Te Raukura O’Connell Rapira (Te Ātiawa, Ngāruahine, Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa, Ngāti Whakaue) has been described by their peers as one of the most strategic minds of their generation. For the past 14 years, they’ve been behind some of the biggest community-led campaigns in Aotearoa. They’re currently the CEO of 350.org in so-called Australia, a global community organisation committed to a world free of fossil fuels. Unlike other people Jen has spoken to on this podcast, Te Raukura isn’t a songwriter. They became friends through a waiata group in Naarm (Melbourne) fondly known as Takatāpui Tuesdays. In this episode, Te Raukura speaks to the complexities of being Māori and working on Aboriginal land – and how singing their cultural songs with other queer and trans Māori has brought them joy and connection.

Find out more about Te Raukura O’Connell Rapira:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Te_Raukura_O%27Connell_Rapira

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Narration: Jen: This episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to their elders past and present with gratitude for thousands of generations of rich culture, storytelling, and song.

[00:00:18] Narration: Jen: Everybody’s trying to find their way home.

[00:00:30] Jen: You can actually hear her snoring.

[00:00:32] Te Raukura: Oh, should I kick her out?

[00:00:35] Narration: Jen: Te Raukura O’Connell Rapira is a Maori and Irish campaigner, organizer and facilitator.

[00:00:41] Te Raukura: I reckon…

[00:00:41] Jen: Maybe if you move more this way?

[00:00:43] Te Raukura: Poor thing

[00:00:43] Jen: I don’t want kick her out, but I think that, that solve it.

[00:00:48] Narration: Jen: Today we’re at their home in Naarm Melbourne, on  Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Country.

[00:00:52] Te Raukura: Is that good?

[00:00:53] Jen: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:00:55] Te Raukura: Okay.

[00:00:55] Jen: That’s awesome. Um.

[00:00:56] Te Raukura: Poor thing.

[00:00:57] Jen: Sorry, Dante. Yeah.

[00:01:00] Narration: Jen:  Te Raukura isn’t a songwriter, like the other people I’ve spoken to on this podcast. We’ve become friends through a waiata group, fondly known as Takatāpui Tuesdays.

[00:01:15] Narration: Jen: The word  Takatāpui is an ancient one that means an intimate friend of the same gender. It was brought back into common use by  Takatāpui writer, academic, and activist Professor Ngahuia Te Awekotuku. During the 80s, Maori and Queer and Trans communities reclaimed it as an umbrella term for organizing actions and standing together. Not everyone who’s Maori and Queer identifies as Takatāpui , but most understand that it’s been a lifesaving word.

[00:01:44] Te Raukura: He uri tēnei no Te Ātiawa, Ngāruahine, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa me County Kerry kia Airangi. He Takatāpui Ahau

[00:01:57] Te Raukura: I remember, you know, I’ve tried so many times to learn Te Reo, [00:02:00] on and off since I was 13. I guess ‘cause I grew up in Aotearoa, I am the beneficiary of the fact that you can do it in high school, and that’s only increasing. And gone to do like the free 10 week university courses and, and each time it unlocks a little bit more of me being able to do that.

[00:02:18] Te Raukura: But there’s always been a barrier, because I haven’t felt fully understood in my Queerness. And so having a space where you can be both Queer and Maori at the same time. And we have a word for it, which is  Takatāpui. And has come back to us as a term as well, it just helps you feel so much more understood as all the parts of who you are. And you don’t have to leave a significant part of who you are at the door in order to access your culture. And that’s been extraordinarily meaningful. And yeah, emotional.

[00:02:58] Narration: Jen: Our group formed at the [00:03:00] beginning of 2024. I wanted a space where we could make stronger connections in our  Takatāpui Tanga.

[00:03:07] Anonymous: Cute space for cute people.

[00:03:08] Narration: Jen: It’s too easy to let your culture slip down to second or third on your list. So I sent a message to my Queer Maori mates, inviting them to meet every Tuesday night to learn a new waiata.

[00:03:19] Anonymous: A bit homophobic, the lighting.

[00:03:20] Anonymous: Hello. Kia ora.

