Diverse Voices: Oriwa Hakaraia

Visual: Filmmaker Oriwa Hakaraia sits in a dark room with studio lights on her. She wears a black shirt and a large Pounamu (greenstone) necklace. Throughout the interview, we switch from one camera angle to another, where the camera is zoomed to focus on her chest upward, with her head being the focal point. The other is zoomed out, showing a table with interesting objects, such as a pink spiky ball, teapots, oranges, and candles. A hand places a card on a silver tray with her name on it.

Audio: Kia ora. Ko wai tēnei e tū ake nei? He uri tēnei nō Ngāti Raukawa nō Ngāti Kapu ano hoki. Ko Oriwa Kurupae Rongo Hakaraia tōkua ingoa.

So, Kia ora everybody. My name Oriwa Hakaraia. I was raised in Ōtaki, which is sort of my ancestral home. Right along the coast, beautiful, paradise on earth. Ōtaki is a small community on the coast. It’s got a population, I think we’re touching, like, 5,000 people now, nearly?

And it’s a very, sort of, Māori town. There’s a big sort of iwi population in there, and that’s Ngāti Raukawa.

Ōtaki, which was also sort of the founding place for the revitalisation of Te Reo Māori movement, which started back in the 1970s. Earlier, even.

My kura, Te Kura-ā-Iwi O Whakatupuranga Rua Mano, which was the school that I was brought up from Year 0 to Year 13, was a vision, set in place by my ancestors.

I went to school, all my uncles were my teachers, my aunties...grew up with all my cousins... until I sort of started branching outside of Ōtaki, like, I started coming into Wellington.

I found it hard because... I would always introduce myself as ‘Oriwa’, and people wouldn’t know how to pronounce that, right?

So ‘Oriwa’ translates to ‘Olive’. So then I would just find myself when I came to like big cities, Wellington, Auckland, I would just introduce myself as ‘Olive’.

I was scared of people knowing that I went to a full immersion school sometimes, just because of the reaction that would get out of them.

But looking back on it and the more I’ve sort of, reflected on those moments, I’m like: “No, like that wasn’t... I would never do that again.”

I guess the upbringing that I have had is the reason that I wanna make art in the first place.

We have a quite, as Māori, oral history, right? It’s within our, like our mōteatea, which is sung poetry, essentially. Um, karakia, you know, prayer, all that sort of stuff.

That’s how our history’s been preserved, is through our oral tradition.

Film is a part of that, like, film can contribute to the revitalisation of our traditions, our tikanga, and our language as well. Which is really important for me because I want to keep being a part of that.

It’s like a big tree. Yeah. I wanna inspire my peers, that there is an industry here.

This is a pathway *for* you.

You have it.

That tradition is a part of you, essentially.

It’s just been suppressed.

Visual: (scenes from Oriwa’s movie ‘Bub’)

• A young boy sticks his head out of a window.
• The young boy sits alone at a dining room table.
• The young boy sits alone, looking at family pictures on the wall.
• The young boy talks on a red telephone.

Audio: Yeah, ‘Bub’ was the first short film that I made. It follows the story of a small Māori boy. He lives with his Nan and he comes home and she’s not there.

The story of the small Māori boy is one that I, and Te Mahara who the co-director is, are very familiar with.

And it’s a film from Ōtaki. So therefore my community can watch it and be familiar with it.

Māoriland is now recognised as part of the revitalisation of Te Reo Māori in Ōtaki. It was founded in 2013 by my mum, Libby Hakaraia, and Tainui Stephens, who is my stepdad.

The reason that it sort of, they had the idea to start Māoriland is because they were travelling internationally to all these, you know, Indigenous film festivals. And they thought: “Why can’t Ōtaki have the same thing?”

It’s now become the largest indigenous film festival in the southern hemisphere.

Our community... They show up because they see themselves on screen. They soak that up and they also soak up... It’s traumatising.

Like there’s deep, deep trauma within Indigenous storytelling. Deep hurt. And there’s just emotion, like crying, crying.

Karakia said afterwards, to heal the audience.

It’s a healing process to make a film that encapsulates the trauma of your ancestors.

Visual:

A clip of card paper shows, written on it the credits. These are written below:

• Producer, Writer and Director: Pachali Brewster.
• Director of photography, editor and colourist: Ben Dickens.
• Featuring:
  • Oriwa Hakaraia
  • Jade Jackson
  • Aditya B. Parige
  • Kathleen Winter
  • Laura Yilmaz
  • Casey Zilbert
  • Raqi Syed and Missy Molloy as the facilitators
  • and Glen McLaughlin as the butler.
• Special thanks to:
  • Massey’s School of Music and Creative Media Production
  • College of Creative Arts Toi Rauwhārangi.
• Production manager assistant, 1st assistant director, and Unit: Anna Valentine.
• 2nd camera operator: Elise Lanigan.
• 3rd camera operator: Nathan Roys.
• Sound Recordist: Jessy McNamara.
• Sound Recordist Assist and Sound Mixer: Matt Asunder.
• Art Department: Glen McLaughlin.
• Hair and Makeup artist: Serena Parsons.
• Stills photography: Celeste Fontein.
• Runner: Ivy Robinson.