Te huna

When Tāwhirimātea came down out of the sky, Haumia-tiketike did the sensible thing. He hid.

He and his brother Rongo went into their mother. Papatūānuku covered them, and the storm went over the top, and they survived. In some tellings she did not hide them well enough — a few fronds, a few leaves left showing above the ground — and that is why you can still find fernroot by the green above it. The giveaway is the gift.

Now, Tūmatauenga did not think much of that. Tū stood and took the storm, and afterwards he judged his brothers for running, and he dug Haumia and Rongo out of the earth with a kō (digging stick) and ate them. Which is why we dig for food. Every time you pull something out of the ground, that is the aftermath of a family argument.

But do not let Tū's opinion settle the matter, because the kōrero is more generous than he is.

Haumia is uncultivated food — the food nobody planted. Aruhe, the fernroot of the bracken, above all: pounded, roasted, chewed, the staple that carried whole communities through winter and through war. Pikopiko, the young fern shoots. Berries — tawa, hīnau, karaka once it was treated. Kareao. Watercress later. Everything the land offers without being farmed.

Understand what that meant in practice. Rongo's kūmara is beautiful, but it is fragile: it depends on the right slope, the right soil, the right season, and it can fail. Haumia does not fail. Fernroot grows on disturbed ground everywhere, whether anyone tends it or not. When the crop failed, when the taua came through and the māra (garden) were burnt, when people had to move — Haumia is what they lived on.

So the misunderstanding to clear away is that wild food was second-rate food. It was not. It was the safety net that held everyone up, and it had its own tikanga and its own expertise. Knowing which ridge had the best aruhe (fernroot), when to lift it, how long to dry it, how to pound it so it was worth eating — that was knowledge, held and passed on, the same as any other.

There is a second thing in Haumia, and it is the shelter.

He is the one who took cover. In a whakapapa full of brothers standing and pushing and fighting, here is one whose whole story is: I went to my mother and I waited it out and I lived. That is not cowardice. Some storms are not to be stood in. Knowing which is which is its own kind of wisdom, and everybody who has ever survived a bad year knows it.

So Haumia carries three things you can actually use.

The fallback. What do you have when the plan fails? Not in theory — actually. Who would you go to. Where would you go. In tikanga terms: where is your papakāinga (home base / ancestral home), who is your whānau, what is the ground that will take you back.

Rest without guilt. He hid in his mother and it was the right decision. You are allowed to go to ground.

And the untended abundance. Most people walk past food every day and do not see it. There is watercress in that drain, blackberries on that fence line, puha (sow thistle greens) in the paddock, a plum tree over someone's back fence heavy with fruit that will rot on the ground.

That is the first step, and it is a small one. Find one edible or useful plant growing untended near where you live. Learn its name — the reo (language) name if you can. Do not necessarily pick it. Just know it is there.

Because that is what Haumia actually is: knowing what the land will give you when nobody is looking after you.