Ko au te Harakeke, Ko te Harakeke ko au

Ko au te Harakeke, ko te Harakeke ko au.

I hold it in my hands, woven into my hair, flowing down my back, and I feel the whakapapa move with me. Every strand is both connection and declaration, a whisper of tīpuna through living fibres.

The act of weaving harakeke into myself is intimate. I am not just photographing it, I am embodying it, carrying its stories forward. Its fibres are soft yet strong, bending with movement but holding their shape, a reflection of our own capacity to endure and adapt.

Harakeke has always sustained: sheltering, binding, creating. Touch it and you touch generations. Weaving it into my hair is a quiet reclamation, a revival of practice, a way of situating myself within a continuum between past and future, self and whakapapa.

Harakeke is more than material. It is identity, ceremony, memory made visible. I am reminded: harakeke, like us, persists. It survives, it grows, it reaches for the world, carrying stories that will not be forgotten.

Ko au te harakeke, ko te harakeke, ko au.