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Image: Getty
Image: Getty

ĀteaOctober 31, 2022

Tikanga tutors: Māori students are still being made to teach cultural competency

Image: Getty
Image: Getty

It takes a village to raise a child. But when it comes to tikanga Māori in schools, a few Māori teachers and students are often expected to raise a village. 

My experience of being Māori at school was impacted heavily by the death of our Māori teacher when I was in year 10. Before that, the Māori department was thriving. Our Te Reo teacher would have done anything to engage us. We were learning tikanga; things were getting done correctly. Māori wasn’t a mess-around free period. She never wanted us to be the token Māori kids. She wanted us to understand our culture that had been ripped from us. But that flipped on its head when she died. 

Your emotion links back to what you believe in, and what you believe in is your tikanga, and your tikanga makes you who you are. We were proud to be Māori when Whaea was our teacher, but to have that stripped away from us, we not only lost our mum, we lost our identity. 

After her tangi, no one came to the marae to check on us – not the senior leaders, not the school counsellor. I couldn’t grieve properly because I had to remain strong for my friends. Imagine that level of responsibility on a kid. It was traumatic. Your teacher is in a coffin, and the only support we got was “If you don’t wanna do your work you don’t have to.” I don’t remember teachers treating us tenderly. There was no empathy. And that’s why a lot of my peers were treated unfairly by teachers or seen as acting out, when really they were just grieving.

Before they found a Te Reo teacher, they gave us a reliever who couldn’t speak Te Reo. There was a massive decline in people who came to class. No one was engaging us. Then, when there was Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori, the senior leaders expected us to teach tikanga, to do the haka for them. They wanted to look progressive, but in their own back garden us Māori kids were failing the subject. It showed me that so many places, including schools, only want Māori tikanga when it’s convenient for them. 

At Epsom Girls Grammar School, Māori students were asked to perform karakia over human remains found on school grounds

Every time they would ask me to teach the haka they would say it would be a good leadership experience and give me more opportunities, but I don’t remember those opportunities coming through. When Whaea would ask us to do it she knew there was something more behind it; she would compensate us kids for helping out. But she did it all herself. Most of us knew she didn’t have support, but she didn’t let that burden us. She would shoulder everything and make sure it didn’t come back on us. 

After she died, the teacher aide and social studies teacher who were Māori were the only ones dealing with the maintenance of the marae. They did all this cooking for us. They were the only people holding it together. The people at the top were supposed to be supporting them. At the time my anger was directed at whichever teacher took charge of the whole department. They were the first line of defence so all my anger would go towards them. 

There was a lot of pressure on the teachers who came after Whaea. They didn’t want another Māori kid to get fucked over. I should have been in the principal’s office, but they protected me. They took care of us in a way that I don’t think the senior staff would have. 

The way our school was set up, the marae was across the road from the rest of the buildings. We were always separate and there was never a merging of the two. 

To do that merge well, there isn’t one answer. First, you have to be aware and willing to make the effort. Schools simply don’t understand tikanga properly. Teachers actually need to be taught Māori history and tikanga. I would have liked for teachers to see from my perspective. I feel like that’s what the school missed. Colonial points of view were forced onto me and my Māori peers. I didn’t care about these old white men who did nothing for me but take my land. That’s where the questions arise – why weren’t we learning Māori history or Māori literature? 

Ihumatao was never mentioned by Pākehā teachers at school. We were going there every day to protest, and the only time you’d talk about it is when some white teachers would start arguing with you about it. It was right in our backyard and we weren’t given the opportunity to understand and study it. In social studies, we did get to study Parihaka. But when I was doing the assessment, the evidence I gathered was kōrero because Māori ways of teaching are passed down through kōrero. My history teacher didn’t validate my evidence because it wasn’t a university cited reference. They questioned the validity, but I got that information from a direct descendant of Parihaka. How can you tell me that their word is not valid, but this British guy who wrote a formal essay about Parihaka is valid? It shows a difference in tikanga. My history teacher probably didn’t understand that.

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Then, there’s just obvious racism. I didn’t realise how big it was in schools until I cast my mind back to all those years. I never raised it because I didn’t think about it. But I shouldn’t have had to because I was a kid. I was suppressed in my voice because they only ever wanted me when they needed me. Which makes me feel mana-munched. Which then made me think that this is okay. As much of an activist as I am, I can’t believe they managed to shut me up like that. 

When I was in year 13 they finally hired two senior staff members who were Māori and Samoan. Until then it felt like everyone in power was white, even though 80% of the school was brown, so to see that change gave me hope. Seeing two brown faces in positions of power, who were empathetic because they were experiencing what we were experiencing, that finally gave us a voice. The new leaders understood us kids more. Once they came into power more cultural representation came out. Language weeks were emphasised because those two pushed for it. It gave power to the people. 

