We are like sisters. Our mother is Matariki. George is Tupu-ā-nuku tending to plants and Piupiu is Tupu-ā-Rangi learning waiata, revitalising forests with their beautiful song. Ana is Waipungarangi accompanying Papatūānuku across Lakes, Oceans and Rivers. Miriama is Waitī and Hana is Waitā, both of these twins learn to take care of all the smallest creatures and are close but both too sensitive. Mya is Ururangi constantly nagging Papatūānuku to tell us another story. “How a body has its own intelligence and cellular memory — knowing other times, other spaces we have yet to encounter within our consciousness. My body has been telling me many things — of care, nurturance, of love, and, of self-care, self-nurturance, and of self-love as rebellious decolonial practice and activism.”¹ When I travelled to Europe I thought about the transformative Faith Hill This Kiss moments in the film versions of Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun. Nothing about me really changed at all. Scrubbing up colonial stains. 125 years celebrating Suffrage in Aotearoa this year. Except it wasn’t universal suffrage. Chinese women were excluded. Do I bring this up at Litcrawl? My advice to my 5 year old self? Suffrage celebrations tend to be very, very white… Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia was the first woman to stand before Māori parliament and argue the women had the right to vote. I don’t care about Kate Sheppard. Meri Te Tai Mangakāhia’s contributions will never be forgotten.

Fresh and Fruity are hard-arse millennials

Fresh and Fruity are hard-arse millennials
Fresh and Fruity are hard-arse millennials
Fresh and Fruity are hard-arse millennials
Fresh and Fruity are hard-arse millennials
Fresh and Fruity are hard-arse millennials

Terrence Handscomb, 7:48 p.m. 27 January, 2018
“...But FnF also get away with being hard-arse millennials because either no one bothers to answer them back, or the outrage police ride to their rescue. Get off your high horse, FnF are quite capable of looking after themselves.”²

Kia mau koe ki nga kupu o ou tupuna.

Everything I say feels dangerous and too much for the Pākehā around me. Why is everyone so cagey? Why am I always angry? Kia mau koe ki nga kupu o ou tupuna. The next time a curator asks me about my ‘mahi’ I’m going to block and delete them. Lol bye bitch. When you feel like quitting, think about why you started. Swapping an English word for a te reo Māori one does not inherently fix the politics of your engagements. Finding new email greetings in te reo Māori doesn’t really absolve you of anything. Giving your organisation a Māori name doesn’t change your practice. Learning te reo does not absolve you of your colonial guilt. Scribe once hooked up with Khloe Kardashian in Australia then slid into her DMs in LA but she wasn't interested, because he was trying it on way too hard… Not many, if any. I feel like a pie chart or a petri dish. I ask Siri why they have a 'feminine voice', they reply “Don’t let my voice fool you, I do not have a gender.” I find myself being studied like an artefact. Loss. The British Museum fighting back at critics by saying, “It’s wasn’t all looted”. I feel nervous all the time. It’s as though I’m expected to pull out the pois and pull a pukana in order to prove something. Visiting Pākehā family who have moved into a recently developed housing area on your papakāinga. Land that was intended to be kept as a reserve no Māori or Pākehā to dwell on because the area is considered wahi tapu. Hey could you please do the karakia? I feel so much shame. Even though I know my pepeha I feel like I could never do this in public.

Carpe Diem. (For Piupiu)

