Unuhia ki te Ao Marama: Draw Forward into the World of Light : Writing Ourselves, Our Politics and Our Dreams into Reality
Cathie Dunsford

Paper for the Plenary session at Queen’s University Kingston

Powhiri of Welcome: Toia mai….

My welcoming powhiri is a traditional Maori one that has been used for centuries. In Maori culture, the ancestors are always behind us, with us and projecting us forward into the future. It is our task to be as present as possible to the voices from the past to inform the present and allow us to move into the future. One of the ways this is possible is by reconnecting with our own mythologies and the layers of spirituality that unfold from this process and to move forward into the world of light as modern day visionaries. Without this visionary tuning in, then we are simply re-acting to the politics of the past and present. We have few tools to move into the future.

It is not always easy to do this in a world wedded to the colonial politics of destruction and annihilation, be this by invading other countries, contributing to global warming that encourages the turbulent weather crises we face today, attempting to destroy our cultures and languages, feeding us toxic food or expunging our vibrant and healthy differences through globalisation. Indeed it is vital that we do grapple with some of these issues in our work. But we must not fall into the trap of being destroyed culturally and spiritually by these forces.

I will never forget the day I read these words from Black author Toni Cade Bambara in her book The Salt Eaters: “To collude with depression is to collude with the enemy.” The forces of colonisation, which are still as vibrant in Iraq and many of our own Pacific countries today as they were when foreign invaders took over our countries and islands, are intended to oppress us and keep us down. One of the most powerful things we can do as writers is en-vision a world beyond these oppressive politics of destruction and depression.

If you really want to create a literary storm – write visionary novels. The critics hate them with a passion. Why? Because instead of re-acting to their oppression and remaining within their control, we are finally taking the courage to move beyond these borders and boundaries created by those who want to control us. We are acting out of the inner knowledge that our ancestors and our cultures have held as sacred for centuries. We are bringing this knowledge into the present and transforming it into a constructive and positive future. One of the most empowering things we can do is en-vision our own and our children’s futures through the power of our imaginations.

This does not mean we need to refrain from criticising or commenting on present and past atrocities. Indeed, we can use these as tools in our re-visioning of ourselves as we sail our waka or canoes forward and discover new areas of our shared cultures. For instance, in Manawa Toa, I talk about the nuclear holocaust in the Pacific in reference to the deliberate genocide of Ma’ohi or Tahitian people by the French. We had the most amazing debates on this when touring Germany with the books. My publisher at Rogner and Bernhard, Antje Landshoff is Jewish. She understood the connexion. But those unaware of the Pacific nuclear holocaust did not. I used the words of Maori politician Tariana Turia regarding the genocide of Maori iwi at Taranaki to support my case. They were words heard. But why? It was because in the Cowrie series I offer solutions, visionary alternatives to war and destruction of our planet and her peoples. I use the wisdom and mythology and spirituality of the past to inform and envision a better future. That 100% of Maori submissions were against genetic engineering helped when writing Ao Toa: Earth Warriors. Here the visionary future was already whispered by the present tangata whenua, people of the land.

We have good reason to celebrate. Indigenous people and women are the majority of the world, even though this world is currently ruled by the 12% of white men who have profited from sales of our land and ideas. We need to make our voices heard and we need to give strong direction to the alienated youth within all our cultures, who are calling out for a visionary politics, a visionary literature, a visionary future.

Faced with leukaemia, I made the decision to move my politics of thirty years of fighting and protesting on the streets and on the seas against nuclear weapons towards a vision of a nuclear free future for all the Pacific. I shifted my attention from the streets to literature. I realised it was not enough to write against the destructive colonial forces, but I had to begin to envision what possible futures might look like. For me this meant creating a new genre of literature, one where strong indigenous women became the central characters in my series of anti-nuclear eco novels. I wanted to see if I could create a form of oral literature on the page, really capture the energy, humour and empowerment of indigenous people, and women in particular. First they had to go back to the past, find out about their roots, before they could move forward.

Once I pushed my waka out onto these seas, there was no going back. The novels really took off and indigenous women from all over the world began telling me how much they related to these stories. Indeed, people from all backgrounds felt moved to write and ask me to tour with the books so that they could hear the sounds of the words. What began as an empowerment for indigenous women also empowered women from other cultures and indigenous men, and then grew to empower people of other races from the Asia-Pacific region, who connected with the stories, and also those from other cultures who said they finally felt empowered to do something about the colonial oppression within their own countries. Key to this is the ability to envision a new world, a better world, and new ways of behaving towards each other.

