Qiane Matata-Sipu

I know many of our readers want to raise their bubs with that connection to te ao Māori too. How’s that going for you? How did your kōtiro react to this pukapuka? 

Yeah, I truly understand that we are so privileged in that we are raising my babies in our papa kāinga/home village and so for them being on a marae is normal. It's just next door to our house, but when I think about the impact of the pukapuka in particular…

Well I had my kōtiro help proofread the books before they went to print and after she'd read the story she went to kura/school the next day and she went up to the senior girls and said. ‘Hey, so, have any of you girls got your ikura yet?’

And they were all like, ‘What?’ Like a little taken aback, and she goes, ‘Have you got your ikura yet? Like, I'm interested to know who has their ikura.’

And a couple of them said, ‘Oh yes, you know, I do.’

And she goes, ‘Well, my mum has just written this book and it's about this and this, and this, and so—do you use pads, or do you use undies? Because undies are really good for our taiao/environment…’ 

And she just…the confidence! There was no shame, there was no…  just to have her walk into a space at this age and not know the stigma associated to periods, to not have had that experience yet…

Those kōtiro were like, ‘Oh,maybe we'll talk about it then,’ and they just sat around and talked and then afterwards, like, very matter-of-factly, my girl was like, ‘Okay!’ and went off and played!

Hearing about that from her was a real moment for me. It was so beautiful to just hear them being a whānau and just feeling so ok with that conversation.

That's SO cool. It really is but it also seems so ridiculous that young girls being able to discuss ikura without feeling whakamā/shame is such a big deal for you and I (and anō/again, I’m sure many of our readers).

It seems like Māori weren’t whakamā about ikura back in the day. Why are we now?

I mean, I don't want to say it's the same old but it's that Western patriarchal value system that gets prioritised in our world. 

When a Western patriarchal value system becomes prioritised, an Indigenous wāhine-led value system goes to the back burner and the broader Western view of these things which has been, ‘Oh it's dirty, oh it should be hidden, it shouldn't be talked about,’ all of those sorts of things just seeped into our everyday lives, I suppose.

It’s all part of that same… you remove the language from a people, you remove their value systems, you remove their mātauranga, and so what they're left with is this other belief system, this other way of being that becomes so dominant that it starts to take over our thoughts. Then we forget. Just like the language isn't passed on, the mātauranga isn't passed on.

But there’s a change happening. 

I always make a point to honour the teachings of Dr. Ngāhuia Murphy because she is so instrumental in bringing this mātauranga to light—giving us kupu, showing us examples, and really helping to shift the way that we think about our ikura. 

And there is just this resurgence of te ao Maori in general—in te reo Maori, mātauranga Maori, toi Maori.Māori art—that's been happening over these last couple of decades. All of that is part and parcel in shifting that dynamic. As we grow in one area we start to understand more about ourselves in another. Together it makes this whole—an ecosystem for us to thrive.

So, yeah, I hope that this pukapuka contributes to that overall resurgence of mātauranga.

Well you’ve managed to turn a pretty dreary pātai into a pretty hopeful and inspiring answer there. I’m excited for what this all means for us. I’m excited for the next generation.

Yeah, what I've really loved about this being a children's pukapuka is that our tamariki will know this kōrero at such a young age. 

They're not going to be 30 and looking for this mātauranga you know, like a lot of us.

I mean, I'm not 30 anymore, I'm way past that now.

Tāua, tāua/you and me both.

But just the new opportunities and accessibility for our young ones to make this kind of knowledge part of their everyday lives is so cool. 

I have a very loving whānau but we never really talked about periods at all, aside from puberty class which was all very clinical. And yeah, they mentioned emotions and hormones but not REALLY.

I came out of our year 8 puberty education night thinking once you get your period you have it forever, like you never stop bleeding… Our poor health teacher was so flustered and talking so fast I could hardly understand a word.

It was a confusing time! While I was writing the story, I actually looked back and was like, ‘Okay, what… were some of the beautiful things that I remember, aside from the embarrassing or the things associated with stigma?’ And my… my dad, he used to give the best back rubs.

Oh he really did? That stood out to me when the pāpā does that in the story.

Yeah, I wrote that into the book. My cousin is the one who gives kōha to all her irāmutu/nieces who get their period too. I really love that idea.

