This autumn, Charisma is travelling through Europe with her whānau. Over the coming weeks, she’ll share moments from the road that resonate with the mahi we do here. Here’s the first of her reflections, from Türkiye.
I’ve done something bold – I have brought my whānau overseas, to Europe. There are eight of us – three rangatahi, the young couple, the matriarch and us (the parents – and planners) on a quest to explore, learn, and marvel. For two weeks we travel as a full group, before half return home while the rest of us continue for six more weeks.
None of us has done this before. The languages are unfamiliar. The history is vast. The customs and tikanga are not our own. Arriving in our first stop – Istanbul – was both exciting and daunting.
The other daunting part? Surviving each other. Travelling as a group means navigating each other just as much as new places. It calls for awareness, reflection, and a good dose of patience.
Our team back home suggested that I document the journey – short reflections on what we’re learning and noticing, and how it might offer something useful for others. So here we are. Bear with us for the next 53 days.
My mum, who’s nearly 70 (although she’ll tell you she’s 55) is an avid watcher of Al Jazeera. A few weeks ago she said, “They’re not saying Turkey anymore. It’s different now – Tur-key-yeh. It’s even spelt differently.” She sounded dubious.
On day one of our trip, we learned that the people of this land never called it Turkey. It was a Western label, passed down for centuries. While the world knew their land as Turkey, they’ve always known it as Türkiye.
Recently, the country has asked the world to start using its official name in the Turkish language, to better reflect its identity and culture. It wasn’t a rebrand – it was a reclamation.
Once Mum understood that, she got it. Knowing the origin of a name opens the door to a whole new level of respect. It reminded me of home, and how often our names, our places and our reo get shortened, softened or dismissed. It took decades for the ‘h’ to be officially added to Whanganui, restoring the original spelling of the name. Taranaki Maunga is replacing Mt Egmont in official use, recognising the mountain’s ancestral name.
Using the correct name matters. It’s how we assert our identity, visibility, and mana. So karanga mai, Turkiye. We see you. We hear you. Nō mātou te whiwhi.
When you fly into Istanbul, the skyline takes your breath away – domes, minarets, terraced homes. But beyond its beauty, this city hums with something deeper: tension, history, memory.
Istanbul straddles the Bosphorous Strait – the only sea route linking the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. It’s more than just a shipping route – it’s a fault line of empires, a threshold between continents, a chokepoint of trade and power. Whoever holds Istanbul controls one of the most strategic crossroads on the planet.
Walking across the city, we passed from Europe to Asia, and tried to imagine what it means to live in a city others have always tried to possess. What struck me most wasn’t the history alone, but how alive it is in everyday conversation. Taxi drivers, waiters and shopkeepers speak of emperors and sultans and conquests. They know their city’s evolution from Byzantium, to Constantinople, to Istanbul. There’s a fluency here – not just in language, but in understanding their past.
It made me wonder how many of us could speak that easily about the whenua we live on. Could we name our local iwi, or explain how local landmarks got their names? Could we talk about colonisation without flinching?
For too long, our own stories were sidelined in Aotearoa. We learnt about faraway empires, but not about Te Tiriti, the New Zealand Wars, or the iwi who shaped the whenua we all live on. The new history curriculum is a good start – but real change means making our stories part of our everyday knowledge, just as Istanbul has done.
In the end, knowing matters. It shapes how we see the world – and how we see ourselves in it.
Mā te wā – until next time.