This gave birth to a global touring schedule, between the writing, where I began to include traditional and new Maori waiata, songs, and instruments interweaving between the words. I now travel with one of the book’s foreign translators, Dr Karin Meissenburg, who is also a musician and expert on Asian-American literature on Great Turtle Island and the Asian-Pacific Coast of USA. And we have turned the readings into performances to capture some of the energy and traditions behind and informing them. So in this way we carry our ancestors with us on the journeys and always have them to tune into as we move the words and songs, into the future in our performances.

As I progressed with the Cowrie novel series and they were sold by my Melbourne publishers, Spinifex Press, at the Frankfurt Bookfair and the novels translated into German and into Turkish, I realised that these novels of protest against nuclear power, warfare, genetic manipulation and destruction of the environment were also novels of peace and hope. They became celebratory. The dominant power shifted from the oppressors to those defining their own alternative ways of living, those imagining a better universe and finding specific ways to enact this on their own terms. The novels became seen as being visionary. And while dealing with issues dear to us in the Asia-Pacific region, they also spoke to a world wide audience of very different cultures without compromising our own politics. This is because they dared to be visionary.

But my characters do not act alone. The main character, Cowrie, is clearly set up in the first novel as one of both Maori and Hawai’ian ancestry. She explores her whakapapa, or ancestry, and in doing so, we see she has a mythical counterpart who guides her along the way – Laukiamanuikahiki, Turtle Woman. She is supported by her mythical sister, also an orphan, and gradually we realise that the present day character draws on the strength of the past, of her ancestors, in order to be able to work in the present and move into the world of light. Laukiamanuikahiki swims beside Cowrie throughout the series, and as she travels the globe, she encounters other mythical beings. By the time the characters come to protest and predict the shut down of the nuclear power plant, Dounreay, in Caithness, Scotland, the selkies or seal women of Orkney mythology have connected with the main character, Morrigan, as she follows her path as a fisher and finds ways to work with Caitlin, a modern day Celtic witch or medicine woman, to help bring down the nuclear power plant.

When I first started writing this book, Dounreay was a hideous reality. At Dounreay, they “lost” enough plutonium for another three Hiroshimas. They lost it? More like they sold it off to third world countries. But by the last editing stages of the book, the announcement that Dounreay was being shut down became just one of many witchy realities that can happen when us writers dare to imagine a nuclear free world and dare to write about it. The same happened as I was writing Manawa Toa, Heart Warrior, during the last series of French tests at Moruroa and Faungta’ufa Atolls. I predicted the end of testing. During the editing stages of the novel, France announced the end of testing and cut back on the final tests.

While writing the sequel to Song of the Selkies, the Return of the Selkies, the seal women invade, set free and kill fish from a fish farm, full of toxic residues, so that the issues are out in the open. At the time the Scottish fish farm industry was on a hideous high and becoming a huge threat to the wild salmon. By the time the book was edited, the closure of several of the most productive fish farms was beginning. Again, the literary vision predicted the outcome. I know I am not the only writer this has happened to. Many others in the Asia-Pacific region have been visionaries who have dared to imagine better worlds and dared to express themselves and their visions.

One of the most magic envisionings was the courage to speak out against injustices in the academic system, knowing my academic colleagues would be the very people reviewing the books in Aotearoa and overseas. Many railed against the politics of Te Haerenga Kainga: The Journey Home, which argues for appropriate space for indigenous voices to enter the academic debate on their own terms, in this case, the voices of indigenous Pacific women. One heterosexual NZ woman academic called it “a lesbian fantasy, dripping with luscious erotic energy” [NZ Herald]. I sure wondered about her gender identity after that comment!!! But the wonderful thing about standing here, in Kingston, Ontario, is that this so-called fantasy, has indeed, come to life. Liz Millward at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg and Katherine McKittrick at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, have pulled together communities of indigenous, First Nations, academic, dyke, feminist, activist, artistic visionary people – you are, in my books [quite literally] tangata whenua, people of the land. People who understand and envision and fight for the right for all of us to speak together, work together and dream about a more vibrant, shared existence, where we honour the earth and each other.