The world will be depleted of all resources in order to maintain human life by 2040. Carpe Diem. Will Smith talking about Jada Pinkett Smith crying 45 days straight in a rough point in their marriage where he felt he had failed as a husband. Lines are blurry. It is still heavy. Pumice stones scrubbing against my skin, stripping it bare. Crying in the shower many times. It almost leaks blood. I burst an eye vessel from crying. Noah Cyrus selling tears she cried from her bizarre breakup with Lil’ Xan. Carpe Diem. I tried to tell you something but even I couldn’t understand now. Abi says in between their beautiful songs, “The great barrier reef is dying” and I feel that with my whole heart. Carpe Diem. Maybe Tāwhirimātea did have a big tantrum. Drowning in his rage at his siblings. The separation of his parents. So angry that he tore his own eyes out and threw them across the sky. What a hard-arse. Fragile, scared. I still walk on the other side of the road, because I feel so exposed every time. Carpe Diem. Running 10km to the beach. Dip salty sweaty face in tumbling waves at Houghton bay. So many surfer dads. Thinking of the time I talked to two art writers about how we all love to exercise and how anxious we all were that we weren’t either going for a run, going to the gym or doing pilates while in Dunedin for two days. Don’t make fun of exercise for your art practice unless you are interested in fitness. The only way to process my anger is to go running. Crossfit era Fresh and Fruity forever in our thoughts and prayers. Carpe Diem. Getting hot for summer just to feel really good is a serious undertaking. Make your body the sexiest outfit you own. Do it for you. Carpe Diem. I’m so glad Ariana Grande dumped Pete Davidson. Carpe Diem. No tears left to cry. Carpe Diem. He literally said he felt bad for the pastor who groped her AND sorry for Bill Clinton for leering at her during Aretha Franklin’s funeral, because Grande was just “so fucking hot”. He said he thought about his Dad dying in 9/11 while they had sex? Carpe Diem. Ariana he was just tall. Carpe Diem. He was a scorpio and an unfunny wanker. She is a cancer and one of the most gifted singers of all time. Was anybody actually surprised when they broke up? A GoFundMe is started just after they break up for Pete who is now homeless after Ariana asked him to move out of her $16 million dollar apartment in New York. Sorry for being an grinch about the beauty of love. I guess we'll always have Meghan Markle (unless the royal family take her out too RIP Princess Di) and the thumb she married who once dressed up as a Nazi and killed people in Afghanistan while in the army. I still could be your mixed race princess ya know? Carpe Diem. Pete Davidson has a Hillary Clinton tattoo. Carpe Diem. Melania Trump says she supports all women who come forward and supports #metoo, but that women need to provide proof of their allegations. Hillary Clinton ('Feminist Icon' eye roll) said there was no power imbalance in Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, because she was an ‘adult’. Lewinsky was 22 and a white house intern. Bill Clinton was the president of the United States.

Terrence Handscomb, 7:48 p.m. 27 January, 2018
“...We are living in the age of #MeToo and, without doubt, the cultural climate of outrage that it has spored. Not even the smartest satire is now immune. Despite #MeToo having valiantly give voice to women hurt by the violence of male power and the ugly secrets that have enabled it for too long, it’s both sad and disappointing to see that #MeToo also means that it is therefore unwise for males (and especially older males) to criticise women’s values, no matter how innocent or benign the content of that criticism may be. Someone will get offended and outraged, then go looking for blood. It’s a pity you also went that way, because I have never shirked away from the cultural dangers of being inappropriate. This means that now suspicion will always colour my textual relationship with FnF…”³

It’s just reassuring.

It's very fashionable for privileged white women to dress like sex workers as part of their art practice or to use this aesthetic as a fashion as though it belongs to them. Cute you bought thigh high pleasers to pull a hot look. Please don’t walk in those shoes unless you have worked 8-10 hours in them. It’s gotta be hard. You have to try pretty hard to get that poor rich girl aesthetic down. Talk over me. Lacks any cohesion. White women are more dangerous than white men. “Calling mutely through lipless mouth.”⁴ The abject. No, I’ve never taken acid and smeared my own shit on a wall. That’s soooo anarchist. An exhibition opening is always a fucked up party. Can you please mansplain Marxism to me? It’s just such a hot aesthetic. She smells like Comme des Garçons and sadness.⁵ Black linen potato sacks. Where is the depth? I want depth? I want warmth? I want to feel it deep inside me? Day 218 without sex. I want something? Pop off on a feeling. Pop off on a look. It lacks depth, thought, meaning or urgency. Just don’t make anything. You are just so edgy. I like it when you call me edgy or quirky or exotic or sexy in a weird way. 3 kilometres away. Zoom zoom zoom. Hey Daddy. In one glance I can see through you. Ghost body. Did you step off the conveyor belt of bland mind numbed thumbs that all think Death Grips is the greatest band of all time? Flying Nun dad band tees. Sad, old and depressing. I don’t care. Are you impressed that I know who Lighting Bolt are? You should be even though I’m barely contributing to your masturbatory story where you try and relate to me. Is it inherently colonising to date a white person? Friendships. Men that I care about. Sporadically discussing things that are meaningful amongst things that are maybe just fun to talk about. I love to talk to you about being a mixed alien. I don’t have to explain. It’s just reassuring. I love to talk to you about how to suss someone’s flirting vibe. It’s just reassuring. I love to talk to you about our garden and what vegetables we should grow. It’s just reassuring. I love to tell you all of my secrets, all of my gossip and send you Gemini memes. It’s just reassuring. It’s nice to be friends with men and not feel afraid of them all the time. Not all men. Lol. Indifference. The idea of you. Hailey Baldwin's California Girl Glow Vogue makeup tutorial. “At each moment of its existence, the police reminds the State of the violence, the banality, and the darkness of its beginnings.”⁶ The true abjection. 73 Questions with Donatella Versace. Every recent Elam and Massey grad who is grinding on Julia Kristeva’s Powers of Horror: An essay on abjection. HOT. You are so edgy. Read another essay. You’re so boring. Pretend poor. Boo hoo. WOW. Piss Christ. Seed bed. Period blood. Nudity. That’s so ABJECT and EDGY. Shit christ. HOT HOT HOT. Smear shit on the walls baby. SHOCKING. Intellectual flabbiness.⁷The privilege of being apolitical. Edgy, edgy, edgy. Abjection does not exist within a gallery. Abjection does not exist within an artwork. “Extreme seductiveness is at the boundary of horror”.⁸ You should just go back to making bad relational aesthetics.

