Speakers: Wikuki Kingi & Tania Wolfgramm | Air Date: January 18, 2020 | Run Time: 44mins | The Native Seed Pod: Season 2
Kai Ora: Māori stories of life-giving foods across Moana
Traditional umu (earth-oven) cooking, Tonga, 2019
Māori knowledge-holders Wikuki Kingi (Māori) and Tania Wolfgramm (Māori/Tongan) take us into the deep waters of Pacific Islander cosmologies, technologies, and foodways.
On a sunny fall afternoon in the shadow of Mount Tamalpias, Seed Pod host Melissa Nelson and producer Sara Moncada sat down with Wikuki and Tania for a cup of tea to talk stories of land and foods across the Pacific. From the masterful Indigenous sciences of land and ocean, food and water (known to Māori peoples as kai wai), to the many foods of Aotearoa we explore the deep knowledge and nourishing relationships held across moana nui.
“Across the pacific we have the same word for our food, which is KAI. ‘KA’ is our word for energy, and ‘I’ infers our divinity. So we are actually talking about food as being divine energy. Kai means everything to us, without Kai we don’t exist. ”
Wikuki with a Māori Pukaea
About Wikuki Kingi
As a Tohunga Whakairo/Master Carver, with over 40 years’ experience, Wikuki has created many heritage taonga (treasures), including the intricately carved masterpiece Pou Kapūa, the tallest Māori/Pacific carving in the world. Wikuki is a founding trustee of Pou Kapua Creations Trust and the HAKAMANA Virtual Reality Collective; convenor and founding member of Planet Māori and the Te Ha Global Alliance. Wikuki has many relationships throughout New Zealand and the Pacific and continues to learn and build on his passion for Mana Whenua and Indigenous community development, cultural resilience and robust futures, believing stronger identities make stronger people and families.
About Tania Wolfgramm
A creative producer, Native technologist, voyager, and storyteller, Tania hails from the Māori tribes of Aotearoa New Zealand and the beautiful island of Vava’u, of the Kingdom of Tonga. Following ancestral footsteps, she creates cultural taonga (treasures) in multiple media from stone and bronze to augmented and virtual reality. Tania is the founder of HAKAMANA Integrated System of Transformative Design, Development and Evaluation, which has been applied in technology, higher education, and healthcare. With her Global Reach Initiative and Development (GRID) Pacific Team, she captures incredible high-resolution imagery of Pacific peoples, places, cultures, and languages that (with their permission) is shared with the world.
Additional Resources
CREDITS
Host/Writer/Director: Melissa K. Nelson
Producer: Sara Moncada
Co-producer and photographer: Mateo Hinojosa
Audio Editor and Engineer: Colin Farish
Production Assistant: Teo Montoya
Photography: Mateo Hinojosa, Melissa Nelson
Songs (in order of appearance):
Station ID break music credit: excerpt from composition for Ocean Trilogy Dance Production (Spector Dance) by Colin Farish. Piano by Colin Farish and Jasnam Daya Singh.
Te Aroha sung by Waikuki Kingi and Tania Wolfgramm