Finding Anchor: A collaborative creative response to navigating cultural sensitivities within professional and educational practice in Aotearoa New Zealand

Heleina Waimoana Dalton
with Bettina Evans, Dr Deborah Green, Wendy Lawson, Amanda Levey, Kathrin Marks and Hilary Tapper

Video filming and production: Hilary Tapper
Music: Waiora – A Māori Music Journey
Ka rau aku mahara / Taonga puoro – koauau and pūrerehua by Horomona Horo, guitar accompaniment by Rodger Cunningham.

Creative arts therapist statement

Holding cultural sensitivities within a professional and educational practice can be complex. I liken it to navigating a journey that I believed I had the vision, drive, whakapapa, skillset and support to embark on. After all, I was invited to captain this part of the expedition. But from the outset I was confronted with mountainous seas and only a few coordinates to map our path. My fellow voyagers had varied levels of experience and were willing to accompany me, and even trust me to lead the way. And yet I was encountering not only mighty waves, but undercurrents and whirlpools and invisible yet tangible gale storms from different directions, some from within me. I realised I wasn’t fully equipped. I realised I had to find anchor.

For the final year of my undergraduate studies, I based my work on punga. I was privileged to cast a mould from an ancient punga, and my rangahau led me to discover that Māori used a variety of punga in a variety of ways. I had gifted all my punga to various places of significance to me. Except one.

I retrieved the final cast punga from a dusty box of resources in my garage. Customarily, the type of anchor I had cast could be used as a punga whakawhenua or a punga kōrewa that one would drop to stabilise the waka in rough seas or so the waka could drift while harvesting/fishing (Best, 1925). I cleaned it up, and early one morning I began to bind it with threads. The act of binding is an ancient practice and is customarily accompanied with karakia until it is completed, then the bound item is named. During my process I knew I couldn’t complete the binding on my own. There was an aching sense that if I was going to take my faculty crew with me on this journey, they needed to be part of that binding process. I realised we needed to find ways to anchor, together.

The video Finding Anchor features seven faculty members of the School of Creative Arts Therapy (SoCAT), Whitecliffe, Aotearoa New Zealand. Respecting our different whakapapa, kaitiakitanga and inviting manaakitanga (being hospitable to all that arrives), we gathered and via the puna waihanga, our collective binding ensued, and continues. Our punga remains unnamed.

The collective creative response heralded the beginning of a collaborative, arts-based research and autoethnographic inquiry, or coll-abr+a, (Green et al., 2022). The aim of the inquiry is to actualise authentic, culturally sensitive practice within our school and to track coordinates whereby others may choose to follow. Kua tīmata – It has begun…