Weaving Parklands School Kapa Haka’s maro

ELISE VOLLWEILER

Half a leaf per whenu, 100 whenu per maro, and one maro for each of 16 boys.

A veritable thicket of harakeke has been harvested to craft garments for Parkland School’s kapa haka team, and you can bet that a whole lot of love has been woven into every strand.

For several months, while the young performers have been pouring hundreds of hours into perfecting their routine for the upcoming national competition, their whānau, teachers and supporters have been working quietly behind the scenes.

They have extracted muka (flax fibre) from the harakeke, fashioned it into whenu (warp threads) and aho (weft threads) by rolling it on their bare skin, and then bound these strings together so that the maro, or loin coverings, can take shape.

“It’s been cool showing the boys at each step, talking about the process, so they can comprehend the mahi and the love that’s gone into it,” explains Vairi Hikuroa, a kaiako at Parklands School/Te Kura o Pakarana and one of the school’s dedicated after-hours weavers.

The weavers have been led by Hāmuera Manihera (Ngāti Kuia, Ngāti Apa, Ngāti Koata).

Hāmuera began weaving when he was nine, learning his craft from his mother and grandmother before honing his skills with “some of the Ngai Tahu aunties”.

“I was brought up in a weaving environment and was surrounded by whānau. A legacy of my grandmother. It’s in our line too – our tipuna were weavers.”

Hāmuera says that it takes him about five hours to piece together a single maro from the whenu; it takes much longer for his helpers, who are learning the process for the first time.

Moana Maaka (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Wairere) happened to be visiting the area when the process was beginning and was now struggling to leave the project behind to head back to her home up north. She says she had always wanted to get into raranga (weaving) and was honoured to be putting this work in for the hardworking tamariki of Pakarana.

“It goes both ways – the kids are seeing us do mahi for them.”

She says that in years to come, the children would look back and remember that their families and teachers putting in the hours of work for them behind the scenes.

“It’s something that they’re always going to have,” she says. “We’ve been really really fortunate to have Hāmuera teaching us.”

The harakeke is all locally-sourced, some from the pā harakeke outside the Parkland School gates, and some from Te Āwhina Marae. Both of these sites have a strong association with Aunty Mere, who personified the pou tokomanawa (the central support pole inside a marae) of the Pakarana Taumata Kahuki bilingual unit.

The maro are to be adorned with pūkeko feathers, matching the blue of Parklands School colours. The feathers were a koha from Wakatū after the birds were harvested as part of Karioi, their indigenous crops project, which aims to revitalise māra kai or traditional gardening.

The kapa haka team is called Ngā Mātātupu, which translates as “beginning to sprout”, or “the new shoots”.

They qualified for the national competition after placing third in the regional competition late last year. It was the first time that a kapa haka group from Motueka has entered the regional competition in 30 years, and the first time one has progressed to the nationals.

The national competition, Te Mana Kuratahi, is to be held over four days beginning 30 October  at Nelson’s Trafalgar Centre.

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