KARL CHITHAM
We both whakapapa to Te Uriroroi, which is a hapū from a rohe just outside of Whangārei. A lot of your practice has been referencing our whenua, so I see this conversation as an opportunity to talk about some of the things that have resonance for both of us, being part of the whānau that we’re part of, and being from the whenua that we’re both from. I thought that a good starting point would be for you to introduce your own journey.
NOVA PAUL
I returned to Whititerā, which is our haukāinga, our whenua, our tūpuna whenua, at the age of twenty-six. My sister was learning te reo Māori and she needed to understand our whakapapa, so I went along to tautoko her and we reached out to our Auntie Dinah. Dinah sat us under a tree on our papakāinga and started to kōrero with us about where we came from on our taha Māori side, to support us in our journey, our haerenga.
I’ve been going back to the whenua my whole life. We met as adults so we didn’t know each other’s stories at first, because we didn’t grow up together.
And then we discovered that we’re the same age, I’m two days older. Yet, because we didn’t grow up together, we have very different ways of informing our relationship to the land [that is in this film], especially around the puna and the kōrero looking at our maunga and at the urupā and where our tūpuna whenua is.
Through Dinah you learned specific knowledge about our whenua, our tūpuna and our whakapapa. But I’d never learnt that whakaaro because my relationship with the whenua was about being there, whereas you didn’t have that physical access. We’ve spoken a lot about your journey to understand who you are and where you’re from, but our feelings toward the place are very similar even though we have come to it through very different journeys. There is a deep connection.
My art practice has been my key relationship to making those connections back home. It has been a vehicle for me to be able to unpack a kōrero and kōrero tuku iho, to connect with whakataukī, pūrākau connected to our whakapapa. It’s through my art practice that I’ve been able to also find my tūrangawaewae and a mode of speaking, and the possibility for whanaungatanga. I’m grateful for my whakapapa, but also for my art practice that has enabled me to access this in a particular way.
Learning about your whakapapa has also led you to language.
In 2019 I did a full immersion course in te reo for the year, which I really, really struggled with. Lots of people struggle—well actually, anyone under twenty-two seemed to do fine on that course; and anyone over forty-five seemed to struggle. But I was really hōhā for pretty much eight months of the whole course because I kept being told every time I put a sentence together, kāore e whakaaro Pākehā koe—that’s really Pākehā thinking. How I tried to structure sentences was a Pākehā way of framing the world. It’s conceptually really interesting, and it also spoke to my background in academia. It was another colonial framework that I had to dismantle within myself.
After eight months, you have to get up and speak for forty minutes without notes; and when I stopped overthinking, it was like a tap had been turned on. I literally got up and spoke for forty minutes without notes or without constructing a Pākehā sentence and then trying to switch it into Māori. I got into a te reo Māori space without any translation in my mind.
The difference between Pākehā, or English, and Māori, is that in English, like I’m doing now, you construct an idea through constructing the sentence— putting a, b and c together. And you’ve got a concept. In te reo Māori, you point to the world; the world already exists, the ideas already exist in the world. You draw those ideas into a sentence structure and you go off and talk about the world. People who do incredible whaikōrero, they can draw poetic images from the world that already exist into the frame of conveying and communicating.
So in that moment I relaxed because I realised that, actually, my image making had always been through a Māori lens. I don’t go and construct another world, the world already exists. I look at a rock and film a rock. If the film was a whaikōrero, the rock would still be specific—there is a rock, maybe it’s a rock that Kupe tied his waka to, but it’s also a rock. There’s a lot of stuff that speaks to a Māori space that Māori will read and go, “Aha, I know that space. I know those meanings in that space, because they come from our pūrākau.” It’s not just this gaze that sees beautiful images, of a rock or whatever.
In my film Hawaiki (2023), there are very specific elements that connect to and create a sense of what Hawaiki could be, a refuge, sanctuary, to build a world. The children are playing in a school ground, under this tree, close to the ngāhere and they call that ‘Hawaiki’. All of these observed elements come together in the film, which I think is a Māori way of bringing images and spaces together in a thread that makes sense.
The black-and-white works, which are about the rākau and the ngāhere, are shot in fenced-off areas back in Whatitiri, the name of our maunga. They’re like these oases in the middle of farmland and orchards and divided-up spaces.
We’ve been talking about how you get access to those spaces—not just physical access, but what you’re allowed access to by the tūpuna.
Throughout the project, there are chapters: each tree has a story and each tree has been shot in black-and-white footage, then I’ve scaffolded these stories in colour 16mm film. The colour film is not hand- processed, it’s processed in a lab in LA. But the black-and-white footage of the trees, the rākau, takes the leaves through karakia and frames them in another kind of rongoā practice, a healing medicine practice. This footage is processed with a caffenol-based
developer that’s also from our whenua. Each time I would shoot the footage, I’d take some leaves, make a solution with a film developer, which I call tree juice, and I’d process the 16mm film that had the image of the tree on it, in the tree-juice developer. The film itself might take about six to eight hours to develop, depending on the levels of caffenol. It’s an early cinematic process but it’s also a tūpuna-led or wairua-led practice—the trees are our whanaunga and tūpuna, they’re our tuākana, and we are in relationship with everything in the taiao.
