Digging at the Roots is a haerenga to Sāmoa. I recall stories of my ancestors in the islands they knew as home, while searching for their presence in a convent, along a coastline, and in a village I can only pass through.
Still from Digging at the Roots. November 2019 – July 2020. HD video, 15m 28s.
Digging at the Roots is chapter three of Moana Calling Me Home, a series of moving-image works from a Master of Visual Arts. This transformational research project is a haerenga — a journey — of reconnection with whakapapa, with ancestral relationships, and with Te Moananui a Kiwa: the ocean and her islands from which these relationships emerged.