- I ahu mai koe e taku manu i te kimihanga, i te hahautanga, ki manu o uta. Ki manu o tai, ki manu o korero e hui tahi nei. Haumi e, hui e, taiki e. This week on The Hui ` Traditional Maori ways of caring for tupapaku are being revived in the Bay of Plenty. - This process, for me, is really healing. Using a shroud on tupapaku, it's always a real honour. - It's empowering whanau and reducing the financial burden of funeral costs as well. - We can do this ourselves. - And we discuss youth justice ` from Ram-raids to support in court with our panel of experts. Plus, we catch up with the couple who are normalising the use of taonga puoro; traditional Maori instruments. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2023 - Haere mai, haere. Tatou e pupuru nei ki nga aweawe o te whenua. Tihewa mauri ora, and welcome back to The Hui. When we lose someone we love, grief is a heavy burden. But with funerals costing up to $10,000, there's also the financial burden on whanau. However, there are a growing number of alternatives to caring for the bodies of loved ones, or tupapaku. Meriana Johnsen set down with those in the Bay of Plenty who are reviving practices that are not only cheaper but also healing for whanau. (ETHEREAL MUSIC) - MERIANA JOHNSEN: Haere atu ki tua o te arai ` when a loved one passes, whanau are left in the dark. - Just` It seemed so unnatural and so... (INHALES SHARPLY) Yeah, confronting. - But from darkness comes light. - I found there was a whole other way. It was the most sacred and beautiful process. - So tell me a bit about where we are now. - We're here at Ihukatia in Ohope. This is where me and Josh first met. We often came here on dates. We'd park up the car and reverse it back and have the fish and chips in the back and... Yeah. - And when you come back here, how does it make you feel? - Like I'm getting a big awhi from him. Yeah. - Sharday Cable-Ranapia fell hard for young scaffolder Josh. - Everything happened really fast-paced. Yeah, it was just real magnetic. Real magic. ON RECORDING: I couldn't have chosen a more amazing man. We will grow old together, you and me. - JOSH ON RECORDING: I promise to tell you the truth and love you till death do us part. I can't wait to grow old with you. - It felt way too good to be true. Like, is this really happening? Is this real? - For 18 months, it was ` until the pain began. - At the time, he was a go-hard rugby fanatic. Played for Paroa. There was eight to 10 doctor visits They thought it was rugby. - Finally, a hospital admission and some answers. - The doctors are saying they think it might be cancer. - The fit and healthy young rugby player was diagnosed with Ewing's Sarcoma ` Cancer of the Bone. - The cancer was quite aggressive. There was no time to muck around. - Did you ever have a conversation with him about the fact that his death was inevitable? - (SIGHS) No, I didn't. It was... In his mind, there was no way. Yeah, we just had a baby. We were so happy. He wasn't gonna go. So my role to awhi him was to fight with him. (WHISPERS) Shit, sorry. (TEARFULLY) Yeah. (SNIFFLES) So there wasn't much preparing in that sense because... we were fighting to win. (POIGNANT MUSIC) So we got nine months with him from diagnosis to the time that he passed. - Josh was 25. What followed would ultimately change the direction of Sharday's life. - My only knowledge was that, yeah, we call the funeral director. They came out and we helped them to get him onto a gurney... and into the hearse and off we went. I had a real uncomfortable feeling about actually leaving him then for the next process and knew that he was going to go be embalmed. and that's... what had to be done. It was just so strange. You know ` the smell, the chemical smell for me. His touch, the feeling of him ` so different. There's no intimacy. And it definitely doesn't feel... like our culture. (BIRDS CHIRP SOFTLY) (GENTLE MUSIC SWELLS) - So people are going to funeral directors because basically the funeral directors often pick up the body. And then they just go with the flow because that's all they know. - Ruth Goodson is a community advocate living in Ohope. - I just love the idea of communities taking more responsibility in life as well as and death to look after their own and not having to pass things over to professionals. - She runs the Funeral Guides Collective, a group that supports whanau to look after their deceased loved one without the need for a funeral director. - We've lost that knowledge, but funerals became professionalised and the communities have lost that knowledge. - Sharday's impersonal experience with Josh sent her on a journey for that knowledge. - I found there was a whole other way that we could do tupapaku, death care. - The answer lay in matauranga Maori. - And I was like, Oh my God. Like this... I instantly felt that I'm going to be doing this. Like, this is where I'm meant to be. This is my calling. It just all made sense. - Shrouding or wrapping the body in cloth before burial is one way she's learned to care for tupapaku. - So I dye my sheets in kokowai, an earth pigment. So I'd like to use whenua that is where they're from. This process for me is really healing. - What is it about the process that's healing for you? - Just knowing that... yeah, this is my whenua. This is a Ngati Pukeko kokowai. Using a shroud on tupapaku is always a real honour. - How long would this process take with the whanau? - Depending if you were going gathering for the kokowai or where, but usually, like an