Announcing an exciting new direction for the Good Energy Project

Empowering homes and kāinga as economic centres

Kia ora,

It’s been a while since I posted here. I’ve spent the first few months of 2024 letting the rich juices of my conversations and discoveries from last year steep and mull while taking time to be in wild places, read, swim, attend weddings, dance and reflect on where to go next. 

Here’s a collage of my most influential summer activities:

This is a collage of pictures depicting a selection of my summer activities. From top left: A photo of me performing in the Solid Gold Dance Troupe wearing a leopard print bodice, lipstick and sunglasses and fist pumping the air; a photo of the cover of “Birnam Wood” by Eleanor Catton; a photo of me in a towelling robe outside a tent; the cover of “Kāinga” by Paul Tapsell; a photo of me with wet hair in front of a river looking happy; my partner Rachel and I dancing with red and blue dresses on; the cover of “The Fifth Sacred Thing” by Starhawk; another photo of me dancing in a leopard print outfit, this one with gold tassels; the cover of “Ruth, Roger and Me” by Andrew Dean.

Out of all this, a new direction has emerged for the Good Energy Project, which I feel very excited to announce. 

Neon sign with words “Announcing Home Economics”

Perhaps “home economics” brings to mind the school subject (a euphemism for cooking and sewing class) which girls were encouraged to take to become good wives?

black and white image of a 1950s woman leaning down offering something to a suited man in an armchair wearing a paper crown and looking superior.

Why is it that the work done at home (including raising children, caring for each other and preparing food) is seen as less important or serious than that done in businesses or organisations? It strikes me that humanity’s success in tackling the huge challenges of environmental and social crises will depend on the security and abundance of our home lives. Home is where we begin and end our days and lives and the foundation for everything we do!

And yet, as New Zealand feminist and former politician Marilyn Waring has famously pointed out, we fail to acknowledge or pay for most domestic work.

We have relegated our homes to the outskirts of our economy - places to rest after the ‘real’ work is done. Cities are the centres of our modern economies. Traditionally men would gather in the cities and their power and influence could be amplified, surging and accumulating in banks, governments and large corporations. Women would stay at home in the suburbs, doing their separate housework in separate houses - their physical isolation limiting the efficiency of their work and their power to act in the world.

A collage on a blackboard background. In the centre is a group of 1950s men standing in front of a cardboard cutout city. Spread around the outside are seven disgruntled looking 1950s housewives in front of seven suburban houses.

I know this sounds like an old-fashioned description of a city. But I don’t think the fundamentals have changed. In fact I think it’s gotten worse. Domestic work still goes unpaid, independent of the gender of the person doing it, and as living costs increase more people are being pushed to spend more time at work and less at home to make ends meet. 

My conversations last year (especially with Max Harris, Hemi Hireme and Max Rashbrooke) made it clear that the economic and political settings of the past 40 years have narrowed our field of vision and sense of possibility in Aotearoa. “Rogernomics”, as it’s been called, has trained our attention with laser focus on the “market” and obscured and undermined everything else - community building, volunteering, environmental restoration, domestic work etc.

Last year (at a fascinating seminar hosted by Action Station) I heard the economy described as an iceberg. The small tip above the surface represents the fraction of economic activity accounted for in GDP and the iceberg’s hidden bulk represents all the unseen and unaccounted activities that support the economy.

An iceberg submerged in dark moody waters with snowy mountains and white wispy clouds surrounding its tip. In front of the iceberg is a wooden row boat containing two figures. One of the figures is shining a torch into the water and illuminating the words “The Unseen Economy” on the iceberg’s large hidden base. The tip of the iceberg, above the surface, is labelled “GDP”.

This idea spurred a curiosity in me to explore the hidden, unaccounted part of the economy-iceberg. So many people, so much skill and knowledge has been under-valued and starved of sustenance - much of this activity taking place in and around people’s homes. 

What potential lies in the unseen economy to contribute to economic transformation and help us overcome the enormous environmental and social challenges we face? 

What would be possible if all the undervalued and unacknowledged work was seen and empowered? Are there ways to coordinate and direct all this energy towards common goals? 

I’ve always been drawn to home as a place to connect, gather heal and grow new culture and ideas

As a child I was blessed to have a safe nurturing home. I lived in the hills of Karori, Pōneke surrounded by trees and scrappy bush hills. Home was a place for making stuff - forts, masks, flying foxes, imaginary worlds. It was a warm centre in the world - the place my favourite people lived - my Mum and Dad and brothers. There were always interesting people visiting and staying.

My home gave me a sense of being connected with the natural world - I knew all the trees and secret spots in the garden. I had a place and group of people to belong to. 

As an adult I’ve poured a lot of my energy into creating nurturing homes in the form of shared flats and communities. I’ve done it mainly because I need it myself. The world is too big. There are too many problems and too many people. I get overwhelmed easily. Whole industries are dedicated to diverting our attention and undermining our confidence. I need support. Home is the place I’ve found that.

Our vision was to create a “wildlife sanctuary” - a little community with enough protection from the predatory forces and pressures of dominant culture so that our shy wild souls could come out to play. A nursery to grow new culture, rituals and ideas that nourish the world.

This is a picture I drew about ten years ago to capture the feeling of the wildlife sanctuary. I called it “Mother Tree”. It’s a hand-drawn black and white illustration of a tree with roots extending into the earth and branches reaching up and out, creating a space to shelter beneath. The tree is contained in a circle and there are birds sitting on a branch and flying around the tree. To me, it creates a feeling of being both grounded in a place and expansive.

