Whakapapa and Cotton. Where the threads intertwine.

We talk about whakapapa often as it relates to us as people, but all things have whakapapa.

This is cotton, ready to harvest. Like us, it too is defined by the whenua on which it stands, by which it is nourished. It is intertwined in the lives and whānau of the community who sow, grow, harvest and depend on it for their whanau's livelihood.

This beautiful ball of cotton that stands in a field in India, is the beginnings of the fibres with which you wrap your Pēpi.

Sometimes, our interconnectedness feels like an abstract idea, but today, standing in a field, listening to the bells of goats returning home at dusk, watching Tamanuiterā descend below the horizon, listening to accents unfamiliar, and the occasional peel of laughter of a child at a nearby kāinga, those hononga, those connections and threads that bind us to these places are not abstract or anonymous 

If we tug on that thread, someone at the other end can feel it. These literal threads and these metaphorical threads, they connect us, and they are spun out of the seed head you see in the photo above.