E ngā mātāwaka huri noa, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou, tēnā koutou katoa.
Ko Hikurangi te maunga
Ko Waiapu te awa
Ko Ngāti Porou te iwi
Ko Olivier Danoy tōku matua, nō Wiwi ia.
Ko Athena Reedy tōku whaea
I whānau ahau i te Whenua Moemoeā.
Ko Francoise tōku ingoa.Tihei Mauri Ora!
Hi, I'm Françoise! 👋🏼 I'm a Franco-Māori American-Australian living in Texas. My journey, which began in 2014, has been a reclamation of Māoritanga through various creative practices: knitting, punch needle, illustration, written word, meditation…
My writing and the stories I'll be sharing are shaped by my experiences of being a third-culture/immigrant and mixed-race kid living across the world, embracing polyamory (the Mormon to Polyamory pipeline is real), and understanding my neurodivergent brain.
If you like your reading to have side thoughts and tangents, my run-on sentences should do the trick for you. My tone can come across as irreverent and silly at times, and I usually write in the way I speak (or, worse, the way I think). If you're interested in hearing from a 33-year-old mixed-race woman full of main-character energy, please stay for a while! 😊 I'm glad you stopped by.
The Meaning Behind the Name
I chose to name my Substack the “Liminal Line” after coming across the Te Reo kupu kauhanganui in Hirini Moko Mead’s 2025 release, “Mātauranga Māori.” Kauhanganui was a physical space within a wharenui, a high tapu area straddling the boundary between tapu and noa.
The concept of liminality has resonated with me since learning about it in my French Senior seminar in college, so coming across this term felt serendipitous - mainly since Mead writes that he too came across the kupu recently and a lot of the knowledge around this “liminal line” is still being discovered; and then “rebuilding, remodeling and repossessing.” (Moko Mead, Hirini. Mātauranga Māori (p. 399). (Function). Kindle Edition).
Mead writes:
The basic idea in the concept of the kauhanganui is the creation of a space in which people can feel safe to do what they must do.
Thinkers among our ancestors thought of a way to make the teaching and learning experience safe and free of the threat of breaking rules of tapu […] Within the kauhanganui, students were free to make errors.
Moko Mead, Hirini. Mātauranga Māori (p. 389. 399-400). (Function). Kindle Edition.
The basic idea in the concept of the kauhanganui is the creation of a space in which people can feel safe to do what they must do.
I'm going to make mistakes in sharing my work and words; I may inadvertently break tikanga or have an interpretation of Mātauranga Māori that is still heavily rooted in Western, colonial, and capitalist thought, which requires further deconstruction. In the spirit of dialectical thought, though, I will inevitably make mistakes or commit faux pas that I will need to rectify, and this is a journey, not an end goal. Mistakes are inherently part of the hīkoi. That said, it is my responsibility to be mindful, intentional, and discerning on what I share here and what I don’t.
I would like to thank my mentors and friends for their invaluable guidance and feedback on my work, which helps me manage instances when I falter or stumble.
Hone Bailey
Amelia Butler
Veeshayne Patuwai
Lissy and Rudi Cole
My mum 🤪
My koro, who is now an ancestor ❤️
