Rongoā Māori: Donna Kerridge
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Maurizio Benazzo: [00:00:00] Donna Kerridge is a Rongoā Māori practitioner from Waikato at Aotearoa New Zealand. She's an advocate, a healer, a leader, passionate about indigenous practices that focus on healing and restoring traditional wisdom. She's an advisor of the New Zealand Ministry of Health, and she bridges Māori traditional medicine and western system to support collective healing.
Grounded in Mataranga, māori Donna. Oh goodness. Good. See, it's so good to see
you again.
Yay.
Donna Kerridge: Lovely to be here. It's just amazing. Beautiful.
Zaya Benazzo: We were in the other room and you [00:01:00] were just mentioning how challenging was for you to watch the film at the beginning and
Donna Kerridge: yeah, it was, I, first of all, I just wanna say you and the team have done an incredible job.
When I went to watch it last night, I had to turn it off because I was really feeling the message. And in the beginning I'm like, I don't wanna feel afraid, I don't wanna feel angry. I don't think I can watch this. From that beginning part and hearing the stories, even now just talking about it.
Hearing the stories of all those beautiful cultures and how we'd all walked the same path I just found really challenging. So I'm grateful that I'm here speaking with you today because I had to suck it up and I had to go back and watch it because it wouldn't do justice to our talk. And I know we're not talking about the eternal song [00:02:00] today, but I just don't think I cannot talk about it because it was, I think it's a piece for our time.
It's so needed. It's, I felt it was the message that we all needed to hear. There's so much in it. It's a thing for our time. It's just right on par. Nobody needs to feel bad. This is about all of us. We've all suffered from colonization at some point, and I just found. The whole message to be inspiring, but I had to get over myself to begin with.
But the cinematography is beautiful. The storytelling is amazing. I'm just not one who likes scary stories. But if you don't have the, if you don't tell the truth, the story doesn't have any meaning. So thank you. Thank you all. I know there's a [00:03:00] huge team behind you. Yes. Yeah. And that, it takes a lot to put something together, even just to work it out in your own heads, to get it into a way that does justice to all those beautiful speakers.
So thank you. And the team.
Maurizio Benazzo: Thank you God. Thank you.
Donna Kerridge: Thank you. Yeah.
Maurizio Benazzo: And he's only as good as the people on the other side of the camera. He is only as good as what you gave us guidance because you Yeah,
Zaya Benazzo: I remember walking with you that brief walk we did with the camera and you were so at home with every plant.
And you would pick and say, this is one is for the heart, this one is you.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah. It looks, I really
Zaya Benazzo: felt like you are living with the medicine. So just to set a conversation, you what is Rongoā Māori, because we have an a global audience here. Many of us don't know when we use the word Rongoā [00:04:00] Māori, I mean we are talking about worldview, we are talking about way of life, of relating.
Can you speak to us? Sure in words, I know it's way beyond the words, but this is what we've got here in this virtual space.
Donna Kerridge: For me, Rongoā is the word that we use for our healing practice. Like some people might use Ayurveda we use the word Rongoā for Māori, the indigenous, one of the indigenous people.
We have two indigenous people here in Aotearoa, Māori and Māori. I belong to the Māori people. And for us is our healing practice and its name comes from one of our ancestors is often referred to as the guardian of peace of our senses, of our cultivation of [00:05:00] foods. Had a lot of responsibility in our practice comes from those foundations.
So it's really important that it's a way of giving context to life in order that we can find a way to heal. So it's really important that we go right back to the beginning, to our creation stories as part of our healing practices, so that we can understand our place on this earth and our responsibility to to honor our role on this planet and in the universe so that we can be well.
So it's more than plant medicines, it's more than body work. It's more than prayers. It's about knowing how we belong and why we matter, and what our gift is to the rest of our family in the natural world, to the rest of our relations in the natural world.
Zaya Benazzo: That takes me right to the next question.
[00:06:00] How is wellbeing understood in Rongoā Māori? What is healing? What is wellbeing?
Donna Kerridge: I think for me, wellbeing is about connections. It's about the life force, the energy, the qi those things. It is about ensuring that those connections and that vitality continues to flow freely between us, within us, outside of us.
That, for me, is wellbeing, and I know that's the very, very big picture when we try to bring it in. If we don't have the big picture. The bit that we focus on the plant medicine or the body work or the prayers that don't make sense in isolation. So we have to have that big picture. This is just the world [00:07:00] according to Donna of course, but we have to have that big picture in order for the little things for them to shine, for them to be able to do their work.