afternoon spent, a few hours, this process. This would be a very healing time where you can sit around with whanau and connect and talk about whakapapa. We speak a lot about taking care of papatuanuku in life, and I think it's just as important to talk about in death, to practice in death. - Something she wished she'd known earlier. - I was so happy, but also so sad that I only know this now and wish that I could have done that, um, for Josh. Yeah. - But what she wasn't able to do then, she's now helping other whanau do, and the knowledge is spreading across the rohe. At just 19, Whatonga is already giving back to his community. - I've created two so far alongside my team, but I've only started doing it for two months now, so it's pretty exciting. Still learning. - A takapau wharenui is another alternative to a coffin or shroud. - The teachings that I've been taught is we start off with panels. So starting off with our sides, the reason why we pull our harakeke up in line with our ara is that so we create a tighter weave and our weave doesn't fall apart or gaps show when it dries out. It's very important to, you know, keep your weave tight so that, yeah, your tupapaku don't fall out. So to complete a takapau wharenui, it depends. If you've got a good group... about nine hours. I think it's awesome because he matauranga Maori, and it creates financial and sustainable space for our whanau. - How big of an issue is funeral poverty here in this rohe? - There's a lot of funeral poverty here. I mean, you could have two or three deaths in a whanau and it can be up to 10,000 each. And, you know, within a year, that's a lot of money for whanau here. - A government grant, if you need it, is only $2,400. - And the funeral directors will tell us that there's a lot of bad debt that they're carrying. - But she says the industry isn't fully supportive of their work. - The Funeral Directors Association and some of their submissions to the government really wanted everyone to learn how to be like them and to be embalming and all of those things, and we're saying, 'No, that knowledge is not what we want.' - And Ruth is up against a powerful industry. - Those funeral directors, our local ones, I think, are wonderful. Nationally, I am concerned that there are two big... Australian corporations that have bought up a lot of the funeral homes in New Zealand now. So I do worry about the industry as a whole in New Zealand. - So it's big business. - Yeah, it is a big business. - There are some beautiful people that work as funeral directors and the mahi that they do is stunning. But to me, we can do this ourselves. (EMOTIONAL MUSIC) - Sharday's darkest days are now a gift. - People often say to me, 'You must get real sad or it must be heavy.' But when there's that much love around... it's so beautiful and a real honour and privilege. - Helping other whanau navigate their grief, providing some comfort for her, too, as she moves forward with her young whanau. - Cos you're never gonna move on, I feel like moving forward was going to be easier now. (SOMBRE MUSIC SOFTENS) - Now the Funeral Directors Association of New Zealand says while embalming is not mandatory, all funeral homes must offer whanau alternative preparation options. However, they say it is the best method available for caring for tupapaku before burial. They're calling for the WINZ funeral grant to be raised to support low income whanau, many of whom are opting to have no funeral because of financial constraints. Coming up after the break on The Hui, with political parties hardening their resolve on crime, what's the impact on youth who enter the justice system and those supporting them? Tracy Karanui-Golf and Renee Karena join us live in studio next. - E takotako nei te tu o te tahuhu, i te pai, i te kounga o ta tatou hui. Welcome back. Political parties are pushing tougher stances on crime, but does this ignore the issues many already encounter in the justice system? And what's the impact on those there to support the system itself, including court-appointed communications assistants? Joining me now is Tracy Karanui-Golf, speech therapist and court-appointed communications assistant, and Renee Karena, lawyer and youth advocate. Tena korua. Nau mai ra ki ta tatou hui. Tracy, you're a court-appointed communications assistant. What's the role do? - Yeah. So in New Zealand, court-appointed communication assistants are specialised speech and language therapists. We're appointed by the court to assist defendants, witnesses and complainants to... have access to communication, to understand all the things that they need to understand, to be able to answer the questions their lawyers might ask them, and just to be able to meaningfully participate. - Give me an example of how that support has been given. Give us an example of how whanau have used that. - Yeah, I can give an example. Recently at Rangatahi Court, actually, with a young person who felt too whakama to come to Rangatahi Court because he knew that he would have to speak in whakawhanaungatanga. And so we adapted communication to give his pepeha via visual form so he could still participate in the process. This is a young man who went from not talking to me at all to now agreeing to say his pepeha in the whare with his lawyer, to participate meaningfully. - Kia ora. - And to be part of the full process. - Ae. - So, Renee, how important are the roles of people like Tracy, of court-appointed communications assistants in the process? - Look, they're absolutely