‘I felt a yearning, a pull to return to my real home,” says Pio Terei early in the first episode of Kāinga Whenua. That real home is in Mitimiti, a tiny settlement north of Hokianga in Northland, where he was born, where his mother still lives – and where Teina, his teenage son, was laid to rest in 2016.
The loss of his son to leukaemia was the catalyst for Terei to do something he says is in the minds of “more and more” urban Māori: to “strengthen their ties back to their heritage, their land and their original homes”. When he was offered the chance to place a tiny house facing the ocean on a relative’s land, he took it.
What emerges is an emotional journey but also a practical one. There’s a house to be found, it has to be carried to the site and it has to be set on the foundations.
There’s also a trust in his son’s name that owns the house but not the land, “and a nice little piece of paper that keeps everybody safe. I’ve just seen people fall over and get into raruraru [conflict]without that,” he explains in the show.
That feeling of emotional practicality flows from Terei’s personal story into the rest of the eight-part series.
In the second episode, he visits Rāpaki in the Lyttelton Harbour basin, where former MP and Ngāi Tahu board member Nuk Korako and his whānau have built a village – a modern papakāinga consisting of five interconnected houses and common spaces.
“Isn’t that stuff beautiful?” says Terei. “The guy says, bro, you sit in this house, you can see your maunga, you can see your marae and you can see your moana. How good is that for your mental health?”
Again, there were practicalities. Architect Perry Royal found a way through the difficulty of getting banks to finance developments on land with multiple owners – the buildings must be able to be removed and repossessed, at least in theory. He created a modular design that met the bank’s needs but also allowed for homes to be built cheaply and quickly and altered.
The current strength of Māori architecture is also evident in a later episode featuring Te Mahurehure marae in Auckland’s Pt Chevalier, which encompasses a stunning conference centre and homes for the old people. When several families from Waimā, in Hokianga, bought the land as a place to stand in the city in the 1960s, there was a football field and a shed. Terei remembers the dances they put on to raise the money.
“They used to put a hāngī down inside the shed!” he says. “They’re bloody amazing, those guys. And those spaces are not just for Māori. They’re a centre of a community.”
He sees a similar vitality in places like Mitimiti, where employment is following the housing. “We did another one up in Kaikohe and they reckon you get 60-year-olds there who can hardly bloody walk, and in 12 months, they look five years younger. Because they’re watching mokopuna play. Those are things I think the human spirit needs.
“I live out in the Henderson Valley [in West Auckland] and it’s beautiful. But I’ve just seen this incredible rise of intensive housing. I’m not a town planner or architect, but why can’t you have intensive housing with more of a papakāinga model?
“If we get another season, we need to focus on a road map of getting there. Quite often, it’s the politics of whānau, and somebody’s got to spearhead from the front and you’ve got to have faith in that person. But it works, man. It works.”
Kāinga Whenua screens on Whakaata Māori from Tuesday, March 12, 7.30pm.