[00:03:27] Te Raukura: There’s been several times when we’ve gathered and sung together that I was just thinking ‘This is so beautiful’. Um, yeah. So thank you for bringing us all together. Yeah. And I think, I don’t know who was the first person to, to have said this, but Rawiri Waititi from Te Pati Maori kind of went viral for saying it on, on Instagram, where he talks about, you know, ‘You may not know your your maunga but your maunga knows you. You may not know your awa, but your awa knows you. You may not know your whenua, but your whenua knows you’.

[00:03:52] Te Raukura: And I feel like that’s what I’ve witnessed in this rōpū, is that even though most of the PU have grown up [00:04:00] away from Aotearoa, the Aotearoa-ness, the Aotearoa Tonga, um, is strong and it comes through and it shines through. And that has been a joy and a privilege to witness and walk alongside everyone in that.

[00:04:16] Narration: Jen: Spending time with my  Takatāpui Whanau fills a need that no other space can give me. Over the year, I watched my friends go home to their marae for the first time. Receive Tā Moko, have babies, make a commitment to their Reo Haerenga, and step into Te Ao Māori with an open heart. We started off meeting at my house, but after a couple of months we moved into a hall. And what started as maybe 10 people, has around 40 members now.

[00:04:46] Te Raukura: You know, I’m excited to see who the first, um, romantic relationship is to form out of  Takatāpui Tuesdays. I was like, surely if you bring a bunch of Queers together, so we’ll see. So we’ll see who that [00:05:00] ends up being. Um, uh, but you know, it’s the kind of like lifelong friendships that we’re all forming for now. The Whanau relationships, like you say, you know, it’s the whakawhanaungatanga, um, which is the, the building and the nurturing and the strengthening of long term family or kinship, like relationships and connections to one another.

[00:05:16] Te Raukura: Um, you know, we’ll go to each other’s, you know, weddings and anniversaries and birthdays and just all these significant events in each other’s lives, because we all just decided that we wanted to come and sing together, you know, which is so gorgeous.

[00:05:34] Narration: Jen:  Te Raukura has been described by their peers as one of the most strategic minds of their generation. For the past 14 years, they’ve been behind some of the biggest community-led campaigns in Aotearoa. They’re currently the CEO of three fifty.org. in so-called Australia, a global community organization committed to a world free of fossil fuels. But the decision to leave your lands doesn’t feel like one that many [00:06:00] Indigenous activists would make lightly. So why did they move?

[00:06:05] Te Raukura: I was headhunted for a job. I at that time had been working at Action Station, which is the  Aotearoa sister organization of Get Up on these lands. And I’d been doing digital campaigning and you know, lots of community organizing for almost seven years at that point.

[00:06:21] Te Raukura: And I was approached to move here and do work to train young people in their activism. So camps and grants and programs that just support them to unleash their power to transform the future. And if I’m honest, the salary was like double what I was being paid in  Aotearoa. And I was reaching a point in my life where I was like, wow, my um, parents are all like, my dad and his siblings, are all renting their homes on our stolen lands.

[00:06:50] Te Raukura: And I was like, actually, I need to get serious about how I’m gonna, you know, while I’m campaigning for land back for Indigenous peoples, maybe I can help buy some of Whanau our land back as well. And so I was [00:07:00] like, let’s make some pragmatic money decisions. So I guess I’m here as an economic migrant by choice.

[00:07:06] Te Raukura: But the other thing is that at that time I’d finished facilitating a fellowship for activists, where I saw young Maori and young Aboriginal participants in that fellowship and how much they got from being in relationship with one another. And I was like, oh, this kind of growing feeling inside me that I wanted to tribute to regional Indigenous solidarity was coming up. And then the story about the Djab Wurrung birthing trees, and the horrible acts of Rio Tinto destroying sacred Aboriginal land kind of started crossing my newsfeed. And at that point in time Aotearoa, we had a different government and I was like, you know, there’s very real conversations happening about how we can truly live into the treaty in the very near future.