important. They walk alongside us, the youth advocates. I know some people might think, well, you're a lawyer, you've got the skills to talk and listen to a young person. But the reality is, with all the complexities that our young people face, we need the assistance of our communication assistants. So I mihi to our hine here, who was talking about a very important topic today about the work they do in our justice system. And I thought that was a beautiful example of what you did... - Oh, kia ora. - ...in the Rangatahi court, and it shows sort of the innovation that the communication assistants can bring to the role as well. - What's another example that you've seen of just how critical this role is? - Sure. Talking to a young person, 'OK, you've got a curfew between the hours of 7pm to 7am, 'which means you must also present at the door when the police come knocking. 'However, if you behave well and you comply, we'll reverse that curfew.' I mean, who can understand that sort of language easily? - Yeah. - So, Tracy, given the role and the critical nature of the role, what's the current situation for court-appointed communications assistants? - Yeah. So there's about, I would say, around 50 court-appointed communication assistants in the country at the moment, about five, maybe six whakapapa Maori and very few of us who whakapapa Maori have confidence and competence working from a matauranga Maori lens. - Why is that so? Why aren't there more? - Yeah. So speech and language therapy has been a... programme of privilege. You could only access it in Auckland or in Christchurch as an undergraduate degree. That means you haven't had a degree before. That's how I became a speech language therapist. Or you could get it in Auckland via postgrad, which means you've already got a degree, so you add another one on top. Now for our whanau, moving to the city like Auckland or Christchurch isn't always gonna be feasible. It's not reasonable for lots of our whanau. So Massey's come up with a solution to that. - But that program is potentially under threat? - Yeah, it's definitely under threat. Well, the worst case would be closure, but also restructure. So restructure being that we lose FTEs or we lose staff. To such a point that we can't teach with the criticality and the speciality that needs to be for us to have graduates that are ready to work with our whanau and often whanau that are in really vulnerable states and hospitals and justice systems, and... - So is that why there are` that wait times for whanau who are needing support are so long? It's simply because the workforce isn't there and there isn't also the development of the workforce itself? - Ae, that's correct. - Wow. - Well, I just like to say to young graduates coming through the university system, there's a big push on putting young people through law school and med school. And yes, we mihi to our rangatahi who are going to through university, but how about... - Speech and language therapy? (CHUCKLES) - They're there serving communities. - Absolutely. - We know our young wanna serve our communities. - I work at Massey University as well in a role called kaiakiaki Maori, and that's about influencing the curriculum so that it's from an Aotearoa perspective, that we're using research that's relevant to our rangatahi, to our whanau here, and also that we can work to keep our students safe when they come. - And a means of supporting whanau. OK, Renee, there is, as you know, a tough on stance crime. - Yes. - From various political parties. It's a big issue for this year's election. What's the impact of that, do you think? What would the impact of that be going forward? - Patai pai, Jules. What it means is if that we can't have the assistance of communications assistants in our courts, we're gonna miss a lot, quite frankly. And there might be lawyers watching this show that say, 'Well, I speak to my young person fine. I can communicate.' But the reality is we've got to keep upskilling. They come with specialist pukenga and we rely heavily on them for that. So there's been, as we know, a lot of knee jerk reactions. We're in an election year this year. - Ram-raids and the like. - The Ram-raids, the ram-raid legislation, which, by the way, isn't gonna be passed before the election. But there's been, as we know, a knee-jerk reaction to that. And of course, we all understand the argument that we need to keep communities safe. There's not a lot of money around and people are scared. Well, yes, we all agree with that. But quite frankly, the research clearly shows that putting people in YJ is not a long-term deterrence by any stretch. - Thank you both very much for your time. Really appreciate you both explaining not only the situation, but also the impacts of current political voices and parties on the issues at play. Na reira, tena korua. E mihi nui atu ana ki a korua tai ra. That's Tracy and Renee, our expert panel. After the break on The Hui, the normalisation of using traditional Maori instruments, taonga puoro in Manawatu. - Ko auraki mai ano koutou ki tatou hui. Taonga puoro, or traditional Maori instruments, is finding a resurgence in the Manawatu. Jerome Kavanagh and Ruiha Turner are part of this movement, and when they're not composing new waiata with their instruments, the couple holds wananga to share the benefits of these ancient taonga. (SPIRITUAL WAIATA) - Karanga karanga, ki a Ranginui e tu iho nei, karanga karanga ki a Papatuanuku e takoto ake nei. Taonga puoro is our original music