The project is a lot about relationships with and within the environment. And for that reason, I say that the tree would give me an image, I wouldn’t take the image—which is a bit of a twist on the colonial gaze and extractive processes that often happen, including in image making, photographic image making, or moving-image making. Once you commit to that idea that you’ll be given the image, and you’re in that space, then it’s not a given that the tree is going to give you the image, is it?
The story you were telling me about filming the three sisters was really interesting because it gives a lot of insight into how we work with those histories and how difficult it sometimes is to access them.
It didn’t always work out and, actually, the clearest sign that the trees gave me was on our tūpuna whenua where my son’s hapū or placenta is, on whenua that is so deeply intrinsic to us. There are three rākau there that are known as the sisters of our hapū, our tūpuna me kaitiaki rākau.
I tried to film those trees three times, but I couldn’t get an image. I thought it would be a cinch, because we’ve got that connection. But it wasn’t the case. I went in perfect lighting conditions. The leaves were really juicy, they had lots of caffenol in them, it was springtime. Three times I shot these trees and wasted a day in the lab each time and didn’t get any images. I had a kōrero with Dinah and I said, “What do you think about this?” And she’s like, “Actually, you know what? I think I know why.” I was like, “Why?” And she’s like, “Because, actually, it’s not really right to film the sisters, who are not the elders. I’ll take you to the matua rākau that’s in the ngāhere.” We went down there at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, there was a storm coming, the conditions were terrible for filming. The light was pretty dark in the bush. Dinah did a karakia. I had to go in with a 16mm camera and basically had the aperture wide open, so I couldn’t actually see what I was filming because I had to expose the film. So I had to pace it out and set it up as a portrait and work through it. I basically had to wing it and just had to hold the camera to my chest, and then open the lens and focus.
That footage turned out the best, it was a really affirming process. It zooms in on the leaves. It’s evocative. Through the passage of the project, you see that it starts off as a portrait of trees; and it’s very clear, kind of like a botanical print. And as it moves through, it gets slowly and slowly deeper into the ngāhere, focusing on kawakawa leaves, and then it ends up deep in this kind of entanglement of the ngāhere; the ngāhere being the forest, the many vines that come together.
I also took some photos of the ngāhere in the same space and the same thing happened. Some of them didn’t turn out.
There’s a gut instinct that we all have. I’ve been going to these places for a long time, but wasn’t privy to the knowledge that goes with them. But I’ve definitely had experiences where there’s something here that shouldn’t be, when I’ve realised—that’s right, I was told not to come down here and I came down here. It’s been affirming. There are reasons why we’ve been told not to go to that bit of the bush or past that bit of the stream. Nobody ever told us why, but you realise those aren’t places that you need to go.
In many ways your work documents those experiences and is the only forum where someone would get access to the behind-the-scenes of it and understand how important this is, not just to you and me, but to our whole whānau.
It’s not definitive or anything, but, like art, it opens up a place for the imagination. That’s the point, really. It opens up a way to reconsider your relationship with that environment. But when you put a Māori worldview lens on it, it starts a specific conversation that opens up te ao mārama.
I’d like to dig into the motivations and the kaupapa behind the practice, and how the work now exists in the world. The new work, which is showing in both Whangārei and Pōneke, feels very free and open. It’s part of a whakapapa of its own.
This goes back to what I said about art becoming a way to make connections back home. When I made This Is Not Dying (2010), that was the first project I did that was based solely on being on Whititerā, our whenua. I did a lot of work behind the scenes to understand how I was approaching the images that I was making in that space. My dad’s in that film, our uncle’s in that film, our cousins are in that film. So it was a way to create a relationship with the space as well as make a work and explore those connections. As I got more confident in being able to access that space, I could really double down on making kaupapa Māori films—by Māori, for Māori—making films that would tautoko our mana motuhake and connect our whānau through artwork back to the whenua. In Ngā Pūrākau Nō Ngā Rākau (2022), I filmed across two clear locations—Aotea Great Barrier Island and Whangārei. I spent my whole childhood on Aotea and still have a deep connection there. When you were talking about being home and knowing a space … I really know the environment on Aotea. The way that those kids play in that tree is very typical of how I remember playing in that environment. It’s all stuff that’s right under my nose, I sit with locations that are already in front of me and that I have a connection to. The kapa haka group you see in the marae is from Ngāti Wai. Half of the whānau were born on Aotea, and half that whānau were born, including the kaumātua and kuia, in Whangārei. The Ngāti Wai whānau are the conduit, the tangata, between Aotea and Whangārei.