Canadian feminist writer, academic, activist, literary critic and Berlin Tour Guide, Carolyn Gammon, upon seeing the schedules devised by Liz and Katherine, emailed me and said she found it amazing that everything I wrote in the Cowrie novels had been brought to life by these visionary academics with this tour. I’d been thinking just the same myself. Finally, tangata whenua within the academy had the courage to act on their own political instincts. I cannot tell you how much this means to me. This alone has made writing the books worth while. Hearing the students at Manitoba and Queen’s Universities interact with the novels, the issues, the characters, debate the ideas, consider how they might integrate their own politics and vision into their lives, has set me on fire, has caused Pele to rise from her Volcano and Laukiamanuikahiki to soar through the oceans, knowing that with the guidance of women academics like Liz and Katherine, the new generations of visionaries and thinkers will have the courage to continue the work we began. To you all – Mahalo, Akina Nindinawe, Mitake Oyasin, Meegwech, Nia:wen, Tena rawa atu koutou, Thank You from deep within my heart.
It is not just in the writing or academic process that we need to be visionary. I have found that inventing a visionary structure within which to read, teach and perform the work globally has helped other cultures to identify and connect to the writing. By touring with our taonga, or sacred treasures, we connect with audiences on an emotional level, a heart level, as well as through their minds and imaginations. We cover the stage in lavalava, or patterned cloth telling the stories of our people. We take along our sacred musical instruments, such as koauau or bone flutes and putorino, larger clay flutes and the conch shells, so that readers can gain a sense of the worlds they are entering. We read the words and sing and play between and beneath them. This works particularly well on the European tours where I read in English and my translator in the language the book has been translated into. In both Germany and Turkey, the translators contributed to the performances and the readers could hear the words in the original language and also in translation. The music helped to bridge the cultural gap and take them deeper on the inner. Readings at the Frankfurt, Leipzig and Istanbul Bookfairs all benefitted from this visionary process. We also stay after each performance talking about the taonga, sacred treasures, the books, the ideas, talkstory and sharing as writer, translator and readers and this is vital when we want to reach other cultures with our visionary ideas.

It is vital that while we fight against all forms of colonial oppression, that we celebrate our own powers of imagination and existence at the same time.

This is not always easy but if we follow our instincts, there can be amazing results. I’ll read you a few extracts from my introduction to one of the five anthologies of Pacific indigenous, feminist and lesbian writing I have edited to show how life and our words and visions can interact magically for the greater good of all. This is from Me and Marilyn Monroe, an anthology of women writing the body and counteracting subversively the inherited images of how women’s bodies should be. The talkstory here shows that we can simultaneously co-create extraordinary narratives from our experiences if we are tuned into our pasts and our future potential while living instinctively in the present.

“This book began in clay.” I refer you to the following pages in Me and Marilyn Monroe: pp1-6, p9, which conclude with the paragraph: “These writers question the dominant culture’s representations of us with extraordinary resilience and outrageous humour, often pushing at the boundaries of narrative realism and bursting out of conventional literary structures to re-invent a world where women are the subjects and not the objects. Their tongues are razor blades slashing through centuries of illusion and mythology surrounding women’s bodies, women’s lives, challenging the multi-billion dollar industrial profits from this war on women’s bodies, reclaiming our pasts and shaping our futures with energy and wit.” [ Me and Marilyn Monroe, edited by Cathie Dunsford, Daphne Brasell Associates Press, Wellington, 1993 [rights now held by Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, New Zealand]

We gain strength in our joining together. We gain strength by imagining better worlds. We gain strength by writing about what we imagine and putting our ideas into print that others can take heart and begin to imagine the possibilities of their own lives and the futures of all our children.

I’ll illustrate this with an excerpt from my travel journals. I try to document events as they happen. Many people with white skins think they do not have a history or fail to make the effort to re-discover their origins. However, a group of people from the Orkney Islands, between the Shetland Islands and Scotland, decided to trace their family heritage of mixed blood descendents knowing that the Hudson Bay Company had recruited Orkney men for their brilliant sailing and survival skills and that many had married Cree women. They had a dream of reuniting the families. They fund raised and finally they managed to bring a large delegation of Cree Nation tangata whenua to Orkney to participate in the international science and arts festival and to share talkstory. They made the dream come true and everyone was deeply enriched by the shared experiences. I’ll begin in the middle of Willie’s first session.

