25 October 2024

Home Is Where the Wairua Leads You

Mano Whenua. Heartland.

writer: AS TOLD TO ARPÉGE TARATOA (NGĀI TE RANGI, NGĀTI RUAKAWA, NGĀPUHI, NGĀTI RĀRUA)
photographer: Michelle Porter

When Jasmine Jones (Ngāruahine, Ngāti Ruanui, Ngā Rauruu Kiitahi, Tainui, Cook Island-Tongareva) moved from Pōneke Wellington to Pātea in 2020, it was on a whim – a deeply intuitive one, it turned out. As well as connecting her to her whakapapa, the move has brought Jasmine, 33, and her whānau great peace and abundance, and allowed her to focus on empowering people’s connections to their wairua, culture and community.

Growing up, I was really just surrounded by my grandparents and my mum, so in terms of family, all I remember was it being small and intimate. In a lot of ways, I felt like my grandparents had removed themselves from that family structure, which wasn’t uncommon. I think urbanisation forced them to go the cities and hustle for their families. In 2017, that was the first time we had ever gone back to our marae, back to our whānau, and that was the first time I had met a lot of my grandmother’s siblings and all my cousins – so very recently we have started to make that reconnection.

I didn’t grow up with my dad. I only met him in my late teens, early twenties – and that really was by some divine calling! When my mum was giving birth to my younger sibling, my dad’s sister happened to be giving birth in the same ward, and while being discharged, she came up tome with tears in her eyes asking if I was Jasmine. My aunty has really been the glue for us since then!

I feel like every point in my life after that has been meant to kind of happen – like moving to Pātea! For some people, it just didn’t make sense – and even for me at the time – but as soon as we came down the hill and we saw the awa, it just hit me. I felt it in my wairua that this was home.

The move to Pātea initially came from feeling like I’d hit the ceiling with my growth in Wellington. It was all I had known at that point. We had been renting, and Covid had really shown us that life is expensive and hard and it’s only going to get harder, but also that there’s the ability to really change the way we respond to the world and think about how we work.

When we made the decision to leave Wellington, we did consider renting, but then I thought, “Let’s just be really ridiculous and try and buy!” We had really good KiwiSavers, but we knew we couldn’t do it in Wellington – I ended up getting some mahi as a lecturer down at the Universal College of Learning in Whanganui, and we knew that coming up here to Pātea was the best option for us to buy. At that point, I hadn’t really had much communication with my dad, but my aunty got in touch– the one I’d met in the ward – and I told her that we were moving to Pātea. That was when she said, “You know that’s where we’re from, right? That’s where I was born. That’s where your father was raised.” I just thought, “Okay. Well, what felt random actually has all this connection.” And that connection was in whakapapa.

Top Image. Jasmine with her husband, Graham, and son, Tobias. “When we started to think about buying, it was really thinking about what the cost would be – probably taking on two jobs each and losing time with our son –and that for me was just a ‘no’ because of how hard it had been to conceive,” Jasmine says. “So we made the call to leave and look to buy, which we knew meant leaving Wellington.” Above. “Being able to reside by my waka grounds me daily and reminds me of the resilience that lives within me, thanks to the pursuit of my tūpuna in reaching these lands,” Jasmine says. “I’m at this point living in Pātea, where I am proud to be a Tūtahione. And for a long time, I was really resentful of that, but I think there’s something important about reclaiming my father's name, in a land that feels like that name is forgotten.”

A lot of my career has been focused on education. It started with early-childhood education and support work for tamariki with disabilities. From there I began to relief-teach, and the centre I was in supported and funded my studies. In that, I not only realised that child development is so important, but I also learnt a lot about being Māori – the biculturalism papers I took sparked a real journey for me to understand what being Māori was.

In 2020, when we moved, I also received my kauae. In many ways, it was a year of transformation, enlightenment and trusting myself. I feel like that was the start of me giving myself permission – because my tūpuna had already given me permission – to explore spirituality from ate ao Māori lens. And just being completely and utterly myself.

 Jasmine values
all the time with her son that the move to Pātea has given
her.
Jasmine values all the time with her son that the move to Pātea has given her.

“In 2020, when we moved, I also received my kauae. In many ways, it was a year of transformation, enlightenment and trusting myself.”