The worldwide art stage.

Throw the curators in the lake. Shiny ass kissers rubbing shoulders with boring men who stutter when they speak to me. Are they worried I will bite? Sexy 90s blood rave scene in Blade. I bite you with my tongue everytime I talk to you. I don’t care anymore, so I’m just rude. Why be nice to people who have always been rude and condescending in the first place? I sighed and said “It’s better than last year’s screening at least. Thank god.” Backhanded compliment like when you wouldn’t take a rapist off of your shoddy 'archive' but sighed and said “well you could’ve gone to the police” and then said “but you know what the police…”, and then you shrugged. His skin isn’t even white it’s ashy grey. Boring. Beard. He definitely loves craft beer. Everyone is looking for the next hot new thing. Isn’t it ridiculous. All the white curators meeting up in Venice and Athens peak summer tote bags red faced. They all look related and red like brand new freshly manufactured babies or sausages. The art world going to Athens for Documenta was a tone deaf, crisis tourism gimmick. The spectacle of someone else’s tragedy. The tapestries of history bleeding through every part of Europe. Ai Weiwei making Refugee art. The New Zealand at Venice team offers an unpaid 'opportunity' to be a visitor host. Imagine hosting our Venice work.⁹ Dream big baby. Come for Francis and we come for you.¹⁰ Tautoko. Are we seriously only just having this conversation now? I’m a patriot of the arts. I love painting. These roles are framed as being for fresh graduates preferably if you can speak Italian and you are rich enough to go. Get me a benefactor with a private jet or at least a Jag I wanna network in Venice. Its okay though CNZ will cover your flights while you figure out how you can afford to live in Venice for six weeks????? It’s like that meme where the woman looks really, really confused with calculus equations revolving around her head. Anti-intellectualism. The discussion around unpaid labour in the New Zealand art community and this Venice 'opportunity' is happening on Facebook. On Facebook…I am very embarrassed. International art media tiring of the cult celebrity status. Et Al. 2005. “Some feared Et Al, which means 'and others', was too obscure to compete on the worldwide art stage with 73 other countries, almost all of which had more to spend than New Zealand's $500,000.” Et Al refuses to speak to the media. Stung by the bad publicity, Creative NZ commissioned a major report and opted not to return to Venice until 2009. From now on, the "creative team" should include people with "recognised public relations skills". "Deliberately obtuse manifesto was hard to understand", "...the New Zealand public like it straight up and down and are impatient with things that are perceived as too hard to understand." New Zealand art world tries to network. Thinking about all the times I walked out on unpaid internships and how good it felt. Burn all the libraries down. Close every art history department. Shut down the humanities. Let’s just study commerce and engineering. What is community? We will not be challenged.

Fresh And Fruity, 11:21 p.m. 25 January, 2018
"Teach me daddy."

Terrence Handscomb, 9:46 a.m. 26 January, 2018
"I’d love to.
When should we start?
What should I wear?
Do I need to bring anything?"

Terrence Handscomb, 9:48 a.m. 26 January, 2018
"… but be careful, I’m libidinally challenged."

Ralph Paine, 10:47 a.m. 30 January, 2018
"Thing is Terrence, Fresh and Fruity's comment may or may not have been about you."¹¹

Fresh and Fruity because Fresh and Fruity is a sexy new look. No one is hot like Fresh and Fruity. Don’t even try. I'm hot 'cause I'm fly (fly) You ain't 'cause you're not. This is why. This is why. This is why I'm hot. You cannot copy. Please don’t try. Cite while u write bitch.