Many of my best and most creative projects and ideas were birthed in these nurturing communal homes. These were wonderful, exciting and nourishing years of my life. But ultimately we found our efforts to create a permanent community or non-nuclear family were frustrated as financial and work commitments pulled us in different directions. It was hard making home our focus in a world that sees it as unimportant.

We haven’t given up though! 

When I started the Good Energy Project a year and a half ago, one of my hopes was to find pathways for my wife and I to put more energy into the people and places we love and less into making money.

Since then both our family homes, which we loved dearly and grew up in, have been sold. With this our personal sense of ‘home’ has dissolved and we find ourselves in a kind of limbo. We both have a desire to establish lasting relationships with a place and people - to create the wildlife sanctuary we dream of. But we’re confused about where and how to do that - particularly in awareness of the history of colonisation in New Zealand.

I feel so grateful that through Te Tiriti o Waitangi we are offered a home here. And yet there is so much injustice to address. The real estate market is founded on stolen land and we’re living in the results of that pain and severance.

I have both Pākehā and Māori ancestry but have grown up in a Pākehā context and benefited from these injustices of the past. I want to understand how I can come into right relationship with tangata and whenua.

Empowering kāinga as economic, political, cultural and environmental centres

My initial inspiration for focusing on home came from reading a book called Kāinga: People, Land, Belonging by Paul Tapsell (Te Arawa, Tainui). It struck me that a lot of the knowledge and wisdom we need to restore our economic, social and environmental wellbeing has already been lived right here in Aotearoa. In pre-colonial times there was a well established living relationship between people and place. That legacy offers a very grounded sense of hope that we can find an alternative pathway away from extractive disconnected systems.

Paul describes the significance to pre-colonial Māori of kāinga (also known in different regions as tribal marae, pā, pā kāinga and papakāinga). These were the homes; the villages where people lived. They were economic and political centres with sophisticated legal and environmental management systems. Fundamentally they were places of sacred connection between tangata, whenua and taonga (people, land and belonging). 

Kāinga were the anchors, connecting people to a vast network of interconnected knowledge developed over generations and constantly adapted in response to the local environment. This knowledge surpassed western science in its ability to understand complex ecosystems and keep them in balance. It was encoded into stories and songs, ritualised and held in taonga that were kept in particular places in the landscape. It was through their relationship with their kāinga that pre-colonial Māori belonged to the whenua and maintained a balance with it.

Reading Paul’s account I feel a deep sense of respect for the hau kāinga who have lived on their whenua for generations and kept this knowledge alive during extremely trying times.

As a child I felt connected to the place I lived but tracing my ancestors back to Europe and the UK, I see that I have inherited a culture born from many generations of severance from the land. Seeing land-based knowledge alive here, helps me to remember where I came from, who I am and my innate spiritual connection to the earth.

Paul goes on to tell the heartbreaking story of how kāinga were systematically disempowered and dissembled through the process of colonisation. 

It’s a story that has echoes in the history of Europe and the UK with the land enclosures  centuries before when the commons were taken from the people. 

And yet in Aotearoa it wasn’t all that long ago. Some of this ancient knowledge is still in reach - still in living memory. Paul himself remembers stories passed down to him by his grandparents that carry the treasures of their kāinga. He believes that if we act, and soon, we can restore the mana of kāinga, and with that have hope for overcoming the environmental, social and economic crises we’re facing. 

“Dare we elevate kāinga as a way of achieving regionalised ecological accountability,” he asks, “and in the process can we bring humanity back into balance with the universe?” 

“Could New Zealand become a beacon to the world by addressing this?”

I love these calls to action. I love that Paul challenges us to understand the true causes of poverty and environmental crisis - to confront the injustice of colonisation so that we can address the problem at the root.

Paul’s vision resonates with Hemi Hireme’s idea of marae communities being economic, social, environmental, political and cultural centres. It also resonates with efforts to relocalise our economies, which several of my interviewees have spoken to. This is the movement I want to be part of!

I want to explore how Pākehā and Tangata Tiriti can support the empowerment of traditional kāinga. Can we accept the 184 year standing invitation to partner with Māori on equal terms? Can we find belonging here and develop a truly reciprocal relationship with the people and land? I’d like to explore what kāinga could look like in our multicultural, technically advanced society and how our homes and communities could become centres of connection, economy and culture again. How can learn from our past to create a more resilient sustainable economy?

My plan for 2024

My funding with the Quatro Trust ends in October so I’ve got six months. 

I’m very excited to have a new colleague to collaborate with. Hannah Wood, who I interviewed last year, is joining me one day a week to support the project.

Our first plan is for me to interview a selection of significant people. We will journey across time to discover seeds of wisdom from the past, current initiatives and visions of the future to inspire us. Our kaupapa will be re-empowering home and kāinga as economic and cultural centres. We’ll share the interviews here on Substack and they’ll be broadcast on Wellington Access Radio as well. 

Alongside this, we’ve started an amazing course called gathering at the gate, which is an incredible support in coming to terms with the roles our ancestors played in colonising Aotearoa and finding more supportive, life-giving ways of being Pākehā in Aotearoa.

One of our intentions for the Good Energy Project is to support rangatahi to reimagine the future. Later this year we want to organise a creative fun hui for youth and elders where we can share the inspiring visions and ideas we’ve gathered and use them as seeds for further dreaming and creating. Our hope is to foster a space for rangatahi that is free from the endless barrage of negative messaging and hopeless conventions - a space to liberate their imaginations and potential.