Mere Kepa - Home: Vol 3

Lead author: Daniel Hikuroa, Ng Pae o te Mramatanga, New Zealands Mori Centre of Research Excellence hosted by the University of Auckland

How permanent is home? When referring to home from overseas Mori mean the landmass of Aotearoa New Zealand. In that context we have notions of permanence, of stability, of trangawaewae, of groundedness, of place, of belonging, of connection. But how real are those notions and through what ways of knowing are they understood? In human timeframes they are more or less true, but have been seriously challenged by the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes in tautahi. Furthermore, in addition to the meso-scale immediate ongoing landslides, volcanoes and earthquakes reconfiguring Aotearoa in human memory, in geological time Aotearoa has also been extremely mobile. Up until 450 million years ago Aotearoa lay in the northern hemisphere, and about 30 million years ago Aotearoa very nearly drowned altogether. The context of the permanence of home provides the basis for an account of the geological history of home starting with the concept of Zealandia, a chunk of continental crust upon which Aotearoa sits, and relating its dynamic nature in geological time to concepts of permanence in human timeframes. Mtauranga Mori reveals insights into alternative ways of knowing and conceptualising home, the permanence of home, and the immense timeframes associated with the creation of land.

Keywords: transient; Zealandia; permanence; geological time; home; dynamic

Home is an emotive word that evokes many different themes simultaneously, themes that often include place, connection and scale home is Aotearoa, home is a region, a city, a town, a house. Home can be plural. How one defines home at any given time is often based upon relativity home from overseas is Aotearoa, home when considered from within Aotearoa might be a whare (house) or a marae (meeting area of a Mori kinship group, including buildings and courtyard). Regardless of our multiple definitions of home, we have coincident concepts of home as permanent, as stable, as trangawaewae (a place to stand, where one has right to residence), as grounded, as place, as belonging, as connection. The permanence of home is inextricably linked to the land, spanning the physical connection of the foundations of a house on the land through to the spiritual connection based on whakapapa (genealogy) and our kinship-based relationship with Papatnuku (Earth Mother and wife of Ranginui all living things originate from them). If home is one of the manifestations of the relationship people have with the land, and vice versa, let us consider the following whakatauk (proverb) as a framework for exploring the multiplicities and nuances of that relationship:

Toit he whenua, whatungarongaro he tangata.

Land is permanent, people disappear

In the chapter, I will explore this whakatauk through geological, societal and cultural lenses. The whakatauk provides the framework for my analysis of the concepts of home being linked with land, the permanence of land, and the non-permanence of people. When thinking about home from an individual or whnau perspective, we think about it in the context of a human lifetime, or perhaps two or three generations. In that timeframe home has a permanence. But if we consider home in terms of hap (kinship group, sub-tribe), iwi (nation, tribe), tipuna (ancestor) or even Hawaiiki (traditional Mori place of origin) the notion of home begins to encompass longer timeframes, more akin to geological timeframes, and our assumption of permanence comes into question.

Aotearoa is my home. I will present first a scientific understanding of Aotearoa New Zealand, starting at the beginning of time, through to the formation of a planet called Earth and a precis of the geological history of Aotearoa with a brief summary on the permanence, or otherwise, of Aotearoa as a physical landmass. Second I will provide an exploration of parallel ideas of time, creation and landscape found in mtauranga Mori (Mori knowledge). An investigation into the basis of many of the Mori words associated with home will be presented before a synthesis of the ideas and concepts covered in this chapter is discussed.

The universe is all of spacetime and everything that exists therein, including all planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, the smallest subatomic particles, and all matter and energy. The Big Bang Theory is the prevailing cosmological model that describes the formation and early development of the universe. Its one of several scientific models that attempts to explain why the universe is the way it is. The theory makes several predictions, many of which have been proven through observational data. As a result, its the most popular and accepted theory regarding our universes development. It is the explanation most consistent with observations and offers a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of phenomena, within an empirical paradigm. The most important concept to understand about the Big Bang is expansion. Many people think that the Big Bang is about a moment in which all the matter and energy in the universe was concentrated in a tiny point. Then this point exploded, shooting matter across space, and the universe was born. In fact, the Big Bang explains the expansion of space itself, which in turn means everything contained within space is spreading apart from everything else. At the earliest moments of the Big Bang, all of the matter, energy and space was compressed to an area of zero volume and infinite density. Cosmologists call this a singularity. Importantly a common misperception about the theory is that it describes the origin of the universe. Thats not quite right. The Big Bang is an attempt to explain how the universe developed from a very tiny, dense state into what it is today. It doesnt attempt to explain what initiated the creation of the universe, or what came before the Big Bang or even what lies outside the universe. To confuse things more, the concept of multiverses a hypothetical set of infinite or finite possible universes and an old idea first postulated by William James in 1895 ( James 1895) has gained traction in recent times. Multiverses have also been referred to as alternate or quantum universes, parallel worlds or dimensions and alternative realities or timelines.