So I guess for me it's about trying to reveal in a way that we can understand and grasp as humans the blueprint of nature. When we can understand the blueprint of nature that nature provides for us in terms of how we establish our own wellbeing, then we are well on the way. And we don't need teachers like me.
The teachers are out there. They are the oceans, they are the forest, they are the mountains, they are the stars in the skies. Those are our teachers. And I know it sounds a bit woo, but if we had more time, you can go into how all of that is connected, but I imagine the majority of people listening are equally as woo and probably get it [00:08:00] really quickly.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. I remember when we were walking and you're like, look this plant, you see the, it's shaped like the heart. It tells us that it's a medicine for the heart. So is that where UA more knowledge comes from? Like I often wondered like, how did our ancestors know that this particular plan is for this particular disbalance in our body?
Donna Kerridge: I think we have to remember that we are both physical and spiritual beings. And so there's more than looking. There's more than seeing. And our ancestor, all, he looked after all the senses, but not sight. So he was everything else but that which we could see. And so we learn how to harness those other senses in order to bring that wisdom forth.
That [00:09:00] nature shares with us openly. We've just shut ourselves off in modern times from using those ways of knowing and understanding the world. And back in the day they called that superstition, but it's I don't know how you term the word superstition, but to me there's nothing superstitious, there's nothing crazy.
It's just another way of understanding the world. It's not better, it's not worse, it's not right. It's not wrong. It just is. And so when we can draw on all of those senses, our sight, belief. Does tell us that it's good for it for us as a heart, for the heart, but we also look at it what is its gift to its fellow citizens in the forest?
What is its gift inside the forest? And then we have a really good sense of how that most likely [00:10:00] will help us because we are nature too, and it's gifts are for nature, including us. But if we, sometimes when we are doing healing or medicine work, we forget that there's a spiritual element to us equally important.
So a big part of the healing practice is making sure that the glue that binds our physical selves and our spiritual selves is really tacky. Strong to hold that bond and then we can be whole and then we have access to so much more than we think we are capable of understanding. I hope that answered the question.
Zaya Benazzo: It does and more.
Donna Kerridge: Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: I wonder when someone comes to my more healer [00:11:00] with this balance or illness or symptoms, illness, what are you looking for? Are you searching for the root cause? Are you, where do you begin?
Donna Kerridge: I think that there's, for me, one of the assumptions that I make is that there is, physical disease, emotional disease things born of trauma are often as a result of an imbalance.
Yeah. Particularly when sickness is recurring, multiple different illnesses, the same one again and again. There's a definite pattern. There's a definite pattern that I see across human existence today and where there's a lot of imbalance, there's a lot of disease, and that is almost [00:12:00] always coupled with disconnection from nature.
The people who live in nature have nowhere near the recurrence of disease that the rest of us who live in cities have, and if they do have a sore ankle, they get on with it. We don't labor the, we don't labor the challenge. We know that it will come right as we reconnect and live a life. That is in harmony with nature.
And I guess I am leaping into big places and I'm a, I know that you guys get this stuff and I should probably come back a little bit. I'm sorry. What I see is patterns. A disconnection is a pattern for me, and I see those patterns in loneliness. When people are lonely. We are unwell and we can see that in all sorts of manifestations.
We eat differently, we don't [00:13:00] socialize, we opt out we exercise differently. All of those things, or we have lost hope, and that leads to illnesses that we see with our eyes, that we feel in our bodies. We experience in our minds. And when we lose hope, that's where we find our people who have addictions.
The people, when we move into that addictive behaviors or addictive substance space we've lost hope. It's also, sadly, where we see our suicides is when people have lost hope. These are the real sicknesses, not a twisted ankle, not an upset stomach, not a pounding head. The other thing is that when we forget or [00:14:00] we lose our connection to where we belong, where we know we belong, we become unwell.
We don't know which way is up. We don't know how to behave. We don't know what's right or wrong anymore. We are confused. And then when we forget just how precious we all are and how the smallest gift that we might possess could be extremely important to one of our relations, one of our relations in the natural world, but nonetheless important, no matter how tiny, now when we come, become disconnected in any of those four ways, that's where we see real illness.
And so the remedy could be a really nice tonic that you can drink to make your heart feel better, to make it work better, [00:15:00] or to take the swelling out of your sore ankle or to help you sleep better. But these things will keep coming back if we don't address our. Our loneliness, our lack of hope, our disconnection from the natural world and from each other.