tradition of iwi Maori. In its essence its the voices of the elements, the voices of the environment. Taonga puoro come from Te orokohanga o te ao ` the origins of the world itself. You know, those sounds of our creation of the world. (ETHEREAL WAIATA) (BIRDSONG) I was first introduced to taonga puoro through my kuia when I was about eight or nine. And she mentioned to me, 'Oh, this is our musical instruments.' Not too long after that, I actually witnessed a koroua who played his pupurangi during a powhiri. (PLAYS SOFT, LOW MELODY) - So my journey's been quite recent in the sense of depth, I guess. Like I sort of knew about puoro, but not really in a sense of what it was or... you know, what they were, just more the sound. - Growing up, taonga puoro wasn't a common conversation or a common concept. - Yeah, or they were looked at as more like a porotiti, as a toy. Yeah, but it wasn't common. (HORN BLOWS) - Taonga puoro saved me in my dark times because it gave me a mahi, it gave me a purpose that my ngakau aligned to. Once I'd committed myself to being a practitioner of taonga puoro, that really had brought me out of this dark space in the way that nothing has, really. At that time, I was suicidal. Quite severely depressed. I was on really heavy medication, in terms of antidepressants. Once I was sort of well enough and had enough of a sort of 10 or so taonga puoro, then I started to go around our kura and kohanga and share those taonga, cos I sort of realised how the sound and how making them and how the purakau made me feel. (ETHEREAL MUSIC) - Taonga puoro has become a really natural everyday occurrence for us. So to use it in our haputanga was quite a natural evolution of how we would use our puoro. - We got these taonga, we got this puoro, we got our baby coming. So it was really about putting that into practice, you know. The porotiti. - Tena koe. (BABY FUSSES) - So we created a puoro collection, I guess, for Tawhirirangi. - When I went into labour, it was a really good way for Jerome to be able to be involved, that we were a team, like coming in during and then through the birth. It kept me really calm and gave me something to focus on. Those sounds that he hears within the whare tangata, now he's here, they are the sounds that remind him of that and that sort of keeps him real tau. - Yeah, everything's really come from Ruiha and baby, in terms of how we approach it. It's sort of like customising what's best for our wahine and our baby. And then once we know that, oh, yeah, whakamahia. (PLAYS LOW, SOFT MELODY) I've been practising now for just over 20 years and you know, we don't have nobody coming to Careers Day saying that you can be a taonga puoro practitioner. Yeah. I was really looking at people like matua Hirini Melbourne and going, 'Oh, wow. I wanna be like him.' (PLAYS HAUNTING MELODY) We've got a high focus on returning to our tupuna rohe and taking our wananga back to the marae is really the biggest thing that we're focusing on. What we're gonna do is we're just gonna take four breaths together. So when I say 'ka u', you're going to breathe in through your ihu. - As a practitioner, I could definitely feel the different types of wider or that happen when we do our oro atua... ...whether it be people sort of uncomfortable at the start, and then seeing them transition through that journey and feeling that mauri be either quite dense and then seeing them transition into it, sort of releasing all that, and to then see the people have sort of a weight off their shoulders, that's quite a beautiful thing. - Really once our whanau have our taonga back in our hands, then really we're empowered to be able to utilise those again as a rongoa. It's really exciting and it's for all of our whanau Maori because we get to wananga together and make them and learn how to play them together. It's been beautiful and it's been challenging as at the same time, but we probably could go and work for somebody else, but we try and stay pono to our kaupapa. Our tupuna have left us these taonga, and if we dedicate ourselves that mahi only, then they'll look after us. (PLAYS HAUNTING MELODY) Some of the challenges for us is does this align with our kaupapa? Like, there was a wine company that approached us to be kind of like, the face of this organic wine. And then we just thought, Oh, that's probably not appropriate considering the history of our people with waipiro. Yeah, and we always check with our mums and our whanau. - We have wananga, yeah. - We say, 'Oh, what about this?' And that one, my mum was like, 'Oh, hell no.' (BOTH CHUCKLE) I guess with, like, taonga or any art form, it doesn't just belong to us. There's a wider responsibility to our whanau, our hapu, our other friends who are taonga puoro practitioners, there's all that that we've got to consider. (BIRDSONG PLAYS) - We're trying to achieve putting puoro back into the hands of our tamariki and whanau. So they have those tools in their kete to use every day. Whether it be for rongoa, whether it be for entertainment. - But we still want that mana of those taonga to stay intact. (WAIATA SOFTENS) - Ka nui te mihi ki a Jerome raua ko Ruiha. Kua paenga nga korero a ta tatou hui ki konei iaianei na. You'll find links to our stories on all our social media channels ` Facebook, YouTube and others as well at newshub.co.nz. Until next week, e nga iwi, kia mau ki te turanga o Taputapuatea. Haumi e, Hui e, Taiki e! Captions by Kitty Wasasala. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2023