Episode 52 - Pukemon, gotta catch em all, Part Three  Welcome to the Final Boss battle. Anyone who’s faced the final Boss at the end of a game for the first time knows what happens next. Game over… game over… you get the picture. But for Whero and his son Mikaere, they suspect that "game over" for them will literally mean… game over. The end. They will need to work together, old school and new, if they are to have any chance of making it through what seems to be a game that is within the...

Episode 51 - Pukemon Ultra Son, Part Two  Mobile games are fun. They can be the perfect release after a hard day's work or even while you're still at work… when the boss is not looking, of course. But what happens when your game comes alive and the little characters in your game crawl out of your phone and start attacking you for real? Is this the latest tech like Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality, simply called “Reality”? The pint-sized Māori Pukemon warriors called Mohoa seemed pretty...

Episode 50 - Pukemon Whero, Part One   This story is about a 50-something year old former-gamer with 9 kids and 9 mokopuna. Oh, hold up, that’s me! I didn’t set out to make it about me, but I was there when Space Invaders hit Aotearoa. I spent most of my time in arcades, making me the foremost 80’s arcade expert, so it just made sense, hence the Whero at the end of the title. But, the Whero also plays on the game name, Pokemon Red. We have to jump forward a few decades, of course, to get to...

Episode 49 - The Rainbow in the Sky (Based on a True Story)  Thirty years ago, I had a strange dream. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was having a premonition, and I didn’t share it with anybody because I didn’t know that what I was dreaming about was about to come true. But you know how these types of visions go, where the details are cloudy at best. I remember that I was in the pool at my house, underwater, looking up at the house. I could make out the pool steps and thought it was...

Episode 48 - When two iwi go to war (Retelling of an Old Story)  E ai ki ngā kōrero, the battle known as Maikukutea, marks the final confrontation between Manaia and Ngātoroirangi. However, it wasn't so much a battle as it was a slaughter. Ancient tales recount how war canoes of Manaia assailed the pā of Ngātoroirangi on Mōtiti Island. In response, Ngātoroirangi dispatched his war god, Aitupawa, to decimate the taua from Manaia. The devastation was so immense that the sole remnants of the...

Episode 47 - Robert and the Totara tree (Based on a True Story) There are many true aspects to this story. Back in the day, when our koroua was young, logging companies would help themselves to trees on Māori land. Our koroua kept shotguns at the ready to scare off would-be thieves. Most importantly, there is something otherworldly in the woods. I'm talking about Fairies and Patupaiarehe. They're everywhere if you know where to look. Many years ago, when we were making pūreke, our rōpū went...

Episode 46 – Witches, Part Two (Based on a True Story)  When we last left off, three Māori women had been arrested and charged with practicing witchcraft. A formidable armed force is poised to defend the town, while a war party waits for the signal to reclaim the women by force. Standing between the two groups is a koroua who, let's just say, has provoked the soldiers to shoot at him. Big mistake! Shooting him is only going to enrage him further, for this koroua harbours a dark secret he's...

Episode 45 – Witches, Part One (Based on a True Story)  There is an urban legend of three witches who were hanged in the 1800s. They are believed to haunt the current Auckland Domain where the Auckland Museum stands.  There are stories of sightings of tall, slender-man-type figures that have frightened joggers and late-night strollers. Our story begins just before these hangings.  Three Māori women are arrested for making rongoā, or as it was called back then, practicing witchcraft. The women...

Episode 44 - The Boy who didn’t wash his hands (Tikanga Based Story)  Why wash your hands when you leave an urupā? As kids, the choice was straightforward: wash your hands or get a kick in the pants from Nan. And with the decision always came a foreboding "beware curse" from Nanny, delivered in a chorus of voices, warning of the dire consequences that might ensue if you neglected this ritual. Nowadays, I gently remind my moko with the sweetest intonation, "Horoia ō ringaringa." Man, what...

Episode 43 - The Rescue (Based on a True Story)  A whanaunga of mine once told me a peculiar story from her early days working in the South Island, where she advised trampers about the weather conditions in the local mountains.  One day, she received a warning on her walkie-talkie about a swiftly approaching stor, which curiously wasn't showing up on any other early warning equipment. The mountain was promptly evacuated, much to the chagrin of several trampers who insisted that, according to...

Episode 42 - Pona... Hemi Pona (Based on a True Story)   I'm sending this message encrypted in case it's being monitored. The encryption is so complex that it will appear as a normal message. I knew a koroua who thought he was a spy, code name 0013. The whole shebang. He said he was recruited straight out of the bush, a tough and clever Māori kid with no family ties, making him a perfect candidate for the CIA's black ops program. Our response was just "Oh, that's nice, koro." But then one...

Episode 41 - The Three Strike Back, Part Two (Retelling of an Old Story)  The race against time is on. Literally! With the fate of the world in the balance and the destiny of all humanity resting on three haututu Māori boys and an irritating little brother, what could possibly go wrong? Well, let's take a quick look at the Three's chances... The Three's plan hinges on the hope that a mythological being, whom no one has ever seen, will show up to help within a tiny window of about 3 seconds....