As a youth worker for a Māori-run non-profit, I’ve learned that there is more than one way to teach a kid. Sitting at a desk, head in the books, looking at a laptop: there is more than just that method. Te Ao Māori is about relationships. That’s how we learn – when there’s focus on creating connections and giving opportunities to young people to express themselves. It is about having power with, not power over, which would be a beautiful thing to see between kaiako and rangatahi. Students don’t want to be looked down upon. I don’t want to sit at a desk while a teacher stands in front and dictates over me. I want a teacher who understands me. There should be mutual power. That way you are listening to the kid and what they want to do, while still teaching them what they need to know. 

It’s not about becoming better just for Māori, it’s how we get better together as a society. It will take every culture in Aotearoa learning tikanga for things to be okay for us indigenous people. We aren’t forcing it down your throat; we just aren’t letting Pākehā shove colonial aspects down our throats any more. We’ve been forced to understand colonial tikanga. Now we are just trying to help you understand our culture. Everyone must buy into each other’s tikanga. 

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Jeanine Clarkin at Te Uru Gallery. (Image: Archi Banal)
Jeanine Clarkin at Te Uru Gallery. (Image: Archi Banal)

ĀteaOctober 23, 2022

From Ponsonby to the pā: Jeanine Clarkin on 28 years of Māori fashion activism

Jeanine Clarkin at Te Uru Gallery. (Image: Archi Banal)
Jeanine Clarkin at Te Uru Gallery. (Image: Archi Banal)

Wahine Māori designer Jeanine Clarkin has been fashioning her take on Māori clothing since 1994. A new retrospective charts almost three decades of her work. 

“It’s so funny seeing people smoking cigarettes inside,” says fashion designer Jeanine Clarkin (Ngāti Hako, Ngāti Pāoa, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Raukawa). We’re perched in front of a screen at Te Uru Gallery in the West Auckland suburb of Titirangi. 

The grainy VCR footage is part of a retrospective of Clarkin’s work titled Te aho tapu hou: The new sacred thread, curated by Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato. The exhibition brings together film footage, photography and garments to map Clarkin’s early influences, significant milestones and enduring passion for indigenous fashion.

“This was my first show in 1994 in Hamilton, I’d just launched my label that year,” she says over the thumping dance music radiating from the video. On screen, models, some with teased hair and almost all wearing some of Clarkin’s earliest forays into Māori fashion, weave their way between the tables of Metropolis Cafe in Hamilton. Founded in 1991, Metropolis was a pioneer of the city’s cafe culture and became a regular haunt for members of the burgeoning arts scene. Skip forward 28 years, and Metropolis cafe is no more – but Clarkin remains active in her pursuits to make clothing that’s resolutely Māori. To her, it’s a form of activism.

When she started her label Jeanine Clarkin Design in 1994, her intention was to provide young urban Māori with garments they could wear every day – to the supermarket, to protests, to university, to the club – to express who they were. “Just as you are what you eat, you are what you wear,” she says, explaining that for a time her clothing was a near-guaranteed sight at protests. “There was almost a kit to being a Māori activist back then: they’d have my clothing, tā moko by Rangi Skipper and a kite by Takirua Weavers.”

Clarkin’s clothing has been worn by activists, celebrities, dancers and artists. (Image: Charlotte Muru-Lanning)

Clarkin grew up in Taupo and later in Paeroa, but spent the first three years of her life in Auckland’s Greenlane Hospital due to a hole in her heart. “I was brought up by the nurses, with my parents visiting me occasionally,” she says. When she returned home to her family, “I had to stay still in case I had a heart attack, and my siblings weren’t allowed to interact with me.” A 30cm scar from the open heart surgery she had as a baby remains today, as does the influence on her disposition, which Clarkin describes as shy and calm. And that’s had a profound impact on her fascination with fashion.

Growing up with four siblings, life at home revolved around her parents’ recycling business, a hectic two-acre yard filled with dead fridges, crates and bottles. Clarkin found sanctuary at her aunt’s bridal salon “filled with taffeta and silk and beautiful things,” she says. “I’d just sit there quietly, hand sew and chat.”

Tāniko printed garments at the Te Uru Gallery exhibition. (Image: Charlotte Muru-Lanning)

As a 17 year old, Clarkin shifted to Raglan to work with Māori land rights leader Eva Rickard at her Kokiri Centre, where they taught catering, carpentry, carving, and sewing. “So I did sewing, even though I actually already knew how to sew,” she says. “I’d make a mistake on purpose and then I’d sit on the deck and spend half the day unpicking it in the sun and perving at the carvers.” Still, the course eventually led her to fashion school at Wellington Polytech (now Massey University) in 1991. 

