Matapiata | Gathering at the Gate

Cuimhnich air na daoine bhon tàinig thu.
Remember the people from which you came.

Dani Pickering is Co-convener of Gathering at the Gate.

‘S e Ratharsair an t-eilean a rug mo ghineal;
‘S e Si’ahl an tìr a thog mi; agus
‘S e Te Whanganui-ā-Tara an tìr a tha gam bheathachadh an-diugh

Nō Raasay o Kōtirana, Pickering o Ingarani, Cullagh Beag o Aerana, me Y Trallwng o Wēra ōku tūpuna
Ko Seattle te whenua tupu
Ko Te Whanganui-ā-Tara te whenua e poipoi ae toku ngākau

I whakapapa most strongly to the Scottish Gàidhealtachd, but also to the usual Pākehā mix of England, Wales and Ireland. A combination of activist, scholarly and artistic interests animate me today, from the effectiveness of tauiwi support for tino rangatiratanga; to the relationship between decolonisation and anticapitalism; to the role of music in social movements; to the history and future of Gael-descended peoples in Aotearoa.

Can you tell us about the mahi you’re leading and the impact you’re seeing in your community?

I helped co-found Gathering at the Gate, a group which facilitates Tiriti-led ancestral recovery processes for tauiwi to [re]ground ourselves in our own whakapapa. We work alongside our participants to conduct critical/medicinal family history research which helps reconnect us to the whakapapa many of us lost in the process of becoming settlers on Māori lands. Ultimately, we see our work as preparing tauiwi for constitutionally transformed, Tiriti-based futures in which we are able to interact more meaningfully and reciprocally with te ao Māori.

As of writing, GatG has completed five rounds of our collective process, and each time reveal new ways in which it has positively impacted participants. Many find their relationships with their families change, opening up new avenues for courageous conversations about how we came to be in Aotearoa, and how we are, and how we could be. Others have found this and more, addressing anxieties around belonging to place which have been heightened by our complicity in the colonisation of te ao Māori. Others still have found new conviction from this work, prepared to work alongside Māori in ways that go beyond altruistic notions of allyship towards mutual liberation. Many have found their own ways into all of the above.

What drew you to this kaupapa, and how has your journey shaped the way you approach this work?

I was drawn into the crew that would go on to found Gathering at the Gate because I was neck-deep in my own ancestral recovery work at the time. It was a year after I had made some breakthroughs in my own whakapapa, most powerfully [re]discovering my ancestral connections to the Isle of Raasay in the Scottish Hebrides, as well as Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) itself. What started as a dabbling with Duolingo to learn how to pronounce place names correctly for my pepeha quickly became a lifelong commitment to learning Gàidhlig as a way of reconnecting to my ancestors.

In Gathering at the Gate, one of the things we often encourage people to do is find their own whakapapa “anchor”—something which animates their connection to their ancestors, whether that’s a recipe, a craft, a trade, a tune or a song, another artistic practice, a relationship to a specific ancestor, family history stories, other family traditions, being a māmā, simply being… the list of possibilities grows with every iteration of our process as more people bring their own interpretations to the table.

Today, my main anchor remains Gàidhlig. When I speak or sing in Gàidhlig in our work, the reactions I get from Pākehā participants in particular suggests that it shows rather than tells them that we have roots deeper than colonial whiteness, and those roots are worth recovering for what we can learn from them about becoming tangata Tiriti.

What do you love most about the mahi?

A crucial part of the ancestral recovery process for us is a guiding question: how could we be together? Inspired by our tuākana Comrades Education in Turtle Island, we start each iteration with an onboarding process that asks us all to be open to ways of being more relational, more response-able, and more generous to each other than the individualism of colonial whiteness allows.

The results have been so, so humbling. Our participants consistently find the strength to go to incredibly vulnerable places, and to bear witness to that vulnerability is a taonga. We believe these moments are where the seeds for personal transformation are planted.

What are some of the most powerful stories of transformation you’ve witnessed through your work?

We’ve had participants who come away from our time together with completely new understandings of who they are in the world, and given the nature of whakapapa the first place this tends to have flow-on effects is in the family. Some participants have found the conviction to keep the relationship going with their racist uncle; others have found the stories of their shared heritage help their family members better understand the foundational importance of Te Tiriti. Others have even found some healing for their own intergenerational traumas, and been able to share in that healing with their families. And again, some have found their own ways into all of the above.

What have the challenges been?

As we’ve grown and word’s gotten around about what we do (which still shocks me! Being Known is weird), we’ve hosted larger and larger cohorts with each iteration. This has made it a challenge to maintain the sense of intimacy with our participants which make the vulnerable moments possible. Last round we had nearly sixty participants, so to make sure we didn’t lose that intimacy we brought in a dozen of our peers from previous rounds to facilitate small “buddy groups” which met between whole-group sessions. Participants loved these buddy groups dearly, but it was still hard not to feel like we conveners were lecturing rather than facilitating during the main sessions of the size of the cohort. We’ll likely continue playing with the scale of our offerings in the future in order to find the happy medium.

What inspires you and who have your greatest teachers and mentors been?

I’m inspired by people from all walks of life who show that it is possible to hold the harms we have endured and the harms we are complicit in, historically and presently, at the same time. It’s no easy feat, but to me accepting this messy reality is one of the most powerfully human things we can do.

My mentor figures all do this work fabulously, inspiringly well: Ingrid Huygens, Heather Came-Friar, Catherine Delahunty, Iain MacKinnon and Richard Shaw. I could never do introductions to any of them justice, but from Aotearoa to Alba (Scotland) each of them has grappled in their own groundbreaking ways with both the violence of colonisation and complicity in it. These activist and scholarly efforts mean that mean we’re not starting from scratch today, but standing on the shoulders of giants. Bidh pròis oirbh air mo shon, seo mo mhionnan.

What’s one whakaaro or piece of advice you’d give to others working in this space who want to create meaningful change?

I don’t know that I’m wizened enough yet to impart advice! So instead I’ll offer the words of Catherine Delahunty:

“I wonder at the damage that our unawareness and lack of caring may do to the whakapapa-based hapū and iwi, surviving their losses and fighting for all their people to know who they are, and to know who their tīpuna are. In a sense, when the rest of us don’t know or don’t care about our own people’s past, it’s a way of demeaning or denying Māori their essence as Māori and, by extension, their rights as Māori. It’s as if whakapapa has no value.”

What would an Aotearoa look like, then, when tauiwi value our own roots? What could it mean for tangata whenua?