Episode 40 - The Three Strike Back, Part One (Retelling of an Old Story)  The boys are still patting down the flames after their last encounter with Mahuika. They, like Māui, were able to entomb her into a Kaikomako tree for all eternity. The boys are counting their lucky stars, having barely made it out alive, when a new threat arrives on the scene: an upset husband named Tamanuiterā! Yes, the very sun in the sky! While Mahuika might have been content with burning the boys to a crisp, the...

Episode 39 - The Return of the Three, Part Two (Retelling of an Old Story)  So, it was Mahuika!  See, I told you that I told you. Anyway, the boys are still alive, albeit a little crispier. How long can they keep this up? Their blend of luck and Māori boy ingenuity has worked against the fingers of flame, who are really just kids like themselves, but they’re not out of the woods yet... literally! If they do somehow manage to get past the rest of the flame children, they know that they will...

Episode 38 - The Return of the Three, Part One (Retelling of an Old Story)  “The Three” are a bunch of likeable non-bullies who are hot off the back of out-playing the Ririo, “the King of the Elves”, thanks to a scary old kuia, a bunch of stones and a bag of chips. Long story.  Now, a strange mushroom cloud of smoke has appeared from within the heart of the dark forest, not too far from their school. While most would run in the opposite direction, “the fearless three” (or as Hemi, the leader...

Episode 37 - Picture Picture on the Wall (Based on a True Story)  I knew a girl who was bad news. It turned out she was possessed by a malevolent spirit, but she was also bad news. She was a special kind of nasty and was totally head over heels in love... with herself. She had the whole Snow White's Evil Stepmother thing going on, right down to the mirror... well, in her case, a picture, lots of pictures. She was a real narcissistic piece-of-work, and the pictures were the source of her...

Episode 36 - The Return of Hape (Retelling of an Old Story)  Our world is replete with famous duels of tohunga. The Hokianga Whakapau Karakia is one such encounter. Here in Tūwharetoa, it's the race up Tongariro Mountain between Ngātoroirangi, the tohunga of the Te Arawa waka, and Hapekitūārangi. The race was more of a battle as both used their powers to defeat each other, but it was Ngātoroirangi who vanquished his opponent by freezing Hape in snow and ice. For Hape, it was assumed that he...

Episode 35 - Funkihi Town (Based on a True Story)  Why or when does an Atua choose to show up, ā-tinana? Through karakia...  perhaps? Or maybe after the death of a noble? You'll know if an Atua is nearby. We often see their presence, especially at tangi, but don't realize it. You might see a greenstone patu run red, or te huingā manu arā manu gathered in unusual groups on a lake. I've seen it all. Sometimes Atua will come a little closer, but so as not to scare the living daylights out of...

Episode 34 – Mauri (Based on a True Story)  When a Wharenui is built, someone dies and becomes the Mauri for the whare. This is the old way of our people. Our family has always wanted to build a Wharenui, but they hesitate because of this and the randomness of who is chosen, so to speak. Sometimes our tipuna would avoid losing one of their own by choosing the person or people (often called a sacrifice) who would become the Mauri. I know of a whare, an old whare here in Tūwharetoa, where four...

Episode 33 - The Caveman (Based on a True Story)  Caves are the ancient burial sites of our people and should be treated in exactly the same way as an Urupā. Because we have Western practices and are so used to burying our dead in the ground, most of us have forgotten the old practices of hiding bones in caves and among the rocks. The kupu of the old ways still remains... tūpāpaku. We use this for the "body" nowadays, but it really means to sit up in the smallest of ways, i.e., the fetal...

Episode 32 - The Last Goodbye (Based on a True Story)  You might think that talking to the dead is abnormal, but not if you're Māori! We communicate with them all the time through our whaikōrero, karanga, and waiata. Sometimes, if you're lucky or unlucky (depending on the circumstances), they might even speak to you. A few years back, one of my wife’s whanaunga passed away. We were all very close, and my wife and her whanaunga kept in touch over the years through Facebook, Messenger, and the...

Episode 31 – The War God (Te Korenga) Part Two (Tikanga Based Story)  Te Pāpaka and Te Korenga: twins! One alive and the other...something else.  Separated at birth, māhanga, neither knew of the other's existence. Yet, as the old saying goes, 'toto ki te toto' or 'blood attracts blood', the brothers were destined to meet on the battlefield.  For Te Pāpaka, the question wasn't about facing a warrior of unimaginable power, nor the realisation that only one of them was destined to walk away from...

Episode 30 – The War God (Te Pāpaka) Part One (Tikanga Based Story)  Prepare for the censorship whānau to have a field day on this one.  I have thought very carefully about what I should include or exclude in this story.  I have decided…. to include every blood-curdling, upsetting and controversial detail. To do otherwise would be inaccurate and insulting to our tipuna. We can all guess that the inception of a War god and let's be specific here, a Māori War god, could be considered by today's...

Episode 29 - Kia ora, is Statue? Part Two (Based on a True Story)   Paki, Tame’s cousin who bullied Tame about his imaginary moving statues now finds himself a born-again believer. Being surrounded by an army of moving statues can indeed shift one’s beliefs.  Now Paki, Tame and Tame’s loyal cousin Hori can all see that the statues are alive and ready to strike. To get out of this one, they first need to answer a few questions about the statues and before time runs out.  Like, how are the...