The early 1990s marked a turning point in New Zealand arts, with the Māori renaissance of the decade before permeating throughout imagery, design, film, music and fashion. Since the 1950s, Māori show bands and later, prominent Māori leaders like Eva Rickard, Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan and Hana Te Hemara had used fashion and design as a bold expression of resistance and identity. But these instances were few and far between. When Clarkin was starting her own label she noticed how many subcultures and other groups around Auckland wore clothing that defined them, that communicated a sense of identity. “But for Maori, you could only see them if you went to a kapa haka festival. We didn’t have a garment that we could wear downtown,” she says. “It couldn’t really be your piupiu every day.” 

Ancestral links brought Clarkin back to Waiheke Island 17 years ago – by then as a solo mum – and she’s lived and worked there ever since. Over the course of her career, Clarkin has developed a visual language for Māori fashion. In a video call from her Waiheke studio, she takes shears to a bolt of monochrome tāniko printed fabric designed by artist Julie Paama-Pengelly. 

“I’ve always wanted my tāniko print fabric to be like the Burberry fabric or like a check, just a classic,” she says, holding up a triangle of the cloth. Since the early days, Clarkin has been commissioning Māori artists to design her printed textiles, an element that persists across Clarkin’s body of work. Vibrantly coloured tāniko fabrics line coats, tā moko is embroidered onto denim rave pants, kowhaiwhai are screen printed onto silk aprons and koru rangi patterns by artist Gordon Hatfield adorn the knees of drill cotton pants. “I don’t profess to study all of the intricacies of the language of tā moko and kowhaiwhai,” she says. “So I just entrusted and commissioned artists to draw the appropriate thing.”

An upcycled wool blanket dress from 2019. (Image: Charlotte Muru-Lanning)

In the main room of the exhibition is one of the most striking garments in the retrospective: an asymmetrical bubblegum pink dress made from a repurposed wool blanket. Like many nostalgia-tinged objects of New Zealand’s past, the once-cheap blankets have become increasingly pricey. And while initially the vintage blankets were a cost-effective and sustainable way to access wool, for Clarkin, these pastel blankets are more than just fabric. With echoes of New Zealand’s long relationship with wool – the first wool mills in this country opened in the 1850s – they’re also an expression of social history, conjuring memories of colonisation, trade and, at times, life on the marae. 

For Clarkin, unmistakably Māori prints were only part of the equation for a contemporary Māori way of dressing. “I was like, I’ve got my Māori fabric – but what’s a Māori garment?” The answer came in four parts: a rapaki or wrap-around skirt, a maro or loincloth, a cape, and then aprons – “a symbol of manaakitanga and your mana in the kitchen” – all of which Clarkin reshaped into fashionable street wear. “The thing I like to say was, ‘you can wear it from Ponsonby to the pā’,” she laughs.

Tucked at the back of the exhibition are a trio of matching dance sets designed for contemporary Māori dancer Merenia Gray in 2001. They’re a whimsical expression of Clarkin’s ability to transform the traditional into the everyday. The near-identical shorts and camisole sets, in cornflower blue, orange and red tāniko print, are inspired by the knitted pari or bodices worn by kapa haka performers.

Dance sets created for Merenia Gray in 2001. (Image: Charlotte Muru-Lanning)

These days, Clarkin’s personal style is practical, often featuring a blazer and a vividly coloured scarf. “I’m always on the slightly overdressed side of things,” she says. She says her approach to dressing today can be traced back to her childhood. “When we were growing up, we had home clothes and town clothes,” she says. “Just with our grandparents wanting to be even better than a Pākehā by trying a little bit harder, or just out-doing the do.”

After our visit to Te Uru, I ask Clarkin over video call whether she has any regrets. “Nope,” she replies resolutely into her phone camera while walking around her house. As she wanders through the converted police station which is now her showroom, workroom and home, she flips the camera around to show her walls festooned with trinkets from travels overseas, photographs, artworks – many made by friends made along the way – and a glimpse of the Hauraki Gulf through the back door.

This weekend, alongside other Māori fashion designers, Clarkin contributed to the Global Fashioning Assembly, a global event that aims to decolonise fashion institutions and practices around the globe. Looking forward, she’s chipping away at plans to teach her own fashion course. Then there’s Clarkin’s Instagram, which is like an extension of the busy walls of her home – pictures of home-grown veggies, clips of protests and occupations, snippets of overseas trips, shots of her clothing on the catwalk, and, on her private account, regular joyous dance videos. Why so much dancing? Clarkin has an answer. “I worked out the other day that those dances are an expression of gratitude.”

Te aho tapu hou: The new sacred thread, curated by Maree Mills and toured by Waikato Museum Te Whare Taonga o Waikato, is on now at Te Uru Gallery in Titirangi and runs to November 20. 


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