Trigger warning: there is talk about rape and domestic violence in this reflection.
I wrote this song for my mother and father, who raised me in a loving home for which I am so grateful for.
I was raised in the mormon church, and when I was old enough to make my own decisions about the church I realised how much I hated it, despised the things I was taught, the racism, the backwards teachings. I spent a lot of my adult years annoyed at my parents for bringing me up in this religion, especially when I learned that it was part of the reason why my family don’t know enough about our culture and that we are only now just picking up the pieces of what we lost.
It wasn’t until last year, I watched a movie called ‘Once Were Warriors’ again, a movie the world knows all too well. My people live in poverty, gangs, alcoholism, drugs, suicide - our rights stripped from us through colonisation. Still to this day we struggle to make ends meet and have a government that is trying to continuously take our culture, language and traditions from us. The movie depicts a lifestyle that so many Indigenous still live in today as a means to get by, a form of anger towards the system because what did they leave us with? Wae’ve lost our words, our sounds and our history. The heart of our identity.
There is a scene in this movie that struck me for the first time. Through my own anger towards my parents, my upbringing and that religion, I realised that my grandparents and my parents did what they had to do to survive. The scene depicts a young girl, Grace, walking through the streets of Auckland city. She had just been violently raped, treated horribly by her father and watched her mother be beaten up over and over again. Grace walks past drunken Maori in the streets, prostitution and unsafe people, but it was this part that got my attention. She walks past a religious choir.
My grandparents and parents found safety in religion and took my family away from the life that we could’ve been living. They found refuge for our family in god and allowed us to be free from the chains of poverty.
I am still rich in culture, even though there is a lot that I still have to learn, but I am so grateful for my upbringing. I may not be fluent in Te Reo, or knowledgeable in Maori customs and traditions, but I have memories of a safe environment, with fierce protectors and guidance from god. I may not believe in the same god, but I was taught of a higher guidance which I feel daily. These roots are nestled in deep, allowing me to bloom into who I am today.