From Cree Nation Sasketchwan to Orkney Islands – a Hudson Bay Odyssey.
“So how do you teach science at First Nations University, Sasketchwan” a scientist at the Orkney International Science Festival asks Cree Indian Professor Willie Ermine. Willie leans back, rubs his chin and thinks a while. Then he replies. “We take the students fishing. We show them how to bait a line, throw it out, catch a fish, then we show them how to skin, fillet, salt, dry or smoke the fish and by the end of that process, we have covered a lot of scientific principles. Because they have taken part in the process, they will not easily forget it. It is vital we involve our students in the learning process.” Kia ora! “Now that’s the best definition of science I have ever heard,” I whisper to Karin.

When Howie Firth invited us to take part in the 14th Orkney International Science Festival, which he’d directed since it began, performing from my eco-novel Ao Toa and asked Karin and I to do lectures in ecology and writing/publishing respectively, I was a bit sceptical. I was not fond of science at school and my most enjoyable memory of science at college was blowing up a thermometer over a bunsen burner, which splashed mercury all over the desk and books and sent kids slithering after the slippery molecules to much laughter and mirth. The teacher was not amused. But at this unique festival, science, art, music and practical workshops are blended with highly academic papers given at the opening conference and somehow it all works out and has the public scrambling for seats and the halls packed out.

The highlight of the 14th International Orkney Science Festival has been the visit of 25 Cree Nation men and women who are descended from Orcadian as well as Cree ancestry. When the men from the Hudson Bay Company, based in Stromness or Hamnavoe, Orkney Islands, at the height of the huge herring industry 200 years ago here were recruited to the Hudson Bay Company in Canada, many took Cree lovers and stayed to beget Orcadian-Cree children, descendants of whom came over this year to share their culture and heritage with Orcadians and to discover more about their Orcadian ancestry. Dancers, storytellers and musicians from the Sturgeon Lake Cree community in Sasketchwan were among the ancestors of Kim Foden who began researching her ancestry and made contact with the Cree. At the same time, Cree professor Willie Ermine had been attending earlier Orkney International Science Festivals and the dream of beginning fund raising to get the Cree to visit and perform in Orkney and also meet some of their families here was initiated.

For me, this has been the most rich and rewarding induction to an international science festival I could ever have. From that moment where Willie Ermine was asked to define how science is taught at the First Nations University of Canada, I was hooked! Throughout the festival, the Cree professors, lecturers, musicians and storytellers have performed and shared their culture generously and have been interested in sharing other cultures and viewpoints. I like the slow, considered way they think about, mull over and then answer any questions. Not the rushing to share “universal truths” but the careful consideration of what questions may mean in a range of contexts and the replies which detail but also leave open the questions, the implicit understanding being that we are in a state of process and thus always learning. Another elder and professor, Wes Stevenson, talked about their work in educating the younger Cree First Nations students and the importance of “mending their broken wings.” He also told us that the connexion between the Cree and Orcadian ancestors was like one tree, “a trunk with two roots”.

During the festival I was amazed at the gentle sharing and patience of the Cree at all sessions. They clearly have thought about the importance of working towards education and reconciliation, despite the painful memories and scars they carry inside them of the colonial treatment handed to their ancestors and themselves. However, there were times when the pain and carefully contained anger simmered just beneath the surface, such as Willie’s lecture on how his people were “airbrushed out of history” in an entire day devoted to this theme. While we had spent time talking with Willie at sessions, in the Pomona Café where we hung out, it was not until then that we discovered he had been taken away from his own family at six years of age, much like the “stolen generations” of Aboriginal Australians, many of whom have shared their stories with me before. He was thrown into a religious school which was strict and very formal and insisted on a strict religious regime of brainwashing. He struggled to keep his voice from wavering when speaking about this even today.