So even though I didn't have a lot of what the book talks about, and what I want my children to have, there were still really beautiful things in there that I could draw from.

We remember all the stigma and the embarrassment but actually there are little nuggets in there of things that our whānau or friends did that are actually very Māori but we just didn't really think about it at the time.

I forgot what the question was, I’ve gone full circle on that one.

I forgot what the question was too but your answer was needed and great thank you.

I love the way you include everyone in the whānau in this pukapuka, but especially our tāne. I would say most of the males in my life are pretty uncomfortable with the ‘p’ word still, and probably especially the ‘i’ word! Not through any fault of their own, just the way we were all raised.

Your book gently invites them into this world. How do you see the role of tāne around ikura then? 

Yeah, on the front of the cover it says ‘for growing girls AND their whānau’ because it's for all of the whānau to read, to learn, to listen to, and hopefully it just becomes one of those bedtime books that anyone feels comfortable picking up.

Even though my dad gave the best back rubs, he never talked to me about it, you know? He never says ‘period’. He doesn't even say, ‘I love you’ but he'll come and he'll clean my whole house and fold all my washing… He won't say it, he just shows you that he loves you.

I had this real interesting kōrero with Hira Nathan at Kupu on the weekend, where he said a lot of tāne are not given the kupu at a young age to express themselves, to actually speak words into their emotions and so I think it's really important that where we have the opportunity to speak to our tamariki, our tama, and give them kupu and knowledge and all of that kind of stuff that we do it. It will eventually help at the other end when they become adults and possibly pāpā one day. 

But for those who are our older tāne now, it's so important that they play an active role with their tamariki. It’s not that old, ‘Oh, I don't have a period, so I can't talk about it.’ It's like, well, you came from a period, so, you know, there is an experience, a hononga/connection there.

I think that's why I purposely wanted to put that into the book, like, pāpā has a role. And if that role isn't fully explaining everything to the kōtiro, then it might be helping to prepare something. Maybe Pāpā will go out and buy some period undies, or a little kete for her. Maybe his role can be a supportive role, a giving koha role, a giving back rubs role,

It would be great for tāne to grow in their confidence talking about periods because it definitely isn't just the role of wāhine. We all have a part to play.

Yeah, I do empathise with any adults who feel a little out of their depth hitting this stage because it’s a challenge on a few fronts (but we can totally handle it).

For me the most paralysing thing about becoming a parent is this desire to pass on mātauranga Māori when… I don’t actually feel like I have enough of it yet myself. 

I feel like I quickly need to learn SO MUCH. Can you help me here? Please ha? What should I learn about ikura before I face up to a kid with your pukapuka?

I think sometimes we get caught up and think we should know all these things before we teach our tamariki when, actually, learning alongside them is just as good.

I mean… I don’t know why I didn’t think of that but I instantly feel ten times lighter…

Yeah, I think a lot of the time we don't teach our tamariki because we feel like we don't have enough information but it's not necessary to know everything already. It’s okay to be learning alongside your tamariki. It's okay to have wānanga together with your kōtiro, with your tama, with your whānau.

When I wrote this book, I gave it to my husband and was like, ‘Have a read of this, do you think you would be equipped to answer questions for your kōtiro from this?;

And he was like, ‘Yeah, I feel like I could answer the question and that if I needed more information, then together we could go and find more information.’ And I really think that’s enough.

Sometimes also when we read a pukapuka and we see that there is something in there—like in this one I talk about planting the whenua under the tree when pēpi is born, or giving your first ikura blood back to the whenua—we're like, ‘Oh, I didn't do that so maybe this isn't for me,’ or ‘I can't do that because I live in an apartment’, or whatever it might be but actually this is just a guide. It's not a ‘you must’. It’s not the be-all or end-all, it's just the beginning of the wānanga/discussion for what this could look like for you and your whānau.

You will figure out what that all looks like in your circumstance, in your situation, with your background and I think just the fact that people are trying… like even just reading this pukapuka together, that's huge! That's one major step. That’s all you need to do. That’s enough to start the shift.

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Inspired to contribute to this mātauranga revolution? You heard the wahine, reading this pukapuka is a great place to start e hoa. Get it here or hit up your local bookstore from 1 November (and then hustle them to order more copies for your mates).