The Māori in Me: Myjanne Jensen reflects on journey connecting with her culture

Journalist Myjanne Jensen, the host of podcast The Māori in Me. Photo / Michael Cummingham.

Over the past month, the NZ Herald has released its new podcast series, The Māori in Me. Hosted by Myjanne Jensen, it focuses on how people can connect with their Māori identity when they have been disconnected, either by living overseas or having limited access to or knowledge of their roots. With all the episodes now live, Myjanne has reflected on working on the series and how it has helped shape her own identity.

Feeling connected to your Māoritanga (Māori culture) is a personal journey that anyone who has whakapapa Māori will experience in their own way.

For many, it comes with ease, and for others- for varying reasons (largely colonisation) it can feel foreign, uncomfortable, and not necessarily something they resonate with.

I know people at both ends of the spectrum and others who sit somewhere in between.

For myself, growing up in Australia and navigating the fact that I wasn’t just Māori but also Danish, I always felt I sat somewhere in the grey.

Even though I loved and was extremely proud of my Māori heritage, I didn’t feel I knew enough or looked the part “enough” to fully claim it.

Not because I didn’t want to, but because I was afraid of being judged by others.

And my fear wasn’t always unfounded. There have been countless times I’ve received the “side eyes” when I’ve said I’m Māori and have felt like I don’t belong, even after I’ve shared who I am and where I come from.

Now I know that just comes down to ignorance on the other person’s behalf, but that doesn’t mean the hurt and shame that has come with those experiences has stung any less.

A big reason why I pitched The Māori in Me podcast series was because I knew I wasn’t alone in those experiences and because I felt these were kōrero that needed to be shared.

Talking about Māori culture and identity has been a kaupapa I’ve longed to share since I was very young, but which felt more urgent to explore after the passing of my Nan in 2018.

After our matriarch died, I had an undeniable feeling that I needed to go home to my roots and understand the Māori side of my whakapapa.

The only way I know how to describe that feeling was a deep, gnawing ache in the pit of my stomach that I couldn’t ignore.

I still remember sitting at my kitchen table in Australia, crying because I felt so lost and not understanding how I could bridge the gap between where I was and where I needed to be.

I even remember calling out to my tūpuna to help guide me because I felt so disconnected and had no idea where to start.

I know that all probably sounds a bit “woo-woo”, but to anyone who is indigenous, I think that ache or call to come home is something many of us feel at some point and extends beyond anything we can understand in the physical realm.

Once I finally had the opportunity to come home in 2021, that kickstarted a whole other journey of self-discovery and pain, joy and grief as I started to process the impact of colonisation and the disconnect our whānau has experienced as a result.

Through The Māori in Me podcast, I understood even more intimately how the feeling of “not-enoughness” was not unique to me but was a common theme throughout the kōrero I had with all of my guests.

I realised that everything I was going through was normal and that I didn’t need to beat myself up for not knowing more because I was simply a by-product of a system that had made it that way.

Like Professor Margaret Mutu said in her interview, “every whānau has their own story to tell, but the overall effect of colonisation is the same”.

I also learned about “Māori cultural embeddedness”, a term created by Māori identity researcher Ririwai Fox to describe how embedded someone is in their Māori culture.

Ririwai talked about how embeddedness was not about how much reo a person could speak or what they knew about tikanga, but was about how they related to and connected with other people and the world around them.

He said this type of kōrero was affirming because it showed the need to think about how we can connect as Māori with our Māoritanga rather than gatekeeping people from it.

I felt this was a beautiful way of understanding Māori culture, especially for those of us who may not yet be as deeply embedded in our culture as we might like to be.

All of these conversations have been very healing for me as I learn to better understand and accept myself as I continue on my journey of becoming more embedded in my Māori culture.

As one of my guests, Erica McCreedy, wisely said about her own podcast, Healing Our Identity, it’s in the sharing of these conversations that we help to collectively heal our people, not just us as individuals.

She also hit the nail on the head when she said we can’t keep looking outside ourselves to validate our Māoritanga because it’s something that’s always been inside us.

The Māori in Me is a NZ Herald podcast, hosted and produced by Myjanne Jensen.

Listen to The Māori in Me on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.