Karin made a deep connexion with a very quiet and fascinating Cree archeologist who was responsible for researching the genealogical connexions between the Cree and the Orcadians and also does work in tracing First Nations ancestry, Alexander Dietz, from Saskatoon. He confirmed that Orcadians were the largest group to assimilate with the Cree. It is fascinating to think of the stretches pakeha Orcadians would have made to assimilate with the first nations people of Canada. But the longer you stay in Orkney, the more you realise that there is an indigeneous people here who may not be brown skinned but who were descended from the first Orcadians who, according to the images regenerated of the inhabitants of Skara Brae 3-5,000 years ago, looked more like Inuit than present day Orcadians. I was blown away when I first saw these images and worked this into the scene in Song of the Selkies where the women of Skara Brae come to life in a dream [SOS, Chapter 24, pp110-111, Spinifex Press].

The sense of identity and being tangata whenua, people of the land, is powerfully represented on these 70 plus islands, in the talkstory, the writings of Bessie Skea, George Mackay Brown, Robert Rendall, to name a few, the music and in the quiet pride which is so familiar to me and the understated humour and wry wit. Orcadian humour and wit is so like the dry “Mainland” [the Mainland is the South Island of New Zealand and also the “Mainland” of the most inhabited island of Orkney, once called Hrossey, island of the wild horses].

The wonderful energy and the lasting image for me of the Cree visit was Willie Ermine’s assertion at the end of the “airbrushed out of history” part of the science festival that despite all the struggle, torment and pain of having your family ripped apart from you, the flame of identity, of inner knowledge, is still alive and well. Wes Stevenson was told when he went to university “your kind do not make it here.” He was not put off and nor was Willie. Wes asserted a strong part of their work was to mend the “broken wings” of the young Cree coming to them without a sense of their own identity which had been torn apart. Willie Ermine smiled wryly, that smile which is Cree and could be Ngai Tahu or Nga Puhi or Mainland Orkney or Aotearoa, and gently asserted the flame of being was still alive. “That is what colonialism cannot wipe out,” he stated. A silence while the audience of scientists and artists and musicians and Orcadians of all backgrounds took it all in. A dramatic silence of awareness before he added, wryly. “Colonised people do not start universities.”

What brilliance to turn colonisation on its head and assert the inner power of the tangata whenua, the First Nations people of Canada in this instance. Many no doubt expected the “we are still oppressed” speech. Professor Willie Ermine of the First Nations University of Canada was not about to give such satisfaction or talk of defeat. Instead he reversed it and asserted the strength of his people, the tangata whenua of Canada, to survive for so long under such oppressive policies, designed to wipe out or assimilate a nation of people. Kia kaha Willie Ermine! If you see a picture of Willie, you’ll see a map of survival. He has it written all over the lines on his face, the quiet patience, the ability to read others and wait until he feels comfortable and that his words will be heard on the inner before he shares what he has to say.

Apart from Willie Ermine and Alexander Dietz, the Cree whom I felt a deep and shared connexion with and who reciprocated this with respect and aroha most was Paskaw Moostoos, or Buffalo Spirit, whose Canadian English name is Rodger Ross. Paskaw Moostoos has been to Aotearoa New Zealand and has met with Maori tangata whenua and feels a deep connexion to the land and the people. Rodger felt like a brother. As soon as our eyes met we connected. He came up to me to hongi after the first lecture at the Science Conference that preceded the festival featuring the Cree. He liked my contribution and wanted to acknowledge this.

Paskaw Moostoos, or Rodger Ross, has been making a film about the Cree visit and documenting it for the Cree back home in Canada and for posterity. One of his passionate interests has been to meet and connect with the youth in Orkney to share the Cree dances, storytelling and traditions with them and forge a deep connexion that might last into the future. With other Sasketchwan Cree he talked to and performed for students from the Firth, Evie and Rousay schools at Firth Primary, teaching the kids some traditional dances which we’d seen at the booked out concert for over 500 people at the Pickaquoy Centre in Kirkwall. The girls learned the newer Jingledress dance while the boys tried out the traditional grass dance and the chicken dance. The contemporary grass dance was performed by a young Cree boy with a body like a snake which could turn every which way and make you believe he was a blade of grass. When he did this at the opening of the festival, the atmosphere at the packed Pickaquoy Centre was electric. We were invited to join the round dance on stage and we danced hand in hand with the Cree until late into the night, our bodies electrified by their drumming and singing, which is like a karanga or chant. Up on stage, surrounded by painted faces and bright feathers and wings, Cree and Orcadians hand in hand, I really felt the power of a united ancestry, the beginning of a new learning for all. It was very moving and very humbling at once. I felt deeply honoured to be a part of such a significant ceremony.

