Here I Am

My name is Kia West.

Through my Koro, Wetere Tahi, on my mothers side, I come from a long line of Chiefs, Weavers and Teachers.

My greatest ancestor Maniapoto of King Country Te Kuiti, was recognised as the first King of Aoteroa, New Zealand. 

My Great Grandmother Miriama Tahi was a mother to many and was recognised for the fierce homestead she ran, and the fierce love that poured from her and her children back into the Ratana church and their community. 

My Grandmother Tiria Eketone connects me with the blood of many natural healers.

Through my father I come from a long line of British Military Soldiers. 

My Great Great Grandfather Major Dudley Johnson, lives on through his descendents as the Gentle Hero, and is recognised for many great examples of leadership in the battles he fought. 

Through my Great Great Great Gandfather Baronet Sir John Arnott, has inherited me a rather interesting Scottish-Irish lineage with his Philanthropic roles in Politics and journalism.

My Grandparents Valentine and Marianne West have lived as faithful devotees to the Military and Veterans in their later years.

I share this with you, because in my culture we Pepeha with new people as a way to share with you the awa that sustained our food, the waka that carried us across seas, or the Maunga that backed our communities. It is a way to provide landmarks of our journey so that you can map your own coordinates and connection to us. 

Both of my parents for choices of their own, set themselves apart from the many privileges, and shadows, that they were born into from their respective lands, and created their life here in Australia. 

My parents Chris and Teressa West, raised my siblings and I on Yugembeh country. We lived a country life out at Beaudesert for most of my younger childhood where I held leadership roles at Gleneagle State School, as well as in Sports. I had the privilege of attending a private high school education at Kimberly College Carbrook, where I participated in many creative arts projects out in the community. 

I had many hopes as an intelligent young student with many prospects and opportunities available to me. Australia has been a land of great resource and privilege, and I do not take that lightly. 

At the age of 17 I had a serious car accident that resulted in the death of one of my best friends. Any hope of any future seemingly snuffed out the instant they turned off Michelle Medveds life support. I spiralled into drugs and punished myself for 15 years in a cycle of silent violence. 

There were many times I used my voice. There were also many times I stood and used fists. I’ve learned though that in the end, silence got me in the least amount of trouble; and seemingly the most amount of pain. 

For many, many years I have suffered in silence. My choice was to focus instead on  doubling down on developing my own resilience, becoming highly self aware of who I am and why I am the way that I am, so that I can have a greater understanding of why I am experiencing the world as I do. I committed myself to working on my weaknesses by prioritising my strengths. A life long student and a natural creative helped me to hone in on the development of my communication skills by focusing on expanding my vocabulary to try and better explain my experiences, and be curious enough to try and understand others. For the most part, these choices to work on myself looked like me being able to withstand greater amounts of violence, and taking it on the chin in silence. 

For many years I looked the other way. My children were constantly mirroring their father and I but I chose to not really see. I would look the other way because I had no control, and then cower when I was berated for letting it all happen. A constant cycle. I became so unwell and ended up in hospital. This is where I learned that I am not really sick. I was provided resources and contacts to help me get out once and for good and it has been an unravelling of trauma ever since. 

My children have since been sharing with me their own voices, and I have found myself completely isolated in how to navigate it. I contacted one of the resource hotlines I’d been given in hospital and then began the process of calling all of the relevant numbers of the system to try and get some help to navigate all of what my children were sharing with me. 

I sat with the Police, spoke with Child Safety and sat in the school with the Childrens Principal. I shared with them my distress and the complexity of our situation. I used my voice to ask for help.

I heard nothing.

When my daughter used her voice to share with me an experience with another child, I followed the processes of contact and gave the benefit of the doubt. 

I heard nothing. 

This isnt my first rodeo.

After following up once the next day, and again the following week with no other call backs, I gave up.

For months my daughter was coming home saying this child would not leave her alone, and we were repeatedly reassuring her that if the school are not going to stand up for her, then she needs to stand up for herself. She couldnt, she was afraid. She was afraid of being hurt, and she was afraid of getting in trouble. So I used my voice to stand up for my daughter, and I gave a very clear and direct boundary to this child. I listened to the voices of this same child and their parents, as they did to ours.

My reactivity in front of children, was towards the Principal who up until this point had failed to honour her duty to my voice, and my daughters; and the recourse of that was further silence. 

We started seeing more changes to my daughters behaviour at home, and with all of the stress we decided to remove her from the school temporarily and she stayed with my parents. 

The very first day back from holidays and she comes home from school reporting a different student threatening her. The next morning I went into the office to ask to speak to the Principal and was told it would be left as a message. 

When I returned to the school several hours later, it was immediately brushed off as not yet been looked at. 

My voice got loud at the Principal for a second time as I demanded what a follow up looks like in action because up until this point silence has been the only follow through. 

When I finally had the Guidance Officer sit with me in the office and give me an opportunity to use my voice, I was given a rehearsed script with the sole intention of diffusing the situation and get me out. At no point did I really truly feel heard. I left that office with clear actions I was seeking from the school for follow up. Two days later I am being invited to school to have it paraded in front of my children and I, how much our voices dont matter.

For so long I didn’t value my own voice enough. Hearing my daughter use her voice, I’ve realised it mattered, it still matters. Her voice matters even more.

I share this with you because ever since I have used my voice, it has been reinforced to me why we all choose to stay silent and all that is teaching us is just how violent silence is.