Our sense of belonging. If we don't restore our sense of belonging, and if we fail to see the gift that we bring, or we fail to remind others of the gift they bring, this is how we truly heal. Moving into plant medicines though along with many others, whether that's our music, the sounds, the vibrations, our ceremony, our songs, our prayers, whichever door you come in, they all lead to the same place.
But for me, [00:16:00] plant medicines, the plants are a way of being our teachers. We walk into the forest and we look at the landscape and we go. I wonder what your gift is to the world of anything, no matter how small in the forest that we see, because we all come with a gift. We all exist only because everything else exists.
So when we can see the gifts that this plant or that plant or this fungi or that fungi brings to the world, that stream, that wind that type of rain, and here in New Zealand we have something like 300 names for wind, all the different types of wind, and they all come with their own special gift.
And so when we start to understand this, understand these things, these gifts, then we can [00:17:00] work with our relations in the natural world. To bring about healing and balance because we understand the gifts that each other bring. And one of the things that we could do now to heal our world is to look into our children's eyes.
No matter how young to watch them and to see the gift that they bring. We know them. We just don't go slow enough. Sometimes the way a child puts a hand on somebody tells you whether or not they have the gift of touch. The way a child picks up a tiny bee and doesn't get stung tells us they have a gift with the insects.
The child who likes their hands in the dirt. We see the gifts of a gardener. We can see these in this in children very young. And when we remind our children of the gifts they bring, when life gets difficult, when they get [00:18:00] older and they teach a little bit. They can clinging to their gifts in order to keep them steady, to be able to give back to the world, to share their gifts, to give them purpose, and they're not teetering anymore.
They're not on that brink anymore. So learning plant medicines for me has been the window to understanding the gifts of everything that our mother, earth papa shares with us. And you can do that whether you come through the weaving crafts, through the vibrational crafts, through our singing crafts, whichever way you go, it's about learning the gifts and the connections that are essential to life.
Zaya Benazzo: [00:19:00] How we were so as stunned when we speak to Māori friends and they would say, I can recite my genealogy, my whakapapa back po to 13 generations back. And we were like, yeah. How the disconnect many of us feel is the disconnect from land and the disconnect from ancestors. Or the forgetting.
Yeah. 'cause ancestors, they've never left, but there is many of us feel disconnect. Can you speak? And that was
Donna Kerridge: deliberate.
Zaya Benazzo: And it was deliberate. Many, of course.
Donna Kerridge: Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: How that comes into healing, the connection
Donna Kerridge: yeah. You have a wonderful memory. I know you have a wonderful memory. [00:20:00]
Maurizio Benazzo: It's insane. She remembers. We have 140 terabytes of the film. She remembers every word that people say, and I barely remember where were we? It is incredible. It is
Donna Kerridge: yeah. Yeah. You really embody it. Zaya. Thank you for that.
Thank you for listening to us. Thank you for sharing our story. Our connection our Whakapapa, which is loosely translated to ancestry, is really important to us because we are the living faces of our ancestors. We are them and they are us. There's no getting away from that. We, they are in our bones and the more that, that we appreciate.
How we got to be here. The more we understand our job, the more we understand our gift. So whakapapa or ancestry is extremely important. And it goes it's [00:21:00] not our human ancestry, it's just the last little bit. It's our evolution, ancestry, and it goes all for us. It goes all the way back to land and beyond.
So you are absolutely right that the, our word for land is whenua. That, but really how that translates is to what sustains us. So whenua is land and that's what sustains us when we walk on this earth and when we are in our mother's womb, it is the placenta that sustains us. And so we have the same word for placenta as we do for land.
It's that which sustains us. And we shouldn't forget that. If we forget that we sever a connection, we sever our connections all the way back to our beginning. [00:22:00] And if we don't have all of those connections, there's pieces missing. So being able to know our journey, not just human, is really important to us.
And I think for most cultures around the world, we don't measure time and hours or minutes or weeks or even years. We measure them in generations. We measure time in generations. And so that helps keep us connected, keeps us in sync. My ancestors, and I'm sure many others, yours and many others.
You spoke to over the production of these, this beautiful coming together of all this knowledge, we knew things that science is only discovering now. Our people knew that Saturn had rings around her. Now [00:23:00] we didn't have telescopes. There was no nasa. There was, there was no, there were no spaceships.
That I know of, but there were no spaceships. But we knew that Saturn had rings around her by the name we gave to her. That same name is also used for Pluto. Now, NASA only discovered that Pluto had rings around her Jupiter. Sorry. Jupiter. Jupiter had rings around her in the 1990s. We've known that forever.