No one is hot like Fresh and Fruity.
because
Fresh and Fruity is a sexy new look.

‘Burning Bridges’ plays gently off of a smartphone.

Sometimes I worry about my proximity to whiteness. It affects my relationships. You cannot decolonise in a relationship with a pākehā. A motion raised by Pauline Pantsdown in Australian parliament about it being “Okay to be be white” almost passes. 'Anti-white' racism. Racially ambiguous. In Australia I was often read as Aboriginal growing up. Māori diaspora. Australia was not my land, not my story. When I learnt that the word ‘Aboriginal’ meant ‘Indigenous’. Treaty settlements are often seen as means of ‘reconciliation’ between Pākehā and Māori, but they are an acknowledgement of a crime, because you cannot undo the process of colonisation, but you can acknowledge it. Please help my aching bones. What is community? Blood quantum. Tan. The audacity of some people. Is it bad that seemingly innocuous questions anger me? Everyone is really trying. Every white artist, curator, writer, director is really trying. Why do I have to be so negative? They can’t help their proximity to wealth and the way they continually benefit from the displacement of working class and indigenous people. They have Māori friends. Stop being so hard to please. I’m tired of being angry. All I do is burn bridges and it feels so good. Cotton eye joe. Any white person who loves Australia travelling through Aotearoa is probably racist, especially if they are British. Te Puea Herangi opposing the government's conscription of Māori men, telling her people on many occasions not to fight another man's war. The story of Medusa who when her head was cut off by Perseus gave birth to a son and a flying horse through her neck. Winston Peters walks up to journalists in Parliament and plays “Burning Bridges” off of Youtube on his smartphone when asked about Jami-Lee Ross’ leaks of a conversation between Ross and the National party leader, Simon Bridges. He plays the song and refuses to actually answer questions. Winston Peters pretending to be Italian instead of Māori. I understand but I also think the only position of power he should ever hold is Minister of sick burns and hottakes nobody was ready for. Afraid of whiteness. Brown signifiers. Witness to your whiteness. You cried. It gave you anxiety, panic attacks, depression. Imagine if you had to actually face yourself. Reveal your insecurities. Reared in whiteness. Suffocating to witness. I was erased. White oblivion. So typical. Not surprising. Another mother. Afraid of being held accountable for your whiteness or for your maleness. The men around me are scared of my indifference to them. They all have dumb bitch energy. Frightened. Masculinity. The word ‘glad’ autocorrects to ‘flaccid’. You cannot get a taste.

Terrence Handscomb, 7:48 p.m. 27 January, 2018
"'...Teach me daddy' has a libidinal component that, in a very clever way, provokes a whole range of connotative entailments that lurk in the dark zones of age and gender stereotyping. FnF are quite happy to play with this, but they can’t have it both ways, and this was my point. Despite their bad-girl-millennial persiflage, FnF are really cleaver at what they do, and to my thinking, they are also very funny. Similarly, it’s a pity you didn’t recognise in my reply, the self-effacing humour with which it was delivered and playful intention with which it was given (#joke, #vomit, #yuk, #inappropriateHumour, #libidinalDelusion, #outToPasture). But I’m also not so deluded to think that everything I write and say will be understood as it is intended to be nor, for that matter, turn out be any good at all...”¹²

Fresh and Fruity are hard-arse millennials

Fresh and Fruity are hard-arse millennials
Fresh and Fruity are hard-arse millennials
Fresh and Fruity are hard-arse millennials
Fresh and Fruity are hard-arse millennials
Fresh and Fruity are hard-arse millennials

Terrence Handscomb, 7:48 p.m. 27 January, 2018
“Thank you for your considered comments, but FFS lighten up. It was a joke given back in the same tone as that which provoked it: sardonic humour. It was not an attack! Dah! In the same way as FnF’s trolling comment was funny, albeit with a serious edge that is typical of their MO, my comment was simply a respond in kind, which you somehow believe I should have risen above. Social-media trolling—FnF’s favoured textual milieu, the evidence of which is rife in "Manifesto"—has one principle efficacy: make any response in kind look unhinged. Trump learned this early….”¹³

International.

