Nickie Muir: How Whaingaroa lost the 'i

Nickie Muir

"I'll go diving with you, Miss! Is it real?" Kids work on giant murals and listen to the stories of Whaingaroa Harbour as told by Yazma Smith, currently teaching art at Whangaroa College.

They've just been told about the punga or anchor stone depicted in one of the murals that was cast from a canoe of a great warrior.

"Can we sign our names?" asks one kid. "No, as Maori," explains Yasma, "we don't sign our names if we don't own this work - it belongs to the community so we don't put our names on it."

He nods - not interested in his sudden loss of individual immortality and more intent on the whakaaro behind the work.

At the back of the school hall is another mural; "We are the prototype - not the stereotype," it states.

Yazma outlines how rather than being some rural backwater; Whaingaroa was once the centre of early New Zealand history; that the kids are from a special place and that by implication they too are special.

"You know Taupo, and Tauranga? The ones down the line? Those were named after the Taupo and Tauranga from up here."

The kids nod, paint and listen, asking questions as they go.

"We were once Whaingaroa - it was only when the postal service got us mixed up with the Whaingaroa in Raglan that we had a name change. Whaingaroa is the sigh of a weary woman waiting for the return of her long lost lover, meaning; 'what a long wait'."

The mural initiative has become much more than a beautification project. Alistair Kay - Emmy award winning art director and local had the seed of the idea when he heard of the Focus Project Fund run through the Northland Regional Council to promote the uniqueness of small towns in Northland.

"Joining with Yazma seemed obvious and her getting the local kids on-board just happened really. One of the beautiful things that has come out of the Treaty process are the stories which reconnect people to the past."

Yazma acknowledges the huge work that Whangaroa Papa Hapu produced in 2012 - the result of a 30-year recording of oral history of place and people, driven in part by such luminaries as Hiwi Tauroa.

"There has been a lot of hurt and a lot of anger in this community through history and the kids here can't help but absorb some of it - art is a way for them to deal with some of that and find some positive way to work through some of those emotions. Yes - they can know themselves by knowing their past - but I'm also hoping it helps them to work out a new future for themselves."

"Why is there a stingray in this, Miss?" asks one boy. "He's a guardian. He looks after all of us - tell your uncles not to kill them if they're fishing next time!"

If you're heading North - stop in Kaeo and see if you can read the history of Whaingaroa, from the Taniwha who made it to the star-crossed lovers to the whai or stingray who are said to still guard it today.