CMUA: What’s your earliest memory of creativity?
Dr Hinemoa: People may not know what crepe paper is, but it used to be a thing. I must have been quite little, maybe four or five years old. I don't think I’d started school but I do remember making these massive red crepe paper flowers with Mum at home.
We were very lucky. Our mum could draw a horse that actually looked like a horse. That's not easy. She was a fantastic artist. I remember her drawing a cicada once, and it was really, really good. Anatomically correct.
"She was a fantastic artist. I remember [mum] drawing a cicada once, and it was really, really good. Anatomically correct."
CMUA: Have you had an unforgettable creative experience?
Dr Elder: I've had so many amazing creative experiences in my life. I can think of one more recently that was absolutely jaw-droppingly brilliant. It's a show called Whakapaupakihi.
The Tuari siblings, who are forces of nature and incredibly brainy, and also musicians and theatre makers created this musical piece which combines haka and theatre. Stunning, mindblowing.
CMUA: Considering the Maramataka and how the lunar cycle can influence us, what can we get from looking up?
Dr Hinemoa: Look up, look out, look at the weather, think about the lunar cycle, think about Hina. I think of her as Papatūānuku’s bestie. She's going around and around Papa, she always shows her the same face, she never turns her back on Papa.
This is a predictable friend travelling around us all the time, reminding us if you didn't get it right last month, you get to try again in a month's time. Huna is going to come around, or Rākaunui, or Ōturu. Another key element of creativity from our tūpuna is that our days have names, and you can have a different relationship with time and with each day, because it has its own name.
I'm a big fan of paying exquisite attention to whatever the face of Hina is telling us today.
CMUA: Do you have a creative pastime?
Dr Hinemoa: I'm doing creative things all the time. When I'm at home by myself with my whānau, we do like to make food together. It’s a time where we are joking and laughing and teasing each other, telling stories and ribbing each other. That's part of our creative lexicon.
I’m sure all whānau have, or can discover, what your creative language might be that you have with each other. Ours is about cooking kai, gathering kai from the garden, and having fun with that.
CMUA: Do you have a signature dish?
Dr Hinemoa: I have a couple of signature dishes. Slow-cooked lamb shoulder is one that is, I've heard, not too bad.
CMUA: On curating and sharing whakataukī, which became the book Aroha, what drew you to that kaupapa?
I love whakataukī and whakatauākī because they are nuggets of wisdom that generally come from the natural world. They're so relatable, even if they were coined, written, or spoken first a thousand years ago.
I do encourage you all to compose your own. I love them because if you're a second-language learner like me, they're short and they don't always obey Māori grammatical rules, so you've got a bit more flexibility there in terms of grammar.
They’re something handy and short that you can carry around and use with your whānau, with your workmates, with your team. Whether you're playing sports or whether you're putting on a play, whakataukī and whakatauākī can synthesise and summarise an idea, a thought, a lesson, a directive.
CMUA: What does the writing process add to you as a person?
Dr Hinemoa: I've always loved writing. When I was a young girl at school we had a teacher, Mrs Paul. She said to us as a class: "We're going to do lots of creative writing this year, class. There's a few words that you're not allowed to use.” One was “go”, and one was “get.”
I got this idea of me whakawhānui, to broaden your vocabulary, to be evoking different kinds of emotions. How did you go somewhere? Did you walk? Did you run? Did you jump? Did you fly?
I write for my own mental health. I write because it makes me feel good, because it challenges me to refine what it is I'm really trying to communicate.
If I had to choose some areas that I'd like to explore more, poetry is something I've always really loved.
CMUA: Do you think of Aotearoa as a creative country?
Dr Hinemoa: I do, because creativity is coming out of the ground. Just look at our whenua, just look at our ngahere, look at our landscapes of sky. Aotearoa.
I think as an incredibly diverse, amazing, rich community of people here, we have so many creative assets. We have vocabularies and stories. You just need to spend a little bit of time on the marae or in the supermarket to see that we're all being creative every day, but we maybe don't even realise it.
CMUA: What is a creative moment that made Aotearoa?
Dr Hinemoa: We might say, when Kupe and his waka arrived, did that make Aotearoa?
I think we are made by a series of millions and millions of creative moments that we all contribute to, that's continuing to shift and change and build the creative pātaka kai that we have as Aotearoa.
CMUA: What’s a creative moment that made you?
Dr Hinemoa: There was a sperm and there was an egg, and they came together very creatively. That was a creative moment that made me. That's, perhaps, a biological interpretation.
"Allow yourself some freedom to try something a little bit different, and be proud of what you do. We're all just doing our best."
CMUA: How would you encourage New Zealanders to get more creativity into their lives?
Dr Hinemoa: Vote for creativity. That’s about voting for health and all the creative things that are meaningful to you.
Creativity is, to a certain extent, about taking a leap of faith. Allow yourself to not be perfect. You plan things to go a certain direction, didn't quite work out that way, but what did you learn? I'd encourage people ,to think about keeping an open mind. What are the creative sparks? What excites you?
No matter where you're at on the spectrum of creativity today, allow yourself some freedom to try something a little bit different, and be proud of what you do. We're all just doing our best.
You don't have to paint a Picasso. Not everybody is capable of this kind of art, and that's not what creativity is alone. It's in all the little tiny moments in our lives.