It's in our stories. It's in the names that we give to those stars. So how did our people know this? How did they know to use a very specific unit of measure that, we don't see in many places here in Ro. There is one specific one in the place where I come from [00:24:00] that was used to build a place of healing that is the same unit of measure that was used to place the stones at Stonehenge and to build the pyramids in Egypt.
That came to an old lady in her dream. She knew when she awoke how to build the house and what unit of measure and exactly where on the land to put it.
There is a spiritual element to us. That is so important that we cannot deny. And until we join those together, we are missing out on so much. I don't. And it is that spiritual connection to land, that spiritual connection to the heavens, to the oceans that makes us whole, that allows us to be whole is when we bind those two.
So [00:25:00] Māori for me is about the bond between the physical and the spiritual and strengthening that we call that modi. We call not Māori modi. And that is the glue between the physical and the spiritual. And it begins at the time of conception for us as humans. And it leaves us at the time of death when we return back to our mother.
It and it goes to enrich our moori, goes to enrich the world that we have gone back to. So building and protecting the moori and also the dignity. Mana is a word that we have people call it self-esteem. I don't really abide by the self part of it because, we don't see, ever see ourselves as individuals.
We are part of a bigger story, [00:26:00] a bigger landscape, a bigger ecosystem. Yes, we are an ecosystem in our own bodies, but that body can only exist because it's part of another ecosystem much bigger than itself. And so making sure that the glue that keeps us whole is what we are doing is healers. Finding the physical and the spiritual so that we can be whole and we can be well, maintaining the Modi or the life force, the vitality and the dignity of everyone and everything.
We all come with a gift. Yeah, to me that's the underlying notion. Plants are like the, they're very important. I'm not dismissing their value, but they're what we can see. They're the little bit, they're the icing on the cake. They're there's so [00:27:00] much more. But when we only rely on our mind and our sight, we miss a whole lot more that we could know.
Our people knew stuff that. Scientists are just discovering at the moment. And, we're constantly discovering and relearning and remembering, and the stuff that we knew about epigenetics, we knew about intergenerational trauma long before it was a thing in our lifetimes. So we always understood the impact of intergenerational trauma.
And so we had that in, in our plan for how, for restoring wellbeing of both the planet and of the people and of everything else that lives as part of this ecosystem. That was superstition, that was all these funny things, these terrible things that we shouldn't do. We even made [00:28:00] laws against, you're not allowed to prophesize, we can't see it, so therefore it's not real.
So you're not allowed to prophesize. We will make a law that says that's illegal and you can't do that. But that was our way of understanding the world. And I would just say that, people look at it and they go, it's hocus pocus. I go, no, it's a miracle. It's a miracle. And miracles are real.
And miracles are just things that science have yet to discover. 'cause just the fact that we are talking now across the world, 80 years ago that would've been considered a miracle. You're dreaming, you can't talk to Maurizio and zaya in another part of the world. That's impossible. You're crazy.
We might lock you up and we'll give you some medicines to make you better as well. But now we know more and we're constantly learning. And in, in an indigenous world [00:29:00] that's remembering. That's remembering from deep in our bones. There's a lot of stuff that we know. There's some amazing things.
I'm sure everybody listening to this has amazing things have fallen out of their mouth and they've gone, oh my goodness, where did that come from? It came from our ancestors. They're whispering to us all the time. We've just forgotten to listen and we go so fast we can't hear sometimes.
Zaya Benazzo: Yes,
Donna Kerridge: we don't reconnect.
We don't sit in nature. I have 15 minutes to go to the beach this afternoon. I'll go and sit on the shore today and watch the waves, but when 15 minutes is up, I must go because I have another appointment, rather than sit there and listen to the wisdom of the ocean.
Zaya Benazzo: You are carrying on something Atarangi said a few days ago when we ask her what is the challenge to be a healer in modern time, having ancestral medicine working with the ancient [00:30:00] technologies.
And she's the biggest challenge is that we live here. Most of modern life happens here.
Donna Kerridge: Yes. She's so right.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. And you speaking to that, like how do you relate, your ancestor had fast knowledge that, like you're saying, scientists are beginning to understand like how do we, the other piece that, pat McCabe said this morning in the movie, we have this kind of, oh, you need something incomprehensible. But what does it mean incomprehensible? It means like we can't understand it here. Yeah. And if we don't understand it here, it cannot be. Yeah. So we are invited to step out of that knowing certainty, that space here.
