Kūmara & Cacao
A Guide To Your DNA
Kūmara & Cacao: In Person Activation
The Sowing Of The Seeds
An in person connection & activation gathering - initiating the story of kūmara & cacao
Join me in person at the heart of Pacific