A Legacy of Raranga: The Māori Craft of Flax Weaving

Moana Rankin (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine) is a multi-faceted wahine: a mother of five, teacher, learner, change-maker and artist (although, not by her own description).

She works as the Māori services librarian in Whangarei – the “small little town trying to be a city”, where she grew up in the 60s – and studies Rumaki Reo, a full immersion Māori language course. 

Throughout her life, Moana has been drawn to the art of raranga – the traditional weaving practice that uses korari (flax) to make baskets, skirts, coats and mats. While the craft is considered a significant part of Indigenous life for Māori, it’s one that’s slipping out of Aotearoa’s cultural consciousness. 

At her Whangarei home, Moana grows flax and creates kete (baskets), which she first remembers seeing hanging on the porch at her grandmother's house.  

VICE spoke to Moana about her drive to connect with nature and her family’s history through the art of flax weaving.

VICE: What is flax weaving?

Moana: For me, it's actually a link back to my great grandmother. That's what it is. It's a real, kind of, touching the past. The stuff that I’m using is the korari (flax) that they used back in the day. 

We missed two generations. My mother never learnt, neither did my grandmother. My parents didn’t encourage the life that they came from, because they were so beaten down at school, and the colonisation process was complete in them. It was awful. 

And so it was my great grandmother that was the weaver. I met her when I was about five years old, because she was calling out for her great grandchildren to come and see her before she passed. She was an amazing woman. She would weave kete for the gardens, or anything else that they needed. 

On the bottom of a kete (basket) is a whiri (plait) that’s made out of muka (the fibre extracted from flax) – and you make that by the way that you take it off the leaf.

You have to divide it into its whenu (strands) and then the way that you pull it off causes it to separate and there's a muka, or a tuft thing, at the end of the whenu, and that’s what you weave with to make the whiri first. That's the base of the kete theory.

And they're a beautiful thing, kete whiri. I call them “the working girls” because you've got the kete whakairo (patterned bags) who are pretty, and they’ve got patterns and they’re dyed. They go to church, they're the nice ones, and everybody’s like, look at my kete whakairo in all its patterns.  But I love the kete whiri. They're an understated, amazing piece of – I would call it – artwork.

Some people want to hang them on the wall. That's a good place to put them while you're not using them. But don't hang them on the wall as trophies, because they want to get out there as well. They might want to go to the beach, but they're sitting there on a fine day on the wall. 

I was a young kōhanga (nursery) mum, and all the mums thought, we just want to make kete. But you can’t do that when you’re a beginner. The kuia (female elder) thought, okay, there's all these young mums that want to make ketes, so she went and harvested korari – which is a job in itself. And there we were with no idea what we were doing. Couldn't make the muka off the korari… just making a mess.

When I’ve taught people at the library, most people say, we want to make kete. And it’s like, first we’re gonna make the most basic thing, and it’s four or five hours just making a kono (small, square basket). There’s certain things that you need to be able to do before you can even think of making your own kete whiri. I’ve made kete whiri that we call gumboots because they turn out so horrible. But you learn. You learn by your mistakes.

Depends on what I’m making. My sons, Toi [and] Manaakitia and I made a wahakura (baby cradle) and that was a long time. It was about three or four hours just preparing. That’s not even weaving it. Because you have to harvest, and then you have to size the whenu, then I had to get the muka so I could plait it. Then we also had to boil the korari to make sure there’s not any kind of rubbish around it, especially when it’s gonna be around babies. Then give it a wash with a hose and then let it dry, let it sit, and you can start the next day. Then the weaving can easily take three hours. 

I've actually planted my own pa korari at my little base that I'm living in. And, for me, I know that if I go and harvest then everything else is just gonna go to blazes. I've had times where I’ve cleaned the bush and thought I'd make something and it's just a complete waste. So I realised, no, just leave it alone until I've actually got the time. 

And before you even do the prep, you've got to go out and do a karakia (prayer), which I love doing. Sometimes I do karakia, sometimes I just tell the korari what I’ve been up to. Ask how they are, speak Māori or sing to them. I tell them how beautiful they are. Y’know, it's all that. Other people might do it differently and do it formally, but for me I feel like I’ve been with them since I was a kid, so the whole formality is gone. I just have such a strong relationship with them. None of them are ugly, we don’t have arguments. I just love the korari. 

When I was younger we always had to be in the garden, or around trees, we didn’t kill wetas because they were seen as something special, and fruit and veggies were always given back to Papatūānuku. There was tikanga there (traditional values). It was this old way of viewing the world. 

We were put in a neighbourhood where there was only our family, and then the rest of the people were pakehas (white New Zealanders). It wasn’t safe to be Māori. In the garden it was safe. The safest place was to talk with the bush. 

I suppose because it's part of who I am, really. I don't want to deny that. That was what I experienced as a child. Like te reo (Māori language), it was in danger of just slipping away and becoming photographs in a book somewhere. 

And I just think, given the state of the world these days, gee, we might have to make kete because we can't just keep manufacturing stuff that is not sustainable. And this is a sustainable practice, because you just grow it, it's not polluting, it's actually beautifying. And then you can make things out of it. And you can go back to it as long as you're looking after them. They'll always be there.

They’re just beautiful. The most satisfying thing to be able to do is harvest and come out with these korari and turn it into something. It’s functional but beautiful. I think it's more than just a craft. It's an expression of who we are.