Moments before I stood and used my voice from the back of the parade, the Principal had used her voice on stage to share that Childers would be spending the next week putting together their voice for what NAIDOC means to us as a school, and what it means to us to be able to learn from this country we call home. When I stood, I used my voice to demonstrate exactly what it means to me. When I stood, I used the same words that were spoken to my daughter “You said to my daughter that you want to smash me” then I opened my arms and hands out wide and projected my voice over those still applauding him so that he could hear me say “Here I Am Bud.” I then called out the behaviour that my children and I were most injured by “I can see you are getting an award, well done congratulations” and then I sat down and let him feel the ferocity of my Pukana.

In many instances people are afraid when I use my voice, and I have never truly understood why. I have spent the last couple of days deeply considering it. I have come to realise it is not just my voice that they are hearing. When I use my voice, the strength of my ancestors and spirit echoes through me as I speak. My words carry the essence of King Maniapoto on his death bed instructing his descendents to fly straight and on purpose like that of the soaring cormorant, and carry the shrill of my Kauia calling her Karanga that directs the mana of our wairua. When I use my voice, I also use gestures with my arms open as though awaiting an embrace, and hands flutter slightly like a wiri of spirit. Perhaps it is the emphasis of my Pukana that is most shocking to the receiver, do not fear the fierceness of my culture. It is through my Pukana that my voice pierces straight into the depths of the beholder and awakens their own spirit to whatever had lay dormant there, of which is none of my business to identify on their behalf. 

I share this with you, as it is my voice that ushered you all in when I called out across the room Here I Am.

I share my voice with you today because I want every single Leader paying lip service to this dangerously politicallised power play of Voices, to actually show up in congruence with their actions - and start to use their voice for those who are too afraid to.

I am using my voice to call to action every person who has been on the other end of my Pukana, and been perplexed by the complexity of love as the subtext beneath the anger in my voice, to recognise that I am demonstrating a level of leadership that is challenging us to put our own heads on the chopping block. 

I share my voice, because this is who I truly am; and the version of my voice I know that we would all much prefer.

What I hope to gain from using my voice, is to be able to continue this example with how we can move forward when we are met with silent violence. I carry the blood of the Oppressor and the Oppressed and through my parents have learned the richness that can be gained when we acknowledge our history and learn from it. Thus my experience with the bully archetype is intricate. 

I have seen that the Bully has two faces, the cowardly Bully and the courageous Bully. Their journey from the shadow to light is centered on using their voice. The cowardly bully is afraid to use their voice, so they find other ways to be heard. They also perpetuate silence by abdicating responsibility and hiding under the rug. The courageous Bully uses their voice to stand up to their own fear that was bullying them all along. Sometimes they have to get loud with their voice to be heard, but they effectively use their voice none-the-less. In its shadow, the bully looks like keeping everything swept under the carpet and hoping it goes away, only it ends up becoming a trip hazard and everyone chokes when it all blows out. In its light form, the bully removes the barriers that were keeping them from being able to use their voice and empowers other voices to join them. 

I have been met with great criticism and persecution for choosing to post publicly. It has threatened my sense of safety within the community, and I question whether or not I have opened a challenge to others who have the same capacity to meet me where I am at, but every step of the way I have had absolute faith and trust in myself.

I do not use my voice as irresponsibly as many are most likely thinking,

I see it as a rather ridiculous level of audacity to be the demonstration of the change I want to see in the world. In my activated trauma response, I also saw it as a means of protection as I have felt that the benefit of the doubt with the help I have asked for, has let me down.

I recognise that using my voice in the way that I did, without having had the opportunity to prime the conditions for anyone else to effectively learn from what I had to say, had a significant impact on every single person in that room. Though that impact has been incredibly dynamic and mixed, it is the individuals who have been harmed that I specifically would like to have the opportunity to continue a model of follow through that my children and I would really like to have experienced as well. It is so incredibly important to me that anyone who felt afraid of my voice, to experience the power of using their own voice. I want for them to experience the power of being heard, seen and listened to and to make a space for a genuine reconciliation, not a tokenistic automated check box. I want to allow whatever was awoken through my expression, to complete its due course and process, so that it is something that will instill resilience, and not more trauma from silent violence. 

This is my level of congruence and where my faith meets my actions.

Unfortunately in a system that keeps everyone apart and swept up in silence, and where my benefit of the doubt has left me waiting on standby on the sidelines, my fear response was to use the system to fuck the system and reveal myself publically, and in doing so I gave my own arse a right good fucking. I had no idea how else to make myself known to other parents who would likely have felt exactly as I have been feeling with my child feeling unsafe at school, and knew that there was no other way of giving them the opportunity to say Here I Am to me. 

Its taken me almost a week to be able to switch off my fight response after my children and I were seriously injured by Thursday’s parade. I read back my original post now and I can feel the anger more than the words I am reading. I understand why people would of had their own fight responses activated in reading that. I have been back and forthing with my own moral compass which has been so thrown off centre by standing up to use my voice in such a way. 

As I continue to integrate with the fragments of me that scattered as I listened to the callings of my own inner voice to trust in who I am and where I come from, I hold the vision of hope that the best outcome will come of this. For my children, our family, and all of the children of our community who are the rising leaders that this shit show is going to fall upon if nothing changes. 

I have harped on alot about my voice now, but we all know this is oh so much bigger than that. 

I hope that by demonstrating the use of my voice, regardless of the consequences, that you will at least consider whether or not you would be willing to put yourself in the firing line for our children too? 

If so, who is the real bully that you feel is keeping us all in silence and if you could use your voice to share the impact of their actions on you, what would you want to be heard?