[00:07:50] Te Raukura: And so I was like, okay, we’ve got a start building this global Indigenous solidarity, ‘cause none of us are free until all of us are free, kind of vibe. So I came over here for all of that. Moved over in 2021, [00:08:00] went into seven months of lockdown, and yeah, have been here ever since on beautiful Wurundjeri Country.

[00:08:08] Narration: Jen: In the census that year, more than 170,000 people in Australia identified as Maori.

[00:08:14] Narration: Jen: That’s 20% of all Maori. For most, the move is financial survival. The ongoing impact of colonization means that many Maori can no longer afford to live on their own stolen lands. But the irony of living on someone else’s is not lost on  Te Raukura.

[00:08:32] Te Raukura: You know, I was a CEO, essentially equivalent, of a really successful not-for-profit. And my salary was the equivalent of the lowest salary at the job that I moved over here for, in terms of like the lowest paid staff members were on that salary, you know? And so like the discrepancy is wild, but I’m also, you know, um, super conscious that the reason that the economy is, um, so much stronger here is because of the mining and the fracking of Aboriginal Land.

[00:08:59] Te Raukura: I mean, that lifts so [00:09:00] many of the wages and salaries. And so I’m also just like hyper aware that the wealth generated on this country or on this continent is stolen wealth. And I feel like more of us that come here for mahi and money need to grapple with that reality, so that we can position ourselves in solidarity with Aboriginal people, as we live on Aboriginal land.

[00:09:28] Te Raukura: Our Elders fought long and hard for our Reo, our language to be where it is today. And I am so, so grateful to them for all the work that they’ve done. And when I moved here and was in lockdown for seven months, and then came out, I was really yearning for connection to other Maori. Because I had taken for granted just how far our language had come.

[00:09:52] Te Raukura: Because when you’re at home, you know, we’ve got Maori television, we’ve got Maori radio stations. You hear people [00:10:00] just say kia ora to you in meetings and everyday life. And I was feeling the absence of that, and I didn’t realize how much I would miss that when I moved here. I, I underestimated just how much - what’s the word - like incidental Te Reo Maori I come across. And so finding the Mau Rākau group, and then the waiata group was really important for me in terms of just the, like I would consider it meeting a basic need that I have. And I think that as Maori living on Aboriginal land, other Indigenous people’s lands, we need to hold in our minds that while we are trying to fulfill and meet our own needs for that connection, there are many of our whanaunga here, our tuakana, who do not have the pathways to access that need being fulfilled.

[00:10:45] Te Raukura: My partner is a Larrakia woman, and we talk often about how me as a Maori person living off my whenua, off my land, can access my culture and my language here. And she as a person living away from her Country, but still on her [00:11:00] continent, can’t access Larrakia language and culture and singing in the same way. And, and so I just think we need to hold both of those things as true.

[00:11:08] Te Raukura: Our ancestors and our elders fought really hard for this. It’s really meaningful and important for us to access our culture. And also there are other people on this continent who cannot access it in the same way. And so just yeah, the grappling with the power and the privilege and the access, and committing ourselves to supporting the revitalization, reawakening, reclamation movements of Aboriginal people.

[00:11:30] Narration: Jen: For me, that’s music. Over the last decade, and as I’ve connected more and more with my culture, my relationship with music has shifted. Or maybe more specifically, I should say, the music industry. But I’ve never stopped believing that culture creates change, and that’s how I show up and engage with people.

[00:11:50] Narration: Jen: Not in big statements, but in all those little conversations I’m able to have. Lyrics are part of that. If I’m in your ear for four minutes, [00:12:00] I wanna say something meaningful. Struggles for liberation have their galvanizing songs in their culture, but these are long-term fights and movements. So what else sustains them?

[00:12:15] Te Raukura: I think for me, I feel like a beneficiary of many of the Maori who live on Kulin Lands do work really hard to be in right relationship with Kulin Peoples. And so I look to, you know, the relationship between the various Kapa Haka groups that we’re both connected to, who have really strong relationships with the Djirri Djirri dance group, and perform together, do cultural exchanges together, share language with one another.