Yeah. Speaking to this very nature of that, this knowing we are one click away from an answer. We never ponder about things. We never sit and listen, like you said to the waves. [00:31:00]
Donna Kerridge: And we are becoming so afraid of making mistakes.
Maurizio Benazzo: Oh, that's the,
Donna Kerridge: I have never learned from anything other than a mistake. I only learn from mistakes, be they mine or somebody else's. I'd like them to be somebody else's, but actually most of them are mine. But I only learn from my mistakes. But we are so risk averse today. We don't stand up and give a talk without fact checking everything we say what have I learned by doing that?
I just, I learn from getting it wrong where people will sit down with me and share their conversation share their history, and then I learn, I get an opportunity to learn. I'm getting to the age now where I better start, stop making mistakes and start sharing some of the things I've learned.
But yeah, we are so risk averse. We don't [00:32:00] take a step without knowing. Is that step solid? Will it hold my weight? Can I go across it? We, yeah, we, like you say, we are here. We're always thinking, and if we can't rationalize it, it's not real.
Zaya Benazzo: Yes. Yes. So you mentioned that Ru Māori has, what are the pillars of Ru Māori?
You mentioned prayers, but it's not really prayer. What is it that, no.
Donna Kerridge: We have all our different ceremonies that help us connect to that invisible realm, if you like. We have, the world's made up of the scene in the unseen heaven and earth. We, we do things like body work, but that's, in our modern world, we think, oh, that's working with the physical, but it's more than working with the physical, it's working with the whole person.
We have our, what we call, [00:33:00] which people translate that to prayers. To me it's setting in tension. It's about invoking protection from those that have gone before us and the wisdom of those that have gone before us. It's about creating a modi and energy that belongs. For example, us talking today, creating an energy that just belongs to this time to see us through this process and us and all our ancestors that sit with us are there making this happen in a way that is safe, that is constructive that helps ourselves and others to be well.
We have we have the people who have the gift of second sight. They are the people who can just connect like that to the spiritual realm, and they're able to articulate those message much more clearly than those of us who might be busy [00:34:00] getting the messages through the earth, through our gardening or all of those things, or through the rituals left to us by our elders.
We have lots of different types of Kaia. We have those Kaia, those chants that are rhythmic and repetitive and boring to the outside world, but they help our brainwaves move onto another level so that knowledge is able to move more freely. It doesn't get stuck on the way down. It can just flow. So we have all these techniques about how to connect to find the answers to questions.
To help improve the flow of energy between all of us, between us, between the plants between the, with the animals and the insects and the water, all of those things. So there's a lot of avenues that we can [00:35:00] use. We use water a lot. That is a great conductor for us. There's yeah, there's lots of ways.
I think everything is healing in its own way. It's just understanding the gift of something.
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah. And if, sorry. Yeah, sorry. And if someone feels disconnected from their lineage where do they start to listen? Where do they start to remember? Do you have any tips for the baby steps we should take?
Donna Kerridge: Often I have people, and it's really hard. For people when they look at you and you, and although they listen to the way you speak and you are clearly from somewhere and you're expected to be the font of all knowledge on those things, and if you've been disconnected through colonization, that is a pain, that's an ache.
We call [00:36:00] it the world calls it trauma, I call it. It's an ache. It's an ache that sits within us. And that can exacerbate that ache. We need to create spaces where it's safe for people to not know these things, and they can learn alongside everybody else that is wanting to learn, wanting to come in your front door, as opposed to perhaps their grandparents' front door.
The way is to spend time in nature. Nature will heal us. I don't know anybody who goes into the forest that, that walks in there for a walk that comes out feeling angry or hurt or all of those feelings that we don't like to feel. Nature heals us. We hurt children. We happen to be the naughtiest, I think, but, and the youngest, we love all our children.
Whether they're naughty or not, [00:37:00] there's no competition or there shouldn't be any competition. And so we are just one of her children and she will heal us. For me, it's the ocean. It's the ocean that calls me, even though I do a lot with plants. But we are either mountain people, ocean people, or forest people go to the place that we connect and I think we know what we are.
I am a bit of all three, and I think we all are a bit of all three. But there's one that's stronger. And when you go and spend time in those places, we are quiet, we are peaceful, we are calm. Nature will teach us. Nature is our teacher. And we wonder sometimes why we can't be well. If nature is our font of healing, [00:38:00] how can we be?
