Rob Mcgowan Medicine man’s life dedication to Mother Earth
Before you get to know Rob Mcgowan, you must first get to know his plants. Wild and outstretched, they tickle the sides of your vehicle as you creep up his long, gravel driveway.
Then get to his house and thousands have got you surrounded.
Mcgowan or Pa Ropata as he’s also known, lives on a 2.3ha native “forest” with glow worms in Tauranga’s Welcome Bay.
He is a former Catholic priest, author and a leading authority on rongoa¯ (traditional Ma¯ori medicine).
He’s also a Pa¯keha¯ who speaks fluent te reo Ma¯ ori, and works with Nga¯ Whenua Ra¯hui, a Department of Conservation unit that supports the protection of indigenous ecosystems on Ma¯ oriowned land.
The 71-year-old travels New Zealand teaching and helping and has run rongoa¯ workshops throughout the country since 1993, most recently teaching a visiting First Nations doctor and a Japanese chef.
Born in Auckland, he became interested in the bush as a child.
One of his earliest memories is discovering One Tree Hill and questioning why he could see more than one tree.
“That’s probably one of the earliest things I can remember… trees,” he recalls.
“I was fascinated with trees and my mum had a good knowledge of trees.”
His mother, the daughter of Dalmatians, used herbal medicine for her family, based on knowledge shared by her mother.
He recalls an old Tararaa (Dalmatian) regularly taking him for walks up Mount Auckland from age 5, which he says transformed his life.
“He had a little house down by the Hoteo River and he had an orange tree. His place was quite memorable to me because when you’d turn on his tap, tadpoles would come out.”
His father, of Irish descent, was a shepherd and later a police officer. Most of Mcgowan’s childhood was spent in Whanganui.
Born on December 8 (which celebrates the feast of the Immaculate Conception), he says it was taken for granted he would become a Marist priest — an
“ideal” for the time.
After seven years of seminarian study, Whanganui was his first major appointment within the Catholic Church in the 1970s. It was also here that his tutorship in rongoa¯ began.
By this time, he was wellinformed in identifying native plants having taken a keen interest in ferns.
“We were being trained as missionaries, so everyone had to learn how to cook, how to do housekeeping and everyone had to learn a trade, so my garden was the fernery (he grew more than 80 species), and my trade was beekeeping.”
It allowed him to get out of the seminary and he learnt about propagating trees.
When he got to Whanganui however, his main mission directed by the Catholic Church was to learn te reo.
One night he went to a marae but couldn’t read his prayer book because there was no power. He wasted no time afterwards learning all the Ma¯ ori prayers offby-heart.
In turn, he also learned the rhythm of the language.
“They say, if you want to learn Ma¯ ori you don’t go to school, you go into the bush and listen to the birds and the birds will teach you. Then when you speak you’ll sound beautiful.
“A lot of modern Ma¯ ori speakers don’t realise that the language grew out of people’s relationship with the whenua (land). The land moulded their language and our way of speaking reflects the sounds of the environment that we live in.”
In his early days as a priest, he felt that he was continuously missing the mark.
His way of rectifying this was to completely immerse himself in the Ma¯ ori world so when an issue arose, his reaction would be similar to the reactions of the people he was a priest for.
To do this, he temporarily dropped contact with his Pa¯ keha¯ family and developed a way of being Catholic that he says wasn’t mainstream.
One example is that he asked for special permission to have confirmation in the marae and not in the church in town because it scared one boy so much that he got drunk before rehearsal so he’d be brave enough to enter.
Asked why locals chose to entrust their rongoa¯ knowledge with him, he says it had a lot to do with the fact he was a priest.
The basis of traditional Ma¯ ori medicine isn’t plants, it’s taha wairua (spirituality).
He was taught by the late Rua Henare who he says watched him for a long time before deciding to teach him.
Initially, he learned how to make dyes to do piupiu (flax skirts) because he was the only one available to accompany Henare up the river and when they went into the bush he knew the trees so he was able to help.
“When she needed different plants, I’d get a message: ‘Auntie wants you to bring some makomako and if she’s not home, just leave it in a bag on her back porch’.
