Dick Jackson Memorial Reserve
Te Tai Poutini West Coast
Punakaiki Petrels. Artist Lynette Hartley
My Tāiko Whakapapa
Writer: Richard Parmatatau
My Tāiko whakapapa
wings its way away
down,
down,
down the ages
a decade passes
‘til home across across oceans
navigating
swirling swishing mingling.
Past becomes present becomes past becomes present;
See me in flight
silhouetted
night
falls moon rises.
Hear me
brushing against dusk
Crash land
burrow sanctus to life’s chosen with fish the family dish.
Shared incubation, keeps warm a new life oval. Repeat. Echo.
Past becomes present becomes past to become present. Echo.
This slope, its mantle holds our whakapapa in soil, trunks,
streams, leaves.
DNA generations threatened by all you might do
to
my Tāiko whakapapa.
Writer: Richard Parmatatau
To sit in silence and the dusk and wait for and watch a Westland petrel arrive is a gift that brings both joy and sadness.
These birds are magnificent in the rarest sense of that word. Each as it steps through the bush after it tumbles from the sky with its cry into the night is the embodiment of thousands of years of history and faith. Faith in the land, the sea, the hill that is home, the burrow, the knowledge that directs them back to the same place generation after generation.
Aligned to this is a precarity; that’s where we come in with our bright lights and roads and desire for progress. That’s where we come in with the corporate wish to turn the flats into a mine for minerals. That’s where we come in to advocate and fight to prevent wanton destruction of land that will bring lights, mayhem and danger to birds who have slipped on the wind for generations to come home time and time again year after year.
Do the petrels need a champion from the celebrity world (though they are celebrities in their own right) who can say no – let’s not mind, let’s keep these birds safe?
Or do we have a collective responsibility to be a champion and influence those we can in our own tiny way?
Perhaps if more sat in silence and the dusk and waited and watched a Westland petrel arrive and circle before landing their magnificence would be understood.
Punakaiki Petrels
Artist: Lynette Hartley
Artist: Lynette Hartley
My artwork shows Westland petrels returning to their nest-burrows in the forests behind Punakaiki. The tāiko gather out at sea at dusk soaring back and forth waiting for darkness. The forest here, the only place these petrels nest, is being damaged and the nests predated by introduced predators. Felting let me capture the excitement of seeing, or feeling, these black birds fly past in the darkness. The work changes depending on the light source with the silhouetted petrels sometimes visible, and sometimes not, against the dark background.
Medium: Felting, merino wool and silk.