“Just as the sea is an open and ever flowing reality, so should our oceanic identity transcend all forms of insularity, to become one that is openly searching, inventive, and welcoming.”

These are the words of Tangata Moana scholar Epeli Hau’ofa, and here he captures this theme of identity as people of the moana, and that this identity is not fixed but flows, like the moana, sometimes lapping over us, sometimes the tide is out and sometimes its waves crash over the reef.

Nonetheless, in the storm and the calm that is the moana, we find ourselves, who we are, where we are from and how we identify ourselves and each other in Te Ao Maori.

When our hearts search as Epeli compelled us to do, how do we step into the va or space of being openly searching, inventive and welcoming.

Because at times, and due to colonial views of power and respect, we sometimes do not have permission to ask, where asking is considered aka tangata and unwelcome, or to be searching and inventive.

Because these are just two of the essential qualities needed for voyaging across the moana, because without these qualities, we would have stayed in the security of our kainga and oire, and not travelled beyond the unseen 70 nautical miles to the moemoea across that horizon.

Because we are inquisitive people, it is in our DNA, and it is because we are from navigators, all of us who “e toto, e kikoi e ivi” to the moana.

Our searching and looking for new lands continues today as we relocate to other places, other villages, towns and cities, but we do not depopulate, because we are always connected to our Ipukarea and that place we call home.

I will never use that term depopulate again because it speaks of a cutting off and disconnection.

But we know as Māori we are always connected to the land, to the enua, because of our akapapa’anga - no matter where in the world we took our first breath, no matter the words we utter with our tongues, or the turanga that we place our feet upon.

This week we farewelled one of our greatest Pe’u Maori navigators and Tu Oe, with the passing of Papa and Dr Jon Tikivanotau Jonassen MBE, whose life books and reference materials have become a critical part of any of us that hunger for who we are, who we were, and how we take these tools passed down from our Tupuna, and carve out a new Vaka for the journey ahead.

“Tarai ia te Vaka”, is the title of my current piece of Masters research, and it is fitting for what I have seen and heard this week from so many of our own kimi kimi marama, researchers and educators at the PIRUN Conference this week.

So many carving out our Vaka, hewn with the tools of our ancestors and modern tools of today, to ensure so many more us are able to climb into that Vaka, and sail into the uncertainty of a post Covid world, with the guidance Ta’unga Tumu Korero like Papa Jonassen provided us, and shows us the way.

Our thoughts are with Mama Diya, Melina, Olivia, Tamatoa and Melody and all the Jonassen kopu Tangata.

From what I have heard this week, from our Māori researchers and educators coming through, they too have heard the whispers of our Tupuna and change is coming – the winds of change are blowing – whether we are ready for it or not.

The carving of a new Vaka, is happening in a new world where we will be free from labels that have bound us to the insularity Epeli warned us of.

Labels like Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian, shaped by “others” ideas of who we are, words like Pacific, which simply means pacified, and Cook Islands - yes, the time is coming, when we too will see given back to the ship’s Captain, his country and former colony, who placed it on us, as we “aka eke” or decolonise ourselves, and continue the moemoea of our Ta’unga Tumu Korero Papa Jon Tikivanotau Jonassen, for our countries Māori name.