[00:12:40] Te Raukura: And so I feel like I got to move here and see a really active Maori diaspora community who are already working to be in right relationship with, um, Wurundjeri and other Kulin Nations. And, uh, and what that looks like is just turning up for one another, being in relationship, being in community with one another.

[00:12:57] Te Raukura: And for me personally, I am a [00:13:00] political organizer. And so I spend about a day a week volunteering my time. And I’m lucky enough to have enough freelance work that’s paid to do this. And so I acknowledge I’m in a very privileged position. But I spend about a day a week volunteering for land back campaigns for Aboriginal people, because I acknowledge that land and language and ceremony and culture are all really connected.

[00:13:22] Te Raukura: And that for Aboriginal people to be able to, you know, access language and ceremony and culture, they need their land return to them. And so that’s where I put my time and energy, because that’s my particular skill set. And so I guess the thing that I would encourage our whanau who live on these lands to think about is - what is your skill and how can you offer that to be of service to the people of the lands, and the land, that you are on?

[00:13:47] Te Raukura: And then how can you work with other people who have different skills and different offerings as you do that? Yeah. I think some of the social movements that I’m most inspired by came together [00:14:00] through mutual aid. And mutual aid, in the way that I understand it, is about communities who share an experience of oppression, um, or exploitation, coming together to meet each other’s needs.

[00:14:12] Te Raukura: And as Takatāpui, we are coming together to meet each other’s needs for a safe place to be  Takatāpui. A place where we don’t need to explain ourselves in that way. Where we can just be joyful and boisterous and laugh, but also like share our vulnerabilities and, and practice our Reo together, and sing songs, and co-regulate, and all of those sorts of things.

[00:14:33] Te Raukura: And what I’ve really enjoyed about being part of this community is that, from that mutual aid of meeting each other’s needs, political organizing has also grown. And so, you know, we sang together at one of the rallies, um, in solidarity with the people of Palestine.

[00:14:54] Te Raukura: Uh, bringing our culture to the stage as a form of resistance. Acknowledging that [00:15:00] love and resistance go hand in hand.

[00:15:02] Te Raukura: There’s a Palestinian artist and writer called Areej Kaoud, who says that, “Resistance is the deepest form of love”. And I believe that to be absolutely true.

[00:15:11] Te Raukura: It’s an important part of any resistance movement to express our love and our culture. Um, you know, we went to Invasion Day rally together, and so more and more, we are politically organizing with one another. And, and we are doing that all as people who are doing it in our free time as volunteers. And as a person who comes from a, a world of kind of paid activism and campaigning, I know that I spend so much time in meetings and gatherings and in Zooms where people are talking about, ‘How do we get people to show up and do this work?’ And you know, here we are doing this work with one another, because we are meeting around a shared need that we have, which is to be in right relationship with this whenua. But also to be in right relationship with ourselves and our lineages, and our whakapapa.

[00:15:54] Te Raukura: And I think what I’ve really enjoyed is that we’ve created a container, [00:16:00] or a cocoon, of aroha where we can hold each other in the mamae, in the, in the soul wound of not knowing our Reo. Not through any fault of our own, because of course that was ripped away from us through the processes of colonization. But we have this deep - I’ll speak for myself - I have this soul wound, this mamae, this deep hurt about not being able to articulate myself in the way that I know that my ancestors would’ve been able to just three generations ago. And so having a place where we can practice what it feels like to have our Reo on our tongue, in a space with other Maori, where you’re not gonna be judged and where you’re gonna be held, is a gift. Is a taonga.

[00:16:59] Narration: Jen: [00:17:00] Everybody’s Trying To Find Their Way Home is made by me, Jen Cloher,  with Bez Zewdie and Jon Tjhia. Ngā mihi nui to Te Raukura and Dante for making me so welcome at their whare.

[00:17:19] Narration: Jen: This show is made with support from Creative Australia and Three Triple R 102.7FM. You can find more information about this episode and listen to season one at everybodys trying podcast dot com. And if you like this episode, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

[00:17:50] Jen: Any last thoughts e hoa?

[00:17:53] Te Raukura: Um, be gay. Do [00:18:00] crime.