Shifts & Changes
Ka nukunuku Ka nekeneke
Two hundred years ago, Ngāpuhi sang a waiata to the newly arrived missionary Samuel Marsden. The song began with the words “Ka nukunuku, Ka nekeneke”, often translated as “it shifts, it changes”.
Those words define our own times.
Our world is changing so fast that many of last century’s realities are today not just irrelevant but even non-existent. For many people, perhaps most people, rapid change — socially, politically, environmentally — is destabilising and dispiriting. It is a cause of grief and fear.
Is it possible to welcome change and adapt creatively to it, and not to dread its dark portents?
Perhaps the practice of creating a new narrative will arise in multiple places in the mouths of multiple people.