Funny when organisations claim to be working with International curators not from New Zealand because they ‘understand the way New Zealand artists are working’ and ‘The New Zealand context’. I’m sorry but if you are a Pākehā curator who is Canadian and lives in London you do not understand our context or how our artists work after going to one 'art symposium' in Aotearoa over two days in Ōtautahi. The director doesn’t say Ōtautahi he says Christchurch, but pats himself on the back. If you are going to be a dealer and hustle that work in the white spaces you understand as 'International' then just do it boo, no shame, but don’t ever claim it’s beneficial to the development of critical curatorial practice within Aotearoa. Calm the farm Mark/Aaron/Robert/Sean/Simon/John etc. Don’t you find they all have really similar names? You all really do look the same. I wish you could be genuinely critical. There’s Ana, Hana and Anna who do you think I am today? Who are these symposiums for? What is community? Why is everything you do so boring? Let's discuss love and try and absolve our white guilt together by talking about ways we won’t 'decolonise' in these weird colonial institutions we can never decolonise anyway (or even hold accountable). The amount of anti blackness inherent in Māori and Pasifika communities is disgusting and something no one is comfortable acknowledging. I feel like Lana summed this up really well in her article on the use of the term ‘baby mama’ in New Zealand; “Whether it’s hip hop, fashion, slang (the word woke comes to mind), thought (have you looked into where the concept of intersectionality came from?) or memes, we are always more than happy to take. But how often do we stop to ask ourselves what our relationship –our obsession – is with Black culture?”¹³ We don’t need to appropriate AAVE¹⁴. We have our own languages that need to be reclaimed. We don’t need to use and decontextualise forms created within black communities and we can’t keep doing this while allowing anti blackness. We have our own forms and practices to reclaim. We don’t need to appropriate black experiences. We have the vastness of Te Moana Nui a Kiwa and all our tupuna to draw from. Why is performing an idea of blackness so much easier than accepting our indigenous identities? Not all slurs born from racism are everyone’s to reclaim. Can we just be accountable for once??? This exists because of a lack of better models. Education. I know Assata Shakur but I do not know Whina Cooper. Māori activists have constantly been silenced and erased. Traditional western education has failed Māori for almost two centuries. Sir Toby Curtis and Dame Iritana Tāwhiwhirangi file the Wai 2770 treaty claim against the government's decision to close 11 charter schools through the country. I riro whenua atu me hoki whenua mai, ko te moni hei utu mō te hara. I want to spit in an old man’s face when he tells me I’m not a real Māori. What percentage white are you though? I want to say. Instead I smile and walk away. Please help my aching bones.

Terrence Handscomb, 7:48 p.m. 27 January, 2018
“.....BTW, the enduring principle players of FnF are not Māori. Someone correct me if I’m wrong...”¹⁵

“Am I navigating correctly?”. ¹⁶

When I heard Tayi Tibble read her poem Identity politics and that one line she repeated that asked, “Am I navigating correctly?”¹⁷ I thought of the currents our wakas followed to Aotearoa across throughout the Pacific. one of my history lecturers at Otago tried to say that the Pacific people did not have the technology to glide across oceans. “Am I navigating correctly?”¹⁸ I do a reading in a room full of Māori and stutter constantly trying to blend vowels. I feel so much shame, but then speak to my sister who reminds me that speaking te reo in public and making it a part of my practice is decolonising. Kia mau koe ki nga kupu o ou tupuna. I refuse to be essentialised or simplified. “Am I navigating correctly?”¹⁹ I think about my tipuna walking alongside me and the histories they hold and I refuse to let them be reduced. Binaries are for the colony. “Am I navigating correctly?”²⁰ The pacific expands everlasting. Each iwi, each rohe hold their own stories, their own tikanga. We are not a monolith. I wear my shame like bricks strapped always to my back, aching, the weight about to collapse. How do I stop my shame coming down to my children. How do I stop the cycle of grief? “Am I navigating correctly?”²¹ I think of those children and I smile. They do not know the shame and I am glad and proud of my friend and his children. They climb on him and giggle and are bored but he's listening and he still smiles at them and I feel more nervous around these children than I do around anyone. But I see in them a future I could never imagine for myself.

Ralph Paine, 2:47 p.m. 8 January, 2018
II. So where’s the coming down hard, the unsafe ideas, the f_cking up of the system from within, the new new? And where indeed the self proclaimed sexiness?²²

Colonisation but...make it sexy.

