Memories
The Teapot was a tribal tool used in serving sweet readymade tea to visitors alike. Aged between 9 and 50 years the waitresses glowed with the hospitality skills naturally for the love and mana of their own marae.
The musical guitar compliments the sound of food being eaten as celebrations called on the soprano singers for entertainment on the pa. A guitar always at the ready for spur of the moment occassions to waiata song down with food.
Te Kupu, the sacred word to us as tamariki was whatever our families told us to be true about our ways and customs, and they left no room for doubt giving flowing maori perspectives to life, love and family so different to the european view.
The chieftain stories of Tama Te Kapua were more than the oral tellings as the wharenui walls are decorated with such carved ancestors telling their own story as it applies to maori history. Hidden beneath the old stories are the mythical beings set to have co-existed with tupuna.
The hui or gathering at the pa involved formal and informal occasions and customs passed down from generation to generation. As the people gathered so do the animals of the awa.
The teacher and his pencil. The signing of the treaty all these political happenings occur when maori used education as their tool of weapon.