this time using a different set of principles to guide us forward, principles that reflect the wisdom that people used to follow when the world was more in balance.
A lot of people are thinking this way. There is nothing new in these thoughts. But too often people who share the same positive thoughts do not hear each other clearly and end at odds with one another. This blunts their message and makes it easy to ignore.
Tiwaiwaka began as a way of bringing those people together, to work towards finding a way that makes our future seem more sure. These are the principles, the priorities, we must adhere to if, in the long term, our descendants are to survive.
Part of the message of Tīwaiwaka is that we must learn again how to listen to the Whenua.
She talks to us in many ways, through the birds, the insects, the trees and plants, the waters, the wind..... Mostly we are too busy with our day to day lives to hear, let alone take notice. And all the time our future becomes less certain. The Whenua is losing the power to heal herself, to provide for us, her children, all of her children, not just the ones who are human.
It reminds me of what I was told many years ago in Whanganui by the kaumatua who I had hoped would teach me Rongoā.
“We don’t have to tell you anything; all you have to do is get to know the trees and plants and they will tell you everything you need to know.”
All the answers we need for our future are already to be found in the world around us, the living, growing, feeling Earth. All we have to do is to learn to listen, and listening to hear, and hearing to take action.
That’s what Tīwaiwaka is about.
