Earlier this year I took part in an eight week online course called Gathering at the Gate, created and facilitated by my friend Elli Yates along with her three friends and co-conspirators - Wren (or Tamsin) Blundell, Erin Thomas and Dani Pickering. The aim of the course is to offer a kind and encouraging space for Pākehā or white assimilated folk to come together and explore the difficult questions around our legacy of colonisation and how we show up as responsible treaty partners without being paralysed by shame?

Doing Gathering at the Gate has been a foundational part of my exploration of home and belonging. Through the course we were encouraged to delve into our own family histories and discover the stories of our settler ancestors who first arrived in Aotearoa - Where did they come from? Why did they come? Where did they settle? How did they establish themselves here? We learnt about the racist policies, laws and wars through which settlers were given land and Māori were displaced and disempowered. We were challenged to identify the ways in which we have benefited personally from those historical injustices through inheriting wealth and property and taking the opportunities we’ve had due to being white.

For me, Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a generous invitation to make this land my home. But acknowledging the stories of how I came to be here uncovers a deep well of difficult feelings - shame, anger, sadness and confusion.

Elli, Wren and the other facilitators held a gentle space for us to feel these feelings and make sense of them together.

In this interview I talk to Elli and Wren about how their personal journeys have led them into this work. We explore the massive issue of shame - how it can paralyse us, but how it can also wake us up and help us move into a more compassionate and responsive state. We talk about the richness of relationships and the sense of belonging that can be found amidst the compost of past hurts.

Show notes

If you’d like to find out more about Gathering at the Gate or sign up to one of their courses just go to

https://www.gathering-at-the-gate.org/

A big thanks to Elli, Wren, Dani and Erin for their brave work in this space.

The quote Wren refers to in the interview about shame being the thin lid on top of a well of grief comes from Maegan Chandler, one of the co-creators of “Re-calling our Ancestors” - another Turtle-Island based online program akin to White Awake and Gathering at the Gate.

The other quote Wren refers to is from an amazing documentary about reckoning with slave-holding ancestry called "Traces of the Trade" directed by Katrina Browne. Here it is in full:

“In the Dagara Tribe of West Africa it is believed that the dead do not pass over into peace until the living have cried all the tears that these ancestors did not cry in their lifetimes - for that which they suffered and for the suffering they caused others. May we, the living, find tears that will bring peace to both us and the ancestors.”

Malidoma Patrice Somé

The song I played half way through the show was recorded around the campfire at the Music Nature and Storytelling camp Wren attended in Northern New Wales (Hawk's Nest) with master tracker Jon Young. The singer was Junae Rodgers and the song came to her during her sit spot practice that morning.

The song we played at the end of the show is another song from the same camp. It came to teenager Reminy Holmes during her sit spot practice.

Charlotte Shade is a friend of mine and I’ve watched with interest and admiration as her group of housemate/friends have bought a house, had babies and brought them up together in a loving non-nuclear family group.

In this conversation Charlotte and I explore where the idea of buying a house with friends came from, how her group made it happen and what they’ve learnt in the process. Being a lawyer, Charlotte has a unique perspective and set of skills. She created this legal agreement, which enables the group to navigate potentially difficult situations like someone wanting to leave. They have made this agreement open-source so that other groups can use or modify as needed.

I was particularly struck by one thing that Charlotte said:

“I’ve realised that you can just do things differently if you want. You just have to do it. It's not necessarily going to be plain sailing, but when is life ever plain sailing? It's hard. There's going to be difficult things. So why not do something different?”

It struck me that these different pathways are open to us if we have the curiosity to look for them and the patience and confidence to navigate the challenges. It was clear from talking to Charlotte that the gains of energy, time and connection far outweigh the challenges of owning a house with friends. She call her and her partner “time millionaires” and she feels profoundly grateful for her situation.

If you’d like to learn more about the benefits and challenges of co-buying and how to go about it, Charlotte’s house-mate Rupert has written some excellent articles:

This article describes the process they went through to find their house.

This article provides details on the legal and financial side of the process.

This article describes the process of coming up with shared values.

And this article is about having a baby while buying and co-owning a house.

This week the tables have turned. Hannah gets to fulfil her dream of being a podcast host and I have a go at answering difficult questions about my childhood, the economics of my life, why I’ve chosen to focus on home and kāinga, what I hope to achieve in this project and why I feel like a piglet suckling an enormous industrial mother pig.

It was a treat to explore the ideas and epiphanies this project is bringing me. I feel shocked that it has taken me 41 years to begin to understand the ways our economic system controls our lives. Despite my deep desire to connect with community and the whenua, I find myself relying on big corporations for my day-to-day sustenance - supermarkets, banks, oil companies etc. Ironically it feels simpler and less risky to keep suckling at these impersonal industrial entities than it does to do business with friends and family. It seems to me that we’ve lost a fundamental ability to work together and to sustain ourselves from the earth. That feels scary! But I do have hope that by understanding more and connecting more we can start to detach ourselves from the teats of the industrial mother pig and reshape the way energy and resources flow.