Then after several years, she began to teach me seriously.”
He was transferred to Hastings in the late 1970s and Henare instructed him to only share his knowledge with those who could trace their whakapapa back to the Whanganui River.
He continued his study in
Hawke’s Bay with the “influential” Paul Mareikura and then later transferred to Te Puke but suffered burnout.
He took sick leave before deciding to leave the ministry in 1990.
He went on to marry medical herbalist and former nurse, Lyndel, and they have a daughter, Ella Mae, 20, and four pets.
He sought and was granted permission by the Whanganui people to share his knowledge of rongoa¯ with others and has since been involved in a number of organisations including the University of Waikato and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, where he had input into the Plant Varieties Act.
He’s helped with Treaty claims and intellectual property issues relating to the Waitangi Tribunal’s Wai 262 report.
He’s a former presenter on Ma¯ ori Television’s Kiwi Maara and Maara Kai programmes; former nursery owner; former and founding chairman of the Kaimai-mamaku Catchments Forum; member of both Te Papa Tongarewa Independent Science Advisory Committee and Bay of Plenty Conservation Board; won national awards — including the Loder Cup in 2018; and is a founding member of Tane’s Tree Trust.
He has also written two books: Rongoa¯ Maori: A practical guide to traditional Ma¯ ori Medicine, and Tiwaiwaka: Healing the mauri of the whenua.
Donna Kerridge, a former IT corporate turned rongoa¯ practitioner, calls him one of the “foremost authorities” on rongoa¯ in the country.
“I can’t think of anyone who would know as much about the plants nationally,” she says.
“He’s well respected by a number of Ma¯ ori leaders,” adding that he has a calming way about him but is no pushover.
Dr Anna Rolleston, director of The Centre for Health, says he is humble and “wairua (spirit) driven”.
“It’s all about people and helping people. In that regard, his underlying philosophy and te ao Ma¯ ori enmesh at some point in his life and that’s how it progressed. It’s so natural. He is the ultimate role model for New Zealanders.”
She says rongoa¯ remains relevant in today’s age because it’s cost-effective and can be used both acutely for conditions and for prevention.
However, the challenge is preserving it.
Mcgowan says we have lost connection to Mother Earth and loneliness is our country’s greatest sickness.
“There’s a big empty hole in so many people. So we fill it up with food, alcohol, drugs or work. We are part of nature, we belong.
“With Ma¯ ori, the land doesn’t belong to you, you belong to the land. The Earth can get by without us but we can’t get by without the Earth.
“Looking after (it) is more important than looking after our economic development.”
Right now, traditional plants are being lost, he says.
An increasing amount of land has been cleared and what’s left has been invaded by weeds or eaten by animals; soils are often contaminated so sometimes it’s not safe and the birds that spread the seeds are diminishing.
“Our job is to clear the way so that the living earth can heal itself and what I’m finding is that there are parts of New Zealand where the land has lost the ability to do so.”
Those who attend his workshops in rongoa¯ are not only interested in the medicine side but their connection to the native bush.
“As you become more integrated you see and understand more. If you connect to the land, you will be taught,” he says.
“I have the privilege of living in a place like the old people did
. . . I’ve got bush at my back door and I go in the bush and get me a kai. Who gets the chance to do that these days?”
He has chickens and preserves homegrown vegetables, fruits and nuts.
He enters his forest of 100-plus species planted over 17 years, in gumboots and with a walking stick.
He uses houhere leaves for hayfever, kawakawa for insect repellent, ku¯ marahou for his liver and kidneys, manono as a way of helping the body to recover and for muscle damage, mingimingi for congestion and tutu for sprains and bruises. All are prepared in different ways from teas to balms.
“What I know is a 21st-century expression of what the people that taught me 50 years ago,” Mcgowan says.
“If a culture doesn’t change a culture dies. You’ve got to keep expressing those same fundamental teachings in a new way as life evolves.”
For all those that he teaches, it’s a “privilege”.
“I get connected to so many extraordinary people and just to be able to do a little bit to enlighten them, support them. It’s wonderful.”