The morning of the shoot I went up to our puna, which is Waipao. I thought I’d get up early and get some watercress, to take to the whānau, because it’s always such a nice thing to turn up with a koha from your whenua. Of course, the kaumātua and kuia loved it, but also it opened up a conversation about our whakapapa connections between Porotī Spring, that’s our puna, Waipao, and its relationship to the moana; and all of a sudden our kaumātua Taipari Munro said, “Āe, the connections between Whatitiri and our puna and the moana … it has been a kai corridor.” So, funnily enough, the film that I created ended up being centred around this place as a kai corridor where tūpuna were exchanging food with the people of the moana, Ngāti Wai. In the film, a friend, Huahana, is picking kawakawa leaves, but in a way the opening of the film is a portal into rongoā, a kind of healing. The painted panels are by Kura Te Waru Rewiri and they’re inside the NorthTec marae, Te Puna o Te Mātauranga, and it’s the only marae that’s been painted by wāhine; and I really wanted to mihi to people like Kura, who held space for a wahine toi practice and for Ngāpuhi as well. She’s a rangatira.
The kai corridor reminded me of old photos I’ve seen of the falls and the awa that’s near our marae, Maungarongo, in Porotī, where they used to do the tuna collection, or the eel catching and drying that would then be distributed—how that’s all gone because they now irrigate significantly and take the water for other reasons. And it made me think about other things, like the ngāhere where you did the black-and-white filming, that used to be filled with supplejack, and because of farming around that area, and letting cows go through, that’s all gone as well.
It made me think about loss, and what filmic work, particularly with a Māori kaupapa, does to hold on to that space. Is that something you are conscious of, or does it become an instinctual thing?
I’m really conscious of it. The reason that we’ve got a climate crisis, for example, is because people forget that they’ve actually got a deep relationship with the land. We’re not kaitiaki of it, it’s kaitiaki of us. I’m really interested in how an image can create relationships with the person that’s sitting in the space experiencing the film. Film’s quite a manipulative medium. You can really tug at people through churning in time and making a connection to draw people into a space and onto a journey. I’ll always make films that are uplifting and a rongoā. That’s my intention, anyway—to hold people in their own sovereignty, to whakamana them. In doing that, you can be collectively powerful.
And everything we see in the environment is an indicator of this reciprocity or this relationality that’s going on. I don’t make films where I’m decolonising anything. I’m indigenising a space; and through indigenising a space, spaces will be decolonised.
At the opening of your exhibition here at City Gallery, Cassandra Barnett mentioned that she’d asked each of the artists with shows opening—yourself, George Watson and Ayesha Green—to lend three words to her speech. What were yours?
“Ngāpuhi didn’t cede sovereignty.” I did say “Honour the Treaty” and then I said, “Well, actually, if there could be four words …”
Which is directly related to, or part of, the bigger conversation about having sovereignty and agency over our spaces, our resources, and the whenua. The work you currently have on show at Pātaka in Porirua as part of Naadohbii: To Draw Water was initially commissioned to be shown at Te Uru. When I walked in I saw our cousin Dinah reading a submission that had been made to the Waitangi Tribunal related to our sovereignty. On its face it’s a simple premise, you have someone reading to the camera. But the whole scene is very loaded in different ways.
At our tribunal hearing, Dinah read in her submission on our behalf, “For the reasons of legal purposes, people want us to summarise our case in 100 words or less. Our situation in 100 words?
All I can say is, they came, they saw, they took. And that’s the summary of it.” I filmed Dinah at the bottom of our maunga, at the base of Whatitiri, on our papakāinga, reading highlighted extracts of the tribunal document alongside the puna, so it’s not abstracted. Because what legislation does over and over again is to abstract a really real moment and real relationship with the whenua and the awa. All of a sudden you find yourself wandering around in a legal system for twenty years, creating document after document … I mean how many hearings have we been to? It’s been ridiculous, any number of hui. It goes on and on and on. It’s thousands upon thousands of unpaid hours, and really detrimental to a whole lot of other things that could be happening to build up the taumata, or rebuilding our marae, taking care of our hauora. Everything, everything, is given to that wai māori, that freshwater space, to assert our tino rangatiratanga mana motuhake of our awa and our puna.
So we get thrown into a legal system to assert our hapū rights over our puna, that’s what we are forced into protecting in an assertion of being mana whenua. Protecting the freshwater from things like water bottling plants and agricultural irrigation has a deep impact on daily life of the haukāinga.
In a way, the reason the films look the way they do is to whakamana all of that mahi. It’s super great if your film goes to Sundance, but it’s really great when you show your work at home. It’s context for the work; and the context is whakapapa. I feel that we will reclaim our waters, we will have kaitiakitanga resolved in a way that is beneficial to our people. I’m pleased that the film could be shown in Whangārei and in Te Aro at the same time, as making the work is about making it for home and uplifting whānau.
Header image: Nova Paul, Hawaiki (stills), 2023, 16mm colour film with sound, 09 minutes. Courtesy of the artist
Nova Paul, Ngā Pūrākau Nō Ngā Rākau at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi 1, July–8 October 2023, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington and Whangārei Art Museum, 30 June–8 October 2023, Whangārei
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