my place

Tonite I've been watching a TV series on DVD with Mum and Megan called My Place. The series is made by the Australian outfit ABC and follows the lives of families living in one specific house each decade between 1788 and 2008. When were watching we joked that we're not exactly the target audience for the series, because it's aimed at kids (Mum and I found it for Matiu when we were in Sydney), but the episodes we watched were awesome. They were also familiar because the series is based on a book of the same name that was released for Australia's 1988 bicentenial, a copy of which floated around our home.

The thing I loved about My Place as a kid, and now again as an adult, is the attention it pays to the layering of people and histories and interactions across all those generations. In the book and the TV series, the specific 'place' is home for these poeple, and some specific aspects of the 'place' become touchstones for all the kids: a river and a big old tree.

This is what it means to be physically home in 'my place.'

Today Mum, Megan, Matiu and I drove north to cousin Jude's place and met with several other cuzzies for a waiata practice. The land we were meeting wasn't 'our place' (thanks Rangitane!) but in our cousin's home, as we practiced 'E Rere Ra,' made poi, caught up with each other and ate lunch together, we remembered and enacted and voiced and performed the significance of place. Our place.

When your homelands have been concreted over by urban space, and no longer resemble either their earlier selves or the place in the imagination of most people when they think about 'Maori space,' it can be profound to reflect on the layers of generations and connections which make up who we are. It has been great to be home in 'my place' (I arrived home 23 hrs ago!) and when I head off to Toronto in eleven days I will take my memories of today with the Te Punga crew with me. E rere ra indeed.