Gratitudes:
I thank the rocks and stones for giving us somewhere to live.
For sharing their stories, wisdom and intelligence with us.
May these words set the conditions
for actions of recognition, repair and reciprocity.
May our actions honour our relatedness
and the vibrant imagination that nourishes us.
Deep in the basement of the University of Bristol are four cardboard boxes containing rock and dust samples from the North Island of Aotearoa. Before these samples were brought to the UK, geologists Ery Hughes and Geoff Kilgour asked for permission from the local iwi (tribe). The iwi agreed on the condition that after the research was carried out the rocks would be returned.
The agreement was verbal and it was made with an understanding that it would be honoured. More than a decade has passed since they were brought to the UK and we are now in the process of exploring how and when to return them. This is complex, nuanced task, an opportunity to ask questions, negotiate, speak with other people involved in processes of repatriation and rematriation and ask about reparation. The interdisciplinary team involved in this process is learning what best practice might be, and how how it can be applied both now and in the future in relation to rock and mineral collection, curation and care.
At this stage, I wanted to make a little note about language. As a poet, it’s impossible for me to be involved in this project without thinking about how things are named and which language they are named in. Aotearoa, the Māori name for the land, means Land of the Long White Cloud, which is very different to saying or reading New Zealand. This may not be wholly correct as a translation however because it is often important to know the stories and myths that give rise to a name in order to fully understand it.
One iwi uses the word whenua for land. It is also the word used to name the placenta. In this way, the word recognises that both the land and placenta are living energies that sustain life[1]. As I make tiny explorations into the Māori language, I discover that again and again words for the human body are intimately connected with words for different aspects of the land. They are knitted together, knotted together, entangled, entwined.
This is way beyond any notion of being connected. It is a fundamentally different way of experiencing and articulating being alive from the one that I have grown up with in the UK. He tūrangawaewae, a place to stand, is used by the ancestors to define both the land we live on and the body we live in[2]. I am now beginning to wonder if returning rocks to the land from which they came means so much more than this phrase suggests. A rock is not just a rock. It is a part of the land that is lived on and also part of the bodies that are lived in by the custodians of that land.
Returning rocks is poetic work. Curatorial work. Earth-centred work. Slow, empathetic, , nuanced: a dream of how to establish good, creative practice for the future. If we begin to understand more about how Indigenous people see, care for and are inextricably bound up with the land, we may also have to radically rethink how we talk about, collect and look after rocks.
By Alyson Hallett
[1] MORRIS, H. W. Te taiao, te tinana e rua, e rua: the environment and the human body. Cadernos de Linguística (S.1.) v.1, n.3, p 01-10, 2020 https://cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/cadernos/article/view/227. Accessed: 30 May, 2024
[2] ibid