If we don't know nature. Many of us, we don't even like nature. It messes up our hair. The wind makes us cold. The, the sun burns our skins and skin and creates wrinkles. We refer to the tiniest little insects as creepy crawlies. We couldn't be more disparaging if we tried. We live in our air conditioned homes and see my air conditioner up there.
We live in our air conditioned homes. We get in our air conditioned cars and we go to our air conditioned jobs. And all of that's designed to keep nature out. Yes. How can nature heal us if we don't even know it? So we have to get back into nature and there's no, I don't think there's any right or wrong way.
Yeah. We just need to allow ourselves to be part of our family, our wider family, to be part of nature, to go sit in [00:39:00] nature. We have amazing researchers on the planet, but most of them are so busy researching nature that they forget to go in nature. They're in their labs, they're in their labs.
They're and no disrespect to you guys, but they're looking through a screen. What we need to do is put all of these things down for a time at least, and just be
Maurizio Benazzo: Yeah. Sorry. Fascinating part is that we are nature. What are we made of? I'm made of water, mineral, bacteria, virus. By what am I made of?
I don't know, plastic, which is even nature by the way. That is, what am I made of? If I don't, if I don't respect nature, how can I respect myself? And if I don't respect myself, how do I expect to be, wow. Insane to me that that we go out to go to nature know. It's completely,
Donna Kerridge: I remember going for a [00:40:00] walk with one of the people on the Modi film to Ashby.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. That you interviewed
Donna Kerridge: beautiful man. And we took a group into the forest. And he said, our, we've got to go from this point to that point way over there so that we can do our class with our students. And it took us about four hours to get there. It was across a cutdown forest, and if you've ever walked across a cutdown forest, it's really hard.
There's lots of holes, there's lots of things to pull yourself up through. Anyway, we all got there and it was starting to get dark and I said to Toi, don't you think it's time for us to go back? We've got four hours, we've got all these people here. We can't be tro them in the wilderness in the dark. That would be dangerous.
He goes, oh no, it'll be okay. Then I'm watching the time and I'm watching the dark coming, and we are miles from anywhere, no cell phone coverage, lots of water. There's [00:41:00] waterfalls and streams and things like that, and oh goodness, I don't think this is gonna end well. We might have to stay out here. We are walking back, he says it's time for us to go.
And we are walking back and I have a friend next to me and I go, I'm a bit worried about this. And he goes, can you see what I can see? And we're coming the other way. And I looked out and there was a track and it took us 20 minutes to get back. And my friend looked at me and he said, I can just hear our ancestors up there in heaven going, oh my goodness, is this what we left behind?
It was a 20 minute walk, but none of us looked for the most efficient way. Some people went through the waterfall, some went directly across all the fallen trees. Other people went on a scenic tour to get to the other side, four hours. And it was actually a 20 minute walk. And we [00:42:00] struggled. We struggled to get there.
And. It's like we've forgotten to think, we think in a way that our ancestors lead us to, if you just, if we had have just sat there for 10 minutes and were part of the landscape, we would've worked it out really easy. But no, we're off,
Maurizio Benazzo: we're
Donna Kerridge: all excited and we're off. Yeah. But you learn from your mistakes.
I won't make that mistake again. Yes.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah.
Donna Kerridge: It was a very hard walk.
Zaya Benazzo: One thing. I was so moved by walking. We had a walk with Tahe and he would go to a plant and he would say, may I have you Before it he would pick the leaf. He would ask for permission. May I have and tell the leaf what he use it for. Will going [00:43:00] to use it for, or Yeah. We arrive at one forest and he said, this forest is not my people's land.
It's the next tribe. And he's tried to call them on the phone to ask for permission for, to show us the co courage trees. Yes. We couldn't get through. And he's sorry, we can't enter the forest without the permission. That kind of deep respect.
Donna Kerridge: Yeah, respect is key. It's key. Today, we look at indigenous medicines and we look at modern medicine and we both have a gift to bring.
And all we need in order to make that work is respect between the two ways of knowing of understanding the world. That's all it takes. Nobody's eating anybody else's lunch. Nobody's taking from anybody else. It just requires to sit us, to have respect for each other, to say, [00:44:00] you have gifts. They're amazing.
They're different to mine. We have gifts. They're amazing, and the people we serve are richer for us both. It only takes respect for us to be able to really change the course of the world. And his respect for the people he lives alongside is another representation of that. It's, you care for this space.
