By Nova Te Hapua

Mauri ora e hoa mā!

My names Nova, I’m a Kaupapa Māori researcher in all things īkura,menstruation. Okay, before you freak out and turn the page thinking I’m one of those witchy woo woo paint with your period blood girls, which kei a koe if that’s you sis, hear me out first!

I, like many other wāhine, have spent a lot of my life whakamā to talk about anything period related thinking eww thats paru, right? And as an endo girlie, that’s a lot of my headspace taken up by negativity. It wasn’t until I came across the likes of Ngahuia Murphy that I started to unpack what those feelings were really about.

Let’s get into a quick fire history lesson:

Back in the rā, Māori were living peacefully off the land following the ways of our tūpuna and our atua. We upheld ancient traditions that were often initiated at puberty, menstruation indicating the first coming of womanhood. At this time, young wāhine would be presented with a new name that signified this transition. Taonga would be presented to her alongside the revealing of her moko kauae. The first bleed was a koha back to the land, a recognition of the gift of fertility and life to ngā Whaea ō te whenua, Papatūānuku and Hineahuone. This ceremony would be followed by a hākari with the whole community, it wasn’t something to keep hush hush but rather to celebrate!

We did however have some precautions to keep our bodies and souls safe. Some tikanga your whānau might still follow could be to not walk on to the urupā while on your awa whero or to avoid being kaikaranga on the marae. These were less so restrictions but safeguards to fertility. Think of all the wairua that float around these spaces and what you could be opening yourself up to while you’re already in such a spiritually vulnerable state. These tikanga were put in place to protect the whare tangata from unwelcome guests. It wasn’t until the arrival of the settlers that these ideas became misconstrued.

A notable contributor to colonised ideologies in Aotearoa was Elsdon Best, an ethnographer
primarily based in the Tūhoe region in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. In the most simplest of
explanations, etic ethnography is the practice of documenting culture as an outsider to the
ethnicity that you are researching. His works are best described as observations of Māori to both inform settlers on the ways of Māori people, and for historic archives. It is a controversial topic that has often lead to unethical observations and practices, as you can imagine. He would watch as wāhine on their mate marama would stand back at the gate to the urupā, or walk silently on to the ātea, even seeing them hibernating in separate huts being cared and cooked for while they relaxed (which for real can we bring this back!?), and came to his own Pākeha conclusions that ‘this is yuck and they are dirty.’ He quite literally documented that the word ‘mate’ in translation of menses was a disease caused by demonic beings, even going so far as to speculate that blood clots were the tangible proof of evil spirits making their way out of the body and into the physical realm. He really said “Damn, these bloody Maari see these women as demons and they need to be kept away from society”. So he wrote all this down, published it, and created the only written documentation of “Māori” whakaaro on menstruation of the time.

He almost made this trash into truth if it wasn’t for our efforts to RE-search, RE-discover, and RE-indiginise. So maybe use your next awa atua to perform a small act of decolonisation and instead of giving in to these ideas of paru’ness, see the beauty of a healthy body! And hey, at least you’re not preggers! Buy those AWWA, take the day off, eat that whole block of chocolate.
You deserve it.

Have you guys heard the story of Māui’s feat for immortality? So Māui, you know, the cheeky trickster who’s always out here finessing the gods, slowing down the sun, fishing up islands like it’s nothing? Well, one day he decides, “You know what it would mean, to live forever.” But let’s just say his idea of achieving immortality was…creative.

The plan? He wanted to crawl up inside the goddess of death, Hinenuitepō, through her tara and then out of her mouth. The thought was that if he pulled that off, ya know up the baby maker and out the other side, that he would be reversing the whole birthing process. I don’t know, he probably thought making some time, space, continuum thing meant he would live forever. Men, am I right? So he gathers up the bros, ngā tīwaiwaka and is like, “Oi, got backs? Kaua e kata!”. Hinenuitepō is just getting her beauty sleep meanwhile Māui is out here doing some Ben 10 type shii, slapping his watch and transforming into his mokomoko alter ego. Māui gets himself all cozy up in there, and the birds are trying their hardest to keep it together. Māui’s worming his way up there and those lil manu just lose it, like that need an inhaler type of laugh, waking Hinenuitepō up from her slumber. She is not cool with this whole nonconsensual reverse birth theory, no shit, and in her fury crushes him with her obsidian vagina teeth. I imagine it like a kegel… maybe that’s why we can do that? Better get to exercising those pelvic floor muscles ladies x (Side note: are yous on kegel tok?? Like the in 2,3, hold 2,3… or just me?)

So basically, Māui went out on a dumbass prank on death herself. But the story doesn’t quite end there. If we take it back a little to the moment before the big crunch, Hinenuitepō has one last thing to say to Māui. She gives in to his demands and tells him “You will live on forever, as the toto of women’s ikura” which is why you may also hear the term mate Māui. How does he get to pull a stunt like that and she still gives him what he wants? Like buying a kid a lollipop just so that they will stop crying. But essentially, the pāheke that runs out of her is the first menstruation of women-kind. He is remembered by all menstruators during our awa tapu, giving him a sense of immortality through fertility and the continuation of life. Not quite what he meant auē. I think it’s a bit shameful that this inherently ira wāhine attribute is now centered around a man, and a shit one at that, but that’s research kaupapa for another day. For now, I’m just glad to be uncovering some hidden truths and cheering on our mana wāhine!

Long story short, be careful what you wish for because you might just get snapped up by some vagina teeth if you’re not careful. Be critical of what you read e hoa mā, is there more to these stories that maybe we have deemed as too taboo?