Tainui

I looked up where this mihi came from and according to ancient knowledge, so there's not a surety about it, Scholar Pei Te Hurunui Jones, he said it is one of the oldest surviving karakia.

It's believed to have been composed over 800 years ago, shortly after the arrival of ancestors aboard either the Tainui or the Takatimu waka.

Takatimu and Tainui traditions, one traditional account links it to the final stanza of a longer karakia called Tua Tua, which tells how the Takatimu waka safely navigated a severe storm.

Tainui traditions often link it to its origins, to a fisherman heading out at dawn into cold coastal waters.

So it has a real, whatever the truth is, it doesn't matter.

It came from the ancestral waka, and it is a beautiful description of an early morning, a fisherman in the early morning about to go to sea.

It's just great.

Now, there is, by the way, something I didn't know, and that is there is a musical arrangement, which is a widely popular melody sung today, composed in 2005 by Takerao Hohua of Tainui.

Thinking about the theme of the Biennale this year, to pass from one dream to another, I wondered if you Could speak to the connection of your work with that theme

One of the themes was about economy, and the point that my image was making is that the Battle of Rangiriri, uh, saw the destruction of a Maori, a flourishing Maori economy in the Waikato, where the people of Tainui had established wheat, growing wheat, flour mills are grinding flour.

They, they were exporting it to Sydney.

They were feeding the colonial settlements to the north.

Like you'll have a sky in late fall, early winter, where you've got Orion, Hyades, Pleiades, and saying, if you're Mari, Pleiades, that's the foam at the front of the boat.

The Hyades is Tainui's sail.

And the three stars of the belt of the water is glaring off the back of his canoe.

You know, I mean, we tell these stories.

On the side of my ruruhi, the Tūtaki family.

Pūriora o Kahu te maunga, Waimeha te awa, Tainui te waka, Rereahu te marae, Rereahu te tangata.

I'm filling Dixon.

I hail from the east coast on my karoua side of the whānau and from the centre of the North Island in a little place called Benidale is where my nanny hails from.

And so we definitely have just been so influenced by them.

And they were one of the voices, maybe the first voices that I heard growing up with lots of um real Māori in their waiata like I was like oh what is this what this is awesome and these these two amazing um two amazing wahine these two amazing women grew up on Tainui land and they um are always yeah standing up for looking after Te Taiao and yeah

They've done so much for our culture in this country, haven't they, those two? Now, you were awarded the Keith Urban Scholarship as well last year to go to the Country Music Association of Australia Academy of Country Music.

I'm sure there's a shorter way to say that.

Oh, you don't think the Kiwis have got that?

Well, just on that Waikato Tainui Hamilton bid that we talked about last week.

The Tainui bid isn't real, is it? The involvement or the intended involvement by the Tainui company is not real.

Tainui Group Holdings media statement on the back of that is aware of recent media reports suggesting the company is considering an investment into the second NRL team in New Zealand.

TGH is not in discussions with the NRL and is not considering an investment of this nature, said Ms Ramadi Tua.

So that's it.