It's not that they own the land, they don't. They belong to the land and this is the piece I care for, and this is the piece that you care for. And so if I'm going to do something on your piece, I need to make sure I'm not becoming a thorn in the good work you are doing in caring for this space. Yeah. So it's respect.
You're absolutely right.
Zaya Benazzo: [00:45:00] We are coming close to our time and if you, and I wanna take a couple of questions as well, but maybe just a few words because you are walking in both worlds, correct? The western healthcare system, and you're trying to bring indigenous way of knowing and medicine into that.
If you can just share anything about that path, trying to work with Yeah, sure.
Donna Kerridge: So I guess it, it started with, I was in a job like everybody else doing. The good citizen thing. And then one day I woke up and I went, money's not enough. More of [00:46:00] the same job. Boring. Don't like it. I love the people.
I didn't like doing the same thing every day. I am not learning anything. I'm just doing more of the same and the money's not enough to make me wanna do it. There's just no amount of money you could pay me to keep doing that thing over and over again, even though other people would think it was amazing.
And it was for a while. Then I thought, I need to do something else, something that matters to me. So I went off and I was very fortunate, got to work with a lot of different people, a lot of different cultures around the planet in their indigenous ways of healing. And I went, wow, these miracles are happening.
These amazing things are happening. Oh, this is wonderful and I'm very excited, but it's all a bit flaky. I think I need to go and learn some science. So I went and studied science, health science for a little while. For a long while. And then when it came time to, getting your degree [00:47:00] we had an assessment and that assessment required us to do a case study, say how we would treat that person and what we would do to it.
And there was a woman who had all these things going on, young children. And I had done my, the final assessment, done the treatment plan, everything else, and we were reciting our treatment plans back to our collective group. And I was listening to everybody else. Mine was the same. I was listening to everybody else and I'm going, oh my goodness, we've missed the point, what she needs, most of all, as a babysitter, half of those things will resolve without all our drugs, without all our medicines.
We just need to get her a babysitter. And then I suddenly went that doesn't have all the answers either. It's as flaky as the indigenous stuff. So then I just, I knew it was my calling, so I just went, I'm just gonna go with our way of knowing the world, the [00:48:00] Māori way of knowing the world, I'm just gonna go back to my roots and I'm gonna see where that takes me.
Now, since then, I sometimes work as the bridge between the two worlds because I've walked both parts in a minimal way. I wouldn't say I'm an expert in any but I've wor walked both parts and I can see the fear and the challenges and the protectionism on both sides. Fear that somebody's gonna steal our stuff, steal our ideas, fear that these people might take us over, fear that, all of those kind of things.
And so it's reminding us why we walk this path in the first place so that we can start to hear each other again. While that's really challenging, it's been really rewarding too. 'cause it's oh my goodness, I can see people looking at us going, they don't have horns, they haven't got any horns. Those people, and I'm, like the devil.
And then [00:49:00] I'm looking at them going, they're actually quite a good sort. They're not trying to push the health industry down our throat. These individual people have hearts and minds and ancestors just like we do. And we all actually want the same thing. And I just find that so rewarding.
Zaya Benazzo: Wow.
Yeah. New radical bridger. Yeah. Do you wanna bring a couple of question? It was
Maurizio Benazzo: an interesting question. How do you reconcile what we are learning this week and the age of tech, which is similar to what you already answer, that we are currently in. How do you find the balance with the signing of these terms and condition that we all have to, how do you find a balance, to the bottom line?
Donna Kerridge: I guess to be honest, the terms and conditions on paper in contract don't matter to me. And in the beginning they did, I said, oh, I must be good. I [00:50:00] must do this, and therefore I must honor it and I must do all of these things. Now it's if that's what we need to do to get this beautiful message out, then fine.
I'll sign, talk to the hand. I'm still gonna do what I do because that's what I believe to be right for now. But I'll play the game. My heart is here. And what I've learned over time is when you use your ancestors as your judge and jury, you find that their standards are a lot higher and a lot harsher than any contract law that any terms and conditions might be thrown at us.
Yeah, they have much higher standards. So yes, I play the game and I don't mean to be disrespectful for anybody. I never wanna steal anybody's stuff. I'm happy to sign the forms. I'm happy that we are recording this and all the tech that goes into it. I don't think, to be very honest, that I've [00:51:00] truly appreciated it until I watched Eternal Song this brought, so we live here in at the bottom of the world.
The whole world revolves around us, we think. We see all these beautiful cultures out there, you brought them into us. We are not alone. Our struggles are the same, our joys are the same, and we are filled with hope and empowerment because of the tech that enabled us to be in the same space at the same time.