White men who write with big self congratulatory useless words rather than just getting their point across. Colonise me. White men taking everything I say on surface level because of course I’m not adept enough to write sarcastic and multilayered text. Colonise me. White men assuming I don’t know the theories I have already referenced in subtle ways that they obviously missed. Colonise me. White men assuming I lack depth. Colonise me. White men who have never had to be self aware of how they perform labour and emotions everyday, so lack analytical depth. White men who have never had to code switch. Colonise me. White men who are obsessed with my ethnicity and try to make guesses. Are you Brazilian? Are you Italian? Are you halfcast? Colonise me. Lena Dunham taking up space where POC women could be thriving, again. Colonise me. Someone really should have told Meghan Markle how to pronounce Te Reo Māori, but I guess she tried. Colonise me. White men who are scared of their own whiteness. Colonise me. White men who are blind to their whiteness. Colonise me. White men who support other white men that are abusive. White men that let predatory white men get applauded at graduate shows at fine arts institutions. Colonise me. White men who still claim Woody Allen is an auteur worth recognition. Colonise me. White men who think the term millennial is even relevant. Aren’t we just digital natives? Colonise me. White men who think avocado toast is the real issue. Colonise me.

Terrence Handscomb. 4 January, 2018
“The steady inculcation of university liberal ethics committees in our major art teaching institutions had produced a generation of artistic wimps, whom no doubt have come to believe that they are entitled to ethically informed cultural protections against the brutal but long established critical mechanisms of the art world.”²³

Entitled bad-girl-millennial.

I really don’t trust any retellings of Māori stories by pākehā authors. They always include lines like ‘The Maori people really enjoyed these gardens.’ As if it’s that easy to lay a general statement over Māori. When Mataaho visited Tāmaki Makaurau he called upon Mahuika to warm him. She created many volcanoes, including Maungawhau, which Mataaho used as his food bowl. We walked around the terraces, by the kumara pits, now used as a reservoir and where children roll and play. Prince Alfred used the summit of Maungawhau as a vantage point to survey the suburbs of Tāmaki Makaurau. He fed an elephant lollies and buns to help him build a platform to work from. In 1868, while in Sydney, Prince Alfred was shot to the right of his spine. Sadly, this attempted assassination failed. I really don’t trust anyone. To the side of Maungawhau is what was once called Te Ti Tuhahi, where a cabbage tree grew and all the chieftains umbilical cords were planted deep into Papatūānuku around it. Te Ti Tuhahi was considered wahi tapu for this reason. Te Ti Tuhahi is now called Newmarket. Stuff reports that shoppers are ‘scared’ by the amount of empty shops in Newmarket, some claiming up to 10 stores along Broadway are abandoned, and shoppers have rising anxieties about being in the area while the new Westfield mall is still under renovation. Stuff is the colonial demonic underbelly of pākehā New Zealand. The director says he doesn’t want to be tokenistic like they are in Australia. He criticizes galleries for offering Acknowledgement of Country like a trophy for trying, but he doesn’t see an issue in no Māori being involved in a show about Māori forms. How does this contribute to Māori? How does this give back to Māori? I sing to myself in the shower to ease my anxiety. The parts I know are patchy. I sing E Hara and Tītahi’s chant until shame stops me or the water runs cold. It’s different for us. When I used a ponga ihu in a show there was so much kawa we held around it because I’m accountable to all Māori and because I value it. Anahera tells us about a work she choreographed. A group of women karanga to each other on stage, welcoming each other into the space and their tīpuna beyond them. Each call is like a rope pulling them closer and closer. Te tau o te patu. I seem to run from job to job in the arts. I don’t think directors understand how heavy the weight is. I don’t think they understand what it means to be a tuakana but in the actual fucking Māori sense. The nannies on the pae say the art of karanga is dying. I can’t speak for anyone other than myself. I can’t carry it all.

Te Ikaroa.

Ikaroa is the long fish that gave birth to all the stars in the Milky Way with Te Ikanui. Kewa, the child of Ranginui and Papatūānuku, went to the peak of Te Maunganui, where he fetched te whānau mārama²⁴ from the celestial guardian Te Āhuru. Kewa carried the three astronomical bodies in sacred baskets, planting them in the sky. Ko Rauru-rangi te kete pupuri i te rā, ko Te Kauhanga te kete pupuri i te marama, ko Te Ikaroa te kete pupuri i ngā whetū. The basket holding Te Ra²⁵ was named Rauru-rangi, the basket carrying Te Marama²⁶ was Te Kauhanga, and the basket containing Nga Whetu was Te Ikaroa.²⁷ We, the six sisters of Matariki, were carried in Ikaroa’s kōpū to be birthed and delivered in Kewa’s kono to be scattered across the sky.