[This sharing of the drumming was echoed later by the students’ smudging, drumming, singing and chanting as a part of their Talkstory contribution at Queen’s University, Kingston and also after our Ao Toa Performance at the Four Directions Aboriginal Centre, Kingston, where they cooked and performed traditional drumming ceremonies for us as part of the Talkstory between our aboriginal nations.]
All of my talks and sharing with Paskaw Moostoos were significant and memorable. Like his Buffalo Spirit identity, he is strong and yet deeply spiritual at once. I will never forget his eyes close to mine. His forehead touching mine. His words of wisdom and sharing. This was an inner sharing, the unspoken words as significant as the shared outer words. We had an inner understanding and we both knew it. We felt drawn to the spirit of each other at every event we shared. And we had some great korero, talkstory, which will remain with me forever. I am sure we will meet again, in some land, some time. After our next to last meeting, Karin and I decided to gather together some significant taonga, or sacred treasures, to share with him and for him to share with the Cree, before they left. I made a medicine bundle woven into a flax kete from Orcadian shells, the limpet and cowrie [grottie buckie], a dog winkle and some whelks, alongside a beautiful bone Nga Puhi hei matau [bone fish hook denoting Te Ika a Maui, the North Island of Aotearoa which Maui fished from the sea in his canoe].

The wonderful thing about this taonga is that the hei matau features a heart carved into the whale fluke tail, a feature I have never ever seen before in a Nga Puhi carving, and which attracted me to it. This heart is the heart of Paskaw Moostoos, Buffalo Spirit, who also has the power of the whale fluke in his wake. This was nestled into a carved coconut peace dove from Tahiti, given to me by a Tahitian protestor when I was in Tahiti protesting French nuclear testing en route home from Great Turtle Island. For Paskaw Moostoos is a peaceful man with a gentle spirit, as well as the power of the buffalo. Some beautiful paua shell from Hokitika, Aotearoa joined the Orcadian shells and some shell sand from the Birsay Beach walked upon and written about by Orcadian poets like Robert Rendall, George Mackay Brown and Bessie Skea. [Our sharing of our taonga or sacred treasures, is a vital part of our inner talkstory and this also happened in Canada at the Four Directions Aboriginal Centre after our performance].

I recalled time spent with the Navajo and Hopi women at Big Mountain, Arizona, their stories of how their men were told by the government to build a wall between the nations to protect the uranium for the corporate bullies and how each night Katherine and the women would go out and tear down the falsely erected wall and each day the men would be told to re-build it. The futility of taking people from their native lands, just as mad as taking Pacific Islanders from their homes to test nuclear weapons on their islands and then telling them not to go back again because the land was contaminated. You cannot tell a migrant bird who has always flown, like the godwit, between Aotearoa and Siberia each year, not to fly because the land has been contaminated. The godwit will fly anyway. It is in her blood to do so. So it is with tangata whenua connected to their land, their islands. Orcadians, those whom poet George Mackay Brown called “fishermen with ploughs”, are also tangata whenua connected to their island homes and the sea surrounding through instinct and ancestry. Try getting between an Orcadian and his or her home islands and you will find out what I mean!

Karin, understanding this connexion with the land from her own ecological connexion with the earth and her gardens in Orkney and Aotearoa, as well as her deep knowledge of the seaweeds indigenous to Orkney, her chosen homeland, folded dried and ground seaweeds, from oarweed to bladderwrack to carrigeen and sugar kelp, into a beautiful hand made ancient handkerchief handed down through her family for generations and named them all, so the Orcadian Cree could relate to the food of their ancestors. The kelp industry had been as massive as the herring industry in Hamnavoe, that which sent the Orcadian men far away to the Hudson Bay Company in Canada. These men were chosen for their strength and endurance and their native fishing traditions and knowledge. Like the renowned Orcadian Arctic explorer, John Rae, they had the wit and survival instincts to live in a wild landscape and thrive.

