Recently, I found myself in Rotorua, the home of Te Matatini o Te Kāhui Maunga 2025 champions, Te Kapa Haka o Ngāti Whakaue. Unlike the bandwagon fans, I actually whakapapa to Ngāti Whakaue through my tūpuna, Whakaahua of Ngāti Tunohopu, Ngāti Whakaue. Not that this gives me any kapa haka credentials, I wish! I’m absolutely hopeless. Thankfully, our tamaiti, Waiora (9), is breaking that cycle. He lives for kapa haka at his kura, Te Kura Kaupapa o Ngā Mokopuna. Every time he performs, my eyes well up.

But this trip wasn’t about kapa haka. I was on the road with my mates, award-winning playwright and actor Jamie McCaskill and the incredibly talented Director of Photography Brandon Te Moananui (Shades of Blue and Green, Hui Hoppers 2, The Māori Sidesteps). Together, we are 6 years deep into an audacious creative pursuit producing Aotearoa’s first anime feature film.

We call this journey The Marathon (shoutout to Nipsey Hussle) because it has been exactly that long, arduous, and relentless, but we’re almost there (I think..). Weaving Māori and Japanese storytelling traditions is no small feat. We are navigating cultural narratives within an animation style that isn’t ours, ensuring that tikanga is not only represented but upheld. That’s why we’re co-writing with Atsuhiro Tomioka, a heavyweight in anime storytelling, known for Pokémon, Dragon Ball Super, and One Piece. When we hosted him in Wellington for a week, his work ethic was unreal, fielding calls for the next Pokémon movie while scribbling down ideas over dinner.

The wānanga in Rotorua was designed to test, challenge, and refine the tikanga Māori and cultural elements in our script, now in its third revision. We gathered with some of the best Māori creatives the gifted anime artist Tish Rangi, mau rākau expert Punehu Wilson, legendary art director Guy Moana, and formidable scriptwriter Tihini Grant, and the man who helped bring it all together, our director and now, our bro, Cliff Curtis. A special mihi to our good friend, the esteemed director Mike Jonathan (Ka Whawhai Tonu), who passed our pitch to Cliff. Chur cuz.

Tihini met us at Rotorua Airport. The morning sun was warm, the air was crisp, and the aroma of sulfur hit our ihu. A ‘Kia ora’, hongi, a hearty hug, and then we were on the road. Cliff had booked out his whānau marae, Tapuaekura-a-Hatupatu, along Curtis Road. Upon arrival, Tihini welcomed us with a mihi whakatau into the beautiful wharenui, Rākeiao. Jamie stepped up as our kaikōrero, and for our waiata tautoko? Te Aroha. A safe choice, right?

Wrong (Charlie Murphy voice).

As Tihini wrapped up his whaikōrero, he launched into Te Aroha with the voice of an operatic rangatira, nailing it like Pavarotti. Then it was our turn aue haha. We stumbled through it (I know some of you are thinking, but you sing for Nesian Mystik?!  It’s different, OK, and refer back to my lack of kapa haka talent). But we knew we were exactly where we needed to be, with the people we needed to be with. He tohu tērā.

The Wānanga

We jumped straight into wānanga. Tihini led us deep into the whakapapa of pounamu, atua, and taiaha, central to our protagonist’s coming-of-age journey. Before we knew it, we were packed into cars, cruising around Lake Rotoiti as Tihini shared kōrero about the rohe.Then, we entered the ngahere (forest).

"Look around. What are our tuakana trying to tell us?" he asked.

By tuakana, he meant the rākau (trees) surrounding us.

"Think about how long they’ve been here, what they’ve seen." 

He pointed to a Kawakawa plant. "Which leaves are they telling us to use?". Some were hole-punched by hungry pēpeke (insects). Others untouched. The answers were there.

Honestly, Tihini deserves his own podcast.

Back at Tapuaekura-a-Hatupatu, a hot cup of black tea in hand, the smell of boil-up wafting across the ātea of Rākeiao, I looked out over Rotoiti. Local kids popped manus off the jetty, their laughter making me smile. I wondered, is simply being Māori enough to make our story, Māori storytelling?

In Rākeiao, under the gaze of Cliff’s tūpuna including the late, great rangatira Tā Toby Curtis, who worked with my Pāpā, Colin Reeder, at Te Ara Poutama back when AUT (Auckland University of Technology) was AIT (Auckland Institute of Technology), I sat with that whakaaro (thought).

Looking at his photo on the wall, I remembered weaving through their offices, walls adorned with Robyn Kahukiwa’s work and pestering my ‘uncles’ for coins to play spacies down at the arcade on Queen Street.

Simpler times.

Arohamai, I digress.

The Question

"What Māori pūrākau (stories) do you love?" Tihini asked.

Jamie suggested Māui me te Rā (Māui and the Sun) which was fitting, since I had just read it to my son, Avanoa (4), the night before.

"So how does the story go?"

We took turns offering kōrero. Māui, frustrated that the days were too short, rallies his brothers to confront Tamanui-te-Rā. They journey to the edge of the world, await to ambush Tamanui-te-Rā, and catch then snare. Māui strikes him on the nose, commanding him to slow down. And just like that, our days are longer.

Tihini nodded, half-smiling, waiting. Then he asked…

"Okay, so what’s the story really about?"

Silence.

He forced us to think deeper.

"If the days were too short, what does that tell us about the season?"

"When Māui and his brothers reach Tamanui-te-Rā, is that east or west?"

"Māui is the youngest but giving instructions. What does that tell us about him?"

Each question cracked open another, then another.

Our tūpuna weren’t just telling stories. They were encoding knowledge,  astronomical, seasonal, genealogical. Clues layered with precision, designed to survive millennia.

I know, you’re probably waiting for the big reveal. So what did we decode? (Get to it, Awa, hurry up ow!)

Ka aroha e hoa, where’s the fun in that?

What I will say is this, that wānanga changed me.

The Feel

It made me confront my own storytelling, from the songs I’ve written, to the marketing plans I’ve crafted, the user experiences I’ve designed and even this post.

Was any of it Māori storytelling? And if it was, how would I know?

Maybe you’ve asked yourself the same thing.

The truth is, I’m not really sure, but maybe that’s the point because Māori storytelling doesn’t always fit into clean, academic terms. You can’t always measure it. You can’t always name it.

You feel it.

I feel it.

Maybe, you do too?

It’s a feeling, whether you whakapapa Māori or not, that our storytelling carries a responsibility to the communities we serve in Aotearoa, past, present and future. Not just between ‘9-5’, but always, mō ake tonu. It’s about how we show up, how we listen and how we engage. A reminder to always move beyond just extraction and transactional, into authentic and relational storytelling that’s grounded in the whenua we stand on.

So the next time you read Māui me te Rā to your tamariki, hear a story passed down from your tūpuna, pause.

Look for the clues, they are the memories of our tūpuna.

One day, our mokopuna will be searching too.

So as the storyteller, the question is what will you leave for them to find?

Arohanui