I remember being very intuitive, very sensitive to energy as a kid. I was just very aware of the world around me. My wider kaupapa of my creative platform, For My Wairua, really encompasses that intrinsic belief that everything happens for a reason. It initially started as a space for my writing and artistic pursuits, and then moved into coaching and supervision for wāhine who are wanting to figure out what the next step is in their lives and just feel empowered to make those steps. My work is underpinned by the motto “Creating to heal and healing to create,” which suggests that the power of creating allows you to both heal and give back to others so that they can do the same. As a hauora practitioner, I use coaching techniques that encourage wāhine of all ages, stages and sizes to move their bodies, to connect with their bodies and find empowerment in their own healing journeys.

“When I first moved here it was like WTF? I’ve gone from big-city living where I could just drive up the road and have a binge whenever, and now I have to get to the shop before seven!” Jasmine says. “Another big adjustment was going from literally a square box to a whole house, back yard and front yard, garages and office space – like, the abundance here is unreal.”

“I spent a lot of time in my early twenties
exploring Christianity and faith,” Jasmine says. “I feel like in a
lot of ways it helped me tap into a sense of higher power and
higher purpose. But now I am at this point in my life where I am
critically reflecting on what that means in the sense of what it
is within myself that I believe in.”
“I spent a lot of time in my early twenties exploring Christianity and faith,” Jasmine says. “I feel like in a lot of ways it helped me tap into a sense of higher power and higher purpose. But now I am at this point in my life where I am critically reflecting on what that means in the sense of what it is within myself that I believe in.”

I wholeheartedly believe that moving stored trauma in our bodies is what helps with weight loss. I run a kaupapa called Kanikani Dance Fit – again, another very wairua-led thing! It started with my own journey trying to lose weight, but when my tuakana who was running it decided to move to Australia, she asked me to take over. I was so nervous. I’m not a qualified instructor by any stretch of the word, and I looked at my size and lack of qualifications, but she just said, “It doesn’t matter! You just have to be you.” So I just embraced it, and it has grown exponentially. Between Hāwera and Pātea, there can be up to twenty-five people attending.

I also work for the not-for-profit community organisation Why Ora, working specifically with Taranaki Māori. Currently we work in secondary schools and with taiohi Māori aged 15–24 out of work and education, to find pathways for them and their whānau so that they can flourish. In that space, I am a kaiārahi and I work alongside my hubby – whose desk is behind me. It’s really cool to get to a place with your significant otherwhere you can work together but also have very different pursuits, too.

The thing about Pātea is that once you’re in, you’re in. People know you and people look after you here. There’s a sense of community, and that care is intergenerational, which is beautiful to see. I think being here just really brings a sense of peace and calm to my state, and the state of my family, and the state of our lives. When I think about our ancestor, Turi, his story is all about voyaging, finding this place and laying his burdens on this whenua. I feel like there’s something significant about the name for this land that is really peaceful. I’m still on my journey, but it really felt like this wairua calling that just so happens to have all of this intention and greater purpose.

Glossary. Awa, river. Hauora, well-being. Kaiārahi, guide, mentor, counsellor. Kanikani, dance. Kauae, traditional chin tattoo worn by women of Māori decent. Kaupapa, topic, project, programme. Mahi, work. Marae, communal meeting place, sacred to Māori kin groups, made up of traditional buildings for cultural practices, values and philosophies. Taiohi, youth. Tamariki, children. Te ao Māori, the Māori worldview. Tuakana, elder sister (of female), used sometimes to reference close friends who are like family. Tūpuna, ancestors. Wāhine, women. Wairua, spirit. Waka, canoe. Whakapapa, genealogy. Whānau, family.

Related Stories

Ophir

Val Butcher, 81, the postmistress of the country’s oldest continuously running postal service, shares her memories of cold winters and fitting cabbages into postboxes.

Read More

A Cosy Spot

It’s a picturesque, sheltered cove with a wee fishing village that’s popular in the summer for swimming and holidaymaking, featuring views across the water towards Cathedral Rock and, further in

Read More
Black and white photo of a young girl and boy laughing together

Moments, Takurua Winter 2023

These are my two youngest children, who have always had a close and playful relationship. It looks to me like they are laughing about something Anton has in his hand.

Read More
Bella making clay cups

The young primary school kaiako using pottery to raise awareness for mental health and suicide prevention

Bella highlights the importance of te ao and te reo Māori in her job in education, and raises funds and awareness for mental health through her project Have a Cuppa.

Read More

Do you have a story to tell?

We'd love to hear it.