Review: Tiahuia, by Merenia Gray

Tiahuia: A Karanga to My Mother is at once a biography, an ode, and a mihi. Author Merenia Gray provides an intimate insight into her mother Tiahuia Te Puea Hērangi Ramihana Gray’s life, and a  glimpse at what it would have been like to be raised beneath such a korowai. 

The book puts the spotlight on a woman who was brought up as the whāngai child of Princess Te Puea Hērangi, and whose own history is a rāranga of many strands, from the Kīngitanga movement to urban life in the capital, from Rangitāne to Tahu Pōtiki to Ngāti Pōneke, and everywhere in between. Tiahuia Gray wore many hats, from city councillor to teacher, kaikaranga to nurse; but despite despite her many positions and accomplishments, it was her mahi as a māmā that underlined all else in her life, and it is this story that Gray gifts us, firsthand in this book.

‘Ko te mōhio ki ngā mea o mua ko te mōhio ko ia anō. To know the past is to know oneself.'

Like this whakataukī, Gray takes a whakapapa-based approach throughout, seeking out the information, history and ultimately tīpuna that brought her mother into the world. The detail given to Tiahuia’s backstory gives this work fullness and depth. Beginning with the story of Tiahuia’s adoption and childhood spent at the side of Te Puea Hērangi, Gray then takes the reader on a journey across the motu, making note of the many locations and peoples that her mother had connection to, including her biological mother Merenia from Te Waipounamu. Tiahuia’s father, Neil Edward Gray, and her parents’ relationship which ultimately become the pou of a family and their ahi kā, is here too. 

The struggles and triumphs that shaped Tiahuia’s legacy as a kaikaranga, artist, nurse, teacher, and mother are captured within these pages. From the tikanga-rich beginnings of her life, to her dislocation and urbanisation to Wellington, and then her eventual role as mother in a biracial relationship. The depth of research into Tiahuia’s world  has created a compelling read that is both a whakapapa of their tīpuna for the Gray family, and a whakapapa of our society, for our whole community.

'You were our punga, our anchor, and Dad our mast.'

Another strand within the rāranga of this book is a strong whakapapa of the creative arts, and how they feature in the Gray family’s lives. There’s a background of dance, choreography and arts sector leadership, and it’s evident in the page layout of this work that a flair for storytelling, pūrākau, poetry and toi Māori was inherited by the Gray children. In three acts, the book is structured by the sections of a karanga: Whakatuwhera (‘opening’), Puku (‘belly’) and Whakamutunga (‘closing’). Each act is dotted  with excerpts from Tiahuia’s own karanga manual, poems by Merenia Gray, extracts from letters between family members, and images both of tūpuna, and by mokopuna. From the esteemed stage of Ngāti Pōneke’s Kapa Haka to tales of Greek mythology, from letters penned by Witi Ihimaera to Gray’s dance films, and from Tiahuia’s famous frybread to her carving and weaving, we’re handed insight into the family’s crucial contribution to the arts in Aotearoa, and the karanga their stories call to us now.

'Nō ngā wāhine auaha o te ao Māori, o te ao Pākehā i hono mahara mōu. The creative women of the Māori world and the European world connected with you.'

There’s a pattern seen amongst many Māori families in this critical era of race relations in Aotearoa: of the loss of te reo, of movement away from tūrangawaewae, and of disconnection from their culture. This book allows us the rare insight into the other side of that experience, as Tiahuia’s commitment to te ao Māori never wavered despite the environments she found herself in. She held onto her language and tikanga and passed it onto her children, and through this lens the reader is given insight into the broader historical and cultural context in which Tiahuia lived and worked. 

'But most importantly, despite how busy our lives were, you brought us up Māori.' The tales within Tiahuia: A Karanga to My Mother are a testament to the resilience and complexity of the human spirit. Written with artistic expression and immense aroha, they grant us an engaging look inside the history, whakapapa and lives of a significant whānau, but also into many aspects of Aotearoa’s society as a whole. Steeped in mātauranga Māori and overflowing with creativity, Merenia Gray presents this pukapuka as a gift to her māmā, but in the end, it serves as a taonga for us all. Reviewed by Isla Huia