Karin wanted to share the rich nourishment of the kelp which their ancestors would have eaten to sustain their existence here and on their journey to Hudson Bay. The same kelp which enriched the land for crops and allowed their ancestors to survive on these wind blown treeless islands. We handed the medicine bag to one of the Cree women storytellers, Rhonda, whom we shared talkstory with in the Tankerness Gardens near the tipi where the storytelling was taking place. She handed it on to Paskaw Moostoos, who was out sailing with Orcadians that day. Later, the storyteller Rhonda, Paskaw and many of the Cree came to our Ao Toa: Earth Warrior performance in the Conference Centre of the Orkney Library in Kirkwall. The venue was packed out. All the seating and spare seating brought in was used and they stood around the edges. I was humbled and stunned they would come after hours of Talkstory and performances in Kirkwall. Afterwards, Paskaw Moostoos came up and greeted me with a hongi and said how much he and the Cree loved the performance. He had tears in his eyes. I knew they would connect to the issues of genetic engineering and the use of genetic modification of crops and plants touched on in the book. I stood at the door farewelling the audience and the Cree, who would soon be flying home to Sturgeon Lake, Sasketchwan. I felt like I was farewelling family, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews. Little did I realise then that within a few years I would be standing on their ancestral land in Canada sharing talkstory with you all as we have done here today.

The Orcadian-Cree Talkstory Journey, The Journey Home, originated from the moemoea, the dreams of one Orcadian woman who wanted to reconnect with her whanau, her family. All this wonderful sharing and talkstory and hearing of the inner power of the Cree to confront colonisation, to empower themselves by creating their own university on their own terms and their willingness to share their knowledge with others. All this talkstory began with the dream of one white woman who needed to connect with her whanau. So do not think you cannot do this. Do not think that you have to be brown or black to live your shared dreams and to resist the forces of colonisation. All of us have a vital part to play in this. We can live and write our own realities. We just need to believe and enact our dreams. We have choices in how we do this. I ask every person sitting here today to go away from this wonderful sharing we have had over the past few days and to resolve to commit to using the knowledge you have gained at this university and in your lives to make a difference on this planet. Small dreams lead to big dreams and together, all together, we are the agents of change.

As Kai Tahu Maori author Keri Hulme states in the bone people:
“They were nothing more than people, by themselves. Even paired, any pairing, they would have been nothing more than people by themselves. But all together, they have become the heart and muscles and mind of something perilous and new, something strange and growing and great. Together, all together, they are the instruments of change.”
(Keri Hulme, Ngai Tahu [Maori tribe], Aotearoa New Zealand, from the bone people, Spiral/Hodder and Stoughton, Auckland, NZ, 1983, p. 4.)

I’d like to alter the prepositions and tenses for this plenary session here at Queen’s University Kingston, today and I hope you will go away remembering these words:
“We are nothing more than people, by ourselves. Even paired, any pairing, we would be nothing more than people by ourselves. But all together, we have become the heart and muscles and mind of something perilous and new, something strange and growing and great. Together, all together, we are the instruments of change.”
In the following karanga or chant, I call upon our Maori Goddess of Music and words sung into life, Hine Raukatauri, to help bring us all into the world of light and take the courage to include this vision in our writing and our lives.

Hine Raukatauri, unuhia ki te ao marama, draw forward into the world of light.

Mahalo. Kia ora koutou.

© Dr. Cathie Dunsford, 2007

Dr. Cathie Koa Dunsford is author of 20 books in print and translation in USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Turkey, including the Cowrie novel series featuring strong wahine toa from the Pacific region http://www.spinifexpress.com.au She is director of Dunsford Publishing Consultants, which has brought 184 new and award winning Pacific authors into print internationally: http://www.dunsfordpublishing.com She is recipient of two literary grants from Creative New Zealand Arts Council and was International Woman of the Year in Publishing in 1997. She has taught writing and publishing courses at Auckland University since 1975.  She tours the world performing from the books with traditional Maori waiata and taonga puoro. Contact:

Notes:
Manawa Toa, Heart Warriors, Ao Toa, Earth Warriors and all the other books in the Cowrie series can be viewed in the following websites:
http://www.spinifexpress.com.au [English]
http://www.christel-goettert-verlag.de [German]
http://www.okuyanus.com.tr [Turkish]
Me and Marilyn Monroe, New Writing by New Zealand Women, Edited by Cathie Dunsford, Daphne Brasell Associates Press, Wellington, New Zealand, 1993.

Hineraukatauri Karanga/Chant: Lyrics and Composition © Cathie Koa Dunsford, Frankfurt, 2004.