I can't overstate that. Yeah, and I'm so looking forward to seeing you in Sonia. Just had to slip that in and show off. Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: And you are reminding us of the billions of years of ancestors that we all have and come from. And you have, [00:52:00] because maybe were, you were the last one to be colonized, but you have so many lineages of intact knowledge that helps us remember those who come
Donna Kerridge: places.
We are blessed.
Zaya Benazzo: Yes, we
Donna Kerridge: are blessed and we can all help each other. Yeah. Yeah. We, nobody has a perfect picture of it. That's the problem. But that's also the exciting part. That's the beauty. It forced us. I look, I know that we are up getting close to time, but I look at my teachers and I look now, I look back and I go, they were quite coming.
They put all that knowledge in that person. They put all that knowledge in that person and they put that knowledge in that person. Those people need each other to have a whole picture. They will never walk alone in this work because we need each other. They were very clever. And I look at our people.
We never had a written language, [00:53:00] and it wasn't because we weren't clever, it's because our old people knew to instill the knowledge in us. So it was always with us, it would always be available for our children, our grandchildren, yet to be born. They knew that is where the gift is to embed knowledge inside of us.
Not on paper. Not on film, but what I see in your film is this door opening that says, come on in.
Maurizio Benazzo: Oh, it's amazing. That's the same we heard this morning. Somebody else said the same thing. Oh, wonderful. It is like a do and it and is now making sense. It didn't make sense in the making obviously. 'cause we just have to, we follow And again, you were talking about the terms and condition.
And the higher standard. If you don't follow the terms and condition of what is channel that you [00:54:00] need to do, they're higher standard, but the penalty for failing are even harder. So you better absolutely what you're set to do. And if you do it, then these miracles happen. And if you don't do it.
You're in trouble, and today somebody was talking just about that, the, that door that open.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. One last question, Kayleigh has, Donna, do you feel the energy of the body when you're doing healing is the vibration that you're tuning into As a healer, I tune into the body through the vibration and feel my way through the landscape of identified areas that are not flowing, areas that are not flowing.
What is your way? What's your intuition? How do you Yeah.
Maurizio Benazzo: Do you do it how you
Donna Kerridge: do
Maurizio Benazzo: it? So
Donna Kerridge: ours is, we do that as body workers. Absolutely. Absolutely. If you are working with the body for me, if I'm working with the body [00:55:00] all the time, my hands, I. My, my sense of breath, all of those things becomes hypersensitive.
If I'm off doing work with, the powers that be, the ones that are trying to change everything, but I'm off doing work with them, I lose that sensitivity for a while until I'm back in that work again, and I just move into that flow and that energy that's able to inform my practice and what I do.
So yes, I absolutely agree. That is how it works. There's, I could tell many stories about how that comes to us and the results that come from that. And that's definitely in the miracle realm. And for my first few years of practice, that was definitely in the ooky spooky corner. I'm not looking, I.
That was stuff I couldn't explain. I know it was real. I know it happened, but I'm not looking at it. I'm not gonna be bigheaded about it. I certainly didn't do that. 'cause even if I did, I don't know [00:56:00] how I did it. But I've moved on since then and I've learned a lot more. But there was a period when that all sat in the corner and went, that's lovely.
That happened. Thank you for sharing that with me. Now can we just pretend it didn't? 'cause I need to talk with some other people now.
Maurizio Benazzo: So beautiful.
Donna Kerridge: So thank you for that question.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah. Thank you Kelly. We have come to the end of our time together and more of Don's wisdom and knowledge will be shared through the Māori, which
Maurizio Benazzo: is called Māori, as you were saying, Māori
Zaya Benazzo: ma name.
Donna Kerridge: Māori Māori. Māori. Māori is the energy that binds the physical and the spiritual. It's a beautiful name and it's also part of your name, Maurizio. I know I never had
Maurizio Benazzo: the courage to say it, but I, and as a baby, my father called my father, my grandma. My, my ally. [00:57:00] Māori is the short for, and when we put the name out, I didn't say ever anything, but I always felt like giggle.
I
Donna Kerridge: think that your film carries the energy that connects us all.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you dear. Thank you DOnna, so much for sharing. So generously your different experience and wisdom
Donna Kerridge: thank you. And thank you all to everybody we've shared on all of these beautiful films that you've done.
Zaya Benazzo: Yeah.
Donna Kerridge: Yeah.
Zaya Benazzo: Thank you. May they serve as medicine. [00:58:00]
