'My First Ikura' celebrates the Māori understanding of menstruation

Stigma still exists, but New Zealand girls today are a lot less ashamed than previous generations about their periods, says Qiane Matata-Sipu. To help this reclamation process, she's written the kids' book My First Ikura.

Looked at through a Māori lens, menstruation can become something much more meaningful than "here's a pad, here's a tampon, this is how you use it", Matata-Sipu says.

"When we reclaim this mātauranga [knowledge], we actually reclaim who we are, and we become empowered in that, and we remember how powerful our bodies are," she tells RNZ's Saturday Morning.

For centuries, the "colonial patriarchal lens" has done a disservice to women, promoting the idea that periods are "dirty" or "yuck", she says.

"These concepts that were fed to us, that we should be hidden, we should be ashamed, we're unclean - those are all false narratives."

For Māori, menstruation is a reminder of our sacred connection to the whenua (earth), Matata-Sipu says.

"[Periods] are wonderful, they're powerful, they create humankind. If it wasn't for a period, half of those people who have those false narratives wouldn't even be here."

In My First Ikura, Matata-Sipu touches on Māori beliefs about the first woman Hineahuone, the goddess of hue (gourds) Hinepūtehue, kaitiakitanga (conservation) in relation to period products, and taonga pūoro (Māori musical instruments).

The book also covers ikura practices like collecting the blood of a girl's first period and burying it as a gift to Papatūānuku (the earth mother).

"That's something that we'll definitely be practising in our whānau when that time comes. It's something that I didn't do, something my mum didn't do, but something that we hope to bring back into our whānau."

For the kupu (Māori words) used in My First Ikura - such as ikura (period) and waiwhero (menstrual blood), she gives honour and credit to academic Dr Ngāhuia Murphy (Ngāti Manawa, Ngāti Ruapani ki Waikaremoana, NgāiTūhoe, Te Arawa and Ngāti Kahungunu).

The book's illustrations are by Isobel Joy Te Aho-White (Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Kahungunu ki te Wairoa), author of Whenua - a recent book of Māori pūrākau (legends) and "probably one of the greatest illustrators in Aotearoa".

While My First Ikura features a lot of Māori concepts, Matata-Sipu says that with its message of "Here's your body, here's how you connect to the environment around you, here's how we connect to each other", the book is really accessible for non-Māori girls and their families, too.

Her next book W is for Wāhine Toa - a bilingual alphabet book of female empowerment, also with illustrations by Isobel Joy Te Aho-White - is due out in March.

In the meantime, she's running a campaign with Dignity New Zealand to get 500 copies of My First Ikura donated to schools and community organisations.

"It is my goal to get this into all of our Kura Kaupapa (Māori language primary schools)."