Lisa – Kaitaia
“Kia ora, my name is Lisa, I am from Kaitaia in the Far North, here visiting Auckland.
I have been a resident of Auckland; Mount Roskill, Hillsborough Road, a number of years back.
I had the privilege of being the midwife at my granddaughter’s birth, because it was a home birth and the midwife who was caring for my daughter lived three-quarters of an hour from our place, and so I was the midwife and I was just so proud. Just in the space of bringing a new life into this world. Brilliant.
Well, I’m originally from Kaitaia, born-bred in Kaitaia, but as I mentioned earlier we moved like many Māori families from rural New Zealand to Auckland in the early ‘60s, because of employment issues for my dad. So we moved to Auckland, Mount Roskill, and I spent my formative years in Mount Roskill, lived life as any young person did at that time, through the ‘70s. [I] have been always back and forth between my birth place and Auckland and other countries in the world as well.
What’s important to me is being Māori; always has been. What’s important is having strong and good relationships with family, with others, and calling a spade a spade, challenging people around their behaviours and attitudes towards others.
I tell you, I’ve always celebrated life. You know, when young people, teenagers, become statistics in terms of another teenage pregnancy, single person, all of those things, what we fail to acknowledge or remind ourselves of is that there are so many people who can’t have babies. For me, we have to celebrate life, and to actually be able to support your own in the birthing process into this world. It was stunning. It was stunning and I recommend that if you ever get the chance to…
When you talk about culture, you know what it did is remind me of my grandmother in particular, and even her mother and that sort of era, which would have been, you know, the 1930s and earlier where having childbirth was normal. It wasn’t a clinical thing.
They weren’t dependent on having a whole lot of equipment around them to ensure that a safe and well-birthing process happened, but how that’s changed to today where scans are the norm, where you have to go for this appointment and that appointment and have a birthing plan, and be surrounded in a lot of instances by clinicians. Reflecting on my grandmother’s time and her mother’s time, to be able to be in that place of supporting my daughter and my granddaughter into this world; magic stuff, can’t beat it.
Well, you know, what would I do differently? Well it’s a big question. For me, I don’t think, well no I do think, I think quite a bit, and that’s why I’m having a hard time to answer this question. It’s not what others do that we should be all concerned about. It’s the way we react to others that we should be looking at, that we can’t change other people’s behaviour; we can only change the way we respond or react to that behaviour.
So what would I do differently? I think I’m doing a damned good job at the minute, actually. I’m no different. Well I am different. I am quite unique, but in terms of how I view others, there should be no class distinction, there should be no race distinction, and there should be no economic wealth distinction between us all. We should embrace each other for and with and because of each other’s uniqueness. Kia ora.”
