Once we arrived in Wellington, the windy capital of New Zealand, we headed for Te Papa museum, a famous place with many interactive exhibitions taking you through New Zealand's natural and human history. Just by chance we came across a conference on Traditional Knowledge. Rich decided that it's a pity we can't to anything about it as it would be interesting to see but obviously all the participants were registered earlier. I found one of the organisers who told us to ring him the next morning and he would see if he could fit us in for one day. The next day we spent listening to indigenous speakers talking about their cultures, indigenous people's role in science, art and politics and once again we postponed our further trip for one day. Never assume that things are impossible.

The speakers on the conference ranged from professors, doctors, politicians and tattoo artists but they all tried to answer the same question - the place for indigenous people in the modern world, what's their role in it and how to support their unique culture. One of the speakers said that whilst it is understandable that some people get upset about the commercial use of indigenous motifs which used to be sacred, if an artist uses them then he can make more people aware of that culture. "We have to surround ourselves with our culture" she said. It was a very good point. In old times people were surrounded by their traditional culture and their traditional art was the only one to which they were exposed. In a world dominated by the mass media and western culture it's difficult to notice indigenous art unless it becomes more common, even more aggressive.

Soon we were to meet someone who remained faithful to the old traditions despite living in the modern world and in the modern way. We drove from Wellington to Wanganui, where we met with a Maori elder, a Kuia. Her name was Olive and she lived just outside the town with her sister, Sue. The house looked a bit spooky from the outside with a garden full of birds. Sue opened the door and let us into the living room with a fire place and a smell of incense. Photos hung on the walls showing the family, ancestors and indigenous people from other parts of the world. Olive had just come back from an indigenous people conference in Australia so we were thankful that she met us despite being really tired.

We discovered that Sue was 82 and Olive 76, but both ladies, despite their grey hair looked to me far younger than this. The reason we wanted to meet Olive was that she was a traditional spiritual healer. We ended up talking for quite a few hours to both ladies about everything, starting on spiritual healing which we will write something about in the customs and traditions section of the website, the future for Maori, politics and two dogs who found their home in the house. Olive turned out to be a trained nurse but later on decided to use, in her work, the traditional knowledge that she grew up with. A lot of her healing is based on ancient Maori rituals but she also incorporates in her practice the knowledge gained from other indigenous people. Apparently the most rewarding work she did was with prisoners who are also sometimes her patients. They come with their wardens and Olive does a lot of psychological work on them and what she calls "mind change". This wasn't the first time we heard or even witnessed some corrective work being done with prisoners or ex offenders and it seems that New Zealand is quite big on finding ways to not just punish but also try and help people who have problems with the law and to bring them back into society.

Next day we made a trip up the river to a fairly isolated region. To get there we had to drive for 20 km up a narrow dirt road bordered with high cliffs on one side and steep cliffs and the river on the other. It was raining and there were quite a few landslips and we were wondering if we will be able to make it or will we be stuck somewhere on the way. When we arrived in Pipiriki, a small village on the Whanganui river, it was already quite dark. We were supposed to meet Josephine, one of the owners of River Adventures who normally, in weather better than this, operate jet boats for tourists. We couldn't really imagine this place full of tourists as these tourists, and we knew there were many of them, didn't seem to make much change to the infrastructure of this little village.

Josephine was a Maori woman from Te Atihau - nui - a - papa - rangi tribe who lived all her life on the river. We talked briefly by the gate. It seemed to me that at first Josephine was a bit unsure maybe about inviting strangers to her house. Then she led us to the room with comfortable armchairs and we talked. It was not till I remembered we had some chocolate and a bunch of bananas that she also remembered she didn't offer us anything to drink. We got hot tea and home made fried bread, very popular amongst Maori people and continued our talk. Josephine told us she is only now learning her Whakapapa (genealogy) and she has worked out 4 generations from her father's side and 3 from her mother's side. Most of the people on the river were somehow related. "That's why once my two daughter got a bit older I sent them off to school, to get a good education but also because I don't want them to end up marrying their cousins. That's why knowing my family tree is also very important".

She talked about the village, the Marae and the old Kuias who know everybody here and their history. "There is an older man who came back to the community recently. He haven't been living many years, he left the village when he was 5 but just the fact that he is old does not make him a respected elder - a Kaumatua in the case of males". We learned that to live here, you have to be accepted by the whole community, otherwise your life is not easy. All the land is owned by the Incorporation. It's tribal land and Maori who live there have shares in it. Only the ones who have the shares can make any decisions about the land. Josephine doesn't have any shares, they will come to her only when her parents pass away. There are Pakeha people living here too, Josephine's husband is one, but they have mostly intermarried with local people. We talked for 5 or so hours and Josephine was upset she didn't know more about us before because she could have cooked a proper meal, like a roast of wild pork that her husband had hunted.

She almost rung her father very late at night to see if he could quickly make Rowena bread, a special Maori bread made with potato flour. " My dad or uncles would always go and hunt, they would also bring some stuff from the city so we always had food, we were never hungry, I don't remember that we ever had to wait of food". Significantly for me was that she made a point of not being hungry whilst for many people this wouldn't be something they would mention, it would be a normal thing probably taken for granted. Well, Josephine also made sure we won't be hungry, not at least for the next 2 or 3 weeks as she decided to give us half of a wild pig she had in her freezer. Josephine was apologetic about the fact that we will have to cook it ourselves

Up the river there was another community but access to them was only through the river, there were no roads. This is where part of Josephine's family lived, anything they needed had to be transported by river. They lived in harsh conditions and had to cope with them. Many, like Josephine's father never left the river. This is where the River Queen movie was filmed with help from the local iwi. The iwi partly sponsored the movie, a romantic story, the background to which was the river's history and Maori wars. The local Kaumatuas made sure that the crew got their facts right and that they didn't film in locations which were tapu, sacred, to the local people, like burial grounds. Driving through this rugged beautiful place brought Josephine's words to me telling us that she was missing the river when she lived away from it and was always drawn back here, and a saying of the 'river people'; "I am the river, the river is me".