Taranaki Cathedral's Jay Ruka is bringing the huia home

Friday, 26 March 2021

Jay Ruka is the new co dean of Taranaki Cathedral whose role is to bring reconciliation with the church and the local iwi.

A big chicken, three stories high, dominated the landscape. But the huia couldn’t be seen. Or heard.

The dream changed Jay Ruka’s life.

Ruka, 45, is the new co dean at Taranaki Cathedral Church of St Mary in New Plymouth.

Of Te Ātiawa and Ngāti Mutunga descent Ruka grew up immersed in Christian culture, but not in Māori culture.

It was awkward, he says. He didn’t really connect with it. He remembers thinking surfers were more his people than Māori.

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But in 2006 that all began to change.

He was in the United Kingdom with a Christian band playing to churches and conferences.

At one conference a woman taught on hearing the voice of God and challenged her audience to go away and practise by asking God three questions.

So, Ruka went off for a walk in the countryside and asked the first question: God, what do you think of me?

Ruka’s wife Erin had a dream of a big chicken and a missing huia that sent their lives in a new direction.

‘’And straight away I heard this thing inside my wairua. I heard ‘Jay, I think you’re Māori’. I just froze. I wasn’t thinking any of this stuff. I knew [the voice] wasn’t me. And I’m in England.’’

He’d just turned 30 and for the first time in his life accepted a part of himself.

‘’I always felt like an egg going into Māori spaces, because I look like I should know how to play the part, but I didn’t know how to play the part.

‘’But, something happened in me that day. I think that was the ignitor.’’

And then in January 2008 his American wife Erin had a dream about an over-sized chicken and a missing huia.

“When Erin had the dream it took us a good nine months to ponder it. What does it mean? Then a friend said to us one day, ‘it’s kind of easy. The chicken’s not from here.’ As soon as he said that it went ding.

Jay Ruka has travelled the country teaching on the Treaty of Waitangi.

‘’The chicken has been imported into this land. It comes from somewhere else. It has grown unusually large and dominates the landscape and has taken over everything. Whereas the huia, that is unique and indigenous to this landscape, is now not seen and not heard.’’

Ruka interprets the chicken as representing Western ideas, Western philosophy, Western ways of thinking and being and doing, versus Māori ways of being and doing things.

‘’When we coined the phrase ‘huia come home - fly back and land again in our forests’ it was really a call for New Zealand to learn from that which is indigenous to our space. For Māori it’s a call to be Māori. For non-Māori it’s a call to learn from a Māori way of doing, a Māori way of thinking.

The voice in 2006 was like a ‘’little ignition thing’’, he says, ‘’then that dream has really become the framework of my future. I’ve tried to do my best and go” ‘well what does it look like for me to be Māori?’.’’

And the journey has resulted in a change of name. Ruka began life as Jay Lucas. His great-grandfather Enoka Ruka, became Robert Lucas when he joined the army in World War I and went off to Gallipoli.

Jay Ruka wants to see tikanga Māori arise from the Taranaki Cathedral.

The light went on when Ruka was in a decolonisation course Te Pūmaomao, he says.

‘’And Takawai Murphy was telling the story of how he took up the name Takawai again as part of cultural reclamation. And I remember going ooooh.’’

So, when his book came out the author was Jay Ruka.

The book Huia Come Home starts with the dream. And it tells the story of Aotearoa and the Treaty of Waitangi from a Christian view.

Ruka had been teaching church history, and in 2008 started looking at the history of the church in New Zealand.

‘’That’s when I heard the stories of Te Whiti and Tohu for the first time – Parihaka. I heard about Ratana. I was raised up with the assumption Ratana was a cult. The prophets from Tūhoe on the East Coast. I heard stories I hadn’t heard before.

‘’I thought ‘how can I grow up in this country and not know this? And also be part of this organisation, the church, and not know anything about its story?’

‘’Especially to be part of an institution that makes some pretty grandiose claims yet doesn’t know the mistakes of its own stories.’’

Ruka has been in some sort of ministry since he was 19. After spending 15 years in missionary organisation Youth With A Mission he was an itinerant preacher before beginning to work in an Auckland church called Edge Kingsland, where he played guitar in a band of the same name. They won a New Zealand music award, a tui, for the album Common Ground.

A drawing of what Te Whare Hononga and the vicarage will look like when the development is finished.

In 2016 the Ruka family, Jay, Erin and their three children, moved to Raglan and Ruka combined a part-time full immersion te reo course with his itinerant ministry, which included teaching churches – from right across the board – and schools about Te Tiriti.

Two years later he was invited to speak to a group of leaders from the Anglican Church.

‘’I do my talk. For two nights I spoke as an outsider – I can say what I like and walk away. I was challenging them on some of the big issues they have to deal with. To do with reconciliation.’’

As he spoke he realised most of the history was actually the Anglican church story.

‘’A lot of history, telling good and bad, doing amazing stuff and stupid stuff, is Anglican history.’’

A week later he and Erin were talking to Archbishop Philip Richardson about a job.

‘’I went to three people in my iwi and said ‘hey is this job good for our people or should I not touch it with a ten-foot pole?’ And all three of them said ‘when can you start?’.’’

Ruka is ordained a deacon but is not a priest. The parish priest is fellow co dean Jacqui Paterson.

He is the director of the Taranaki Cathedral’s Paul Reeves Centre, which will be housed upstairs in the old vicarage, which is currently being renovated, and will oversee Te Whare Hononga - The House That Binds, which will be built in front of the property.

Te Whare Hononga will tell the stories of the church's relationship with local iwi and won't shy away from difficult questions and the 'less comfortable interactions that occurred during colonisation and the Taranaki Land Wars”.

On the first day in his new job Ruka told a Māori women he was the new leader of St Mary’s church. She turned and walked away.

He understood. Back in the day St Mary’s clearly sided with colonial forces.

‘’It’s a very good challenge for us. And we’re up for the challenge. And my iwi wants me in this role.

“Everything about this space if very much Pākehā. So, if I can’t see tikanga Māori arise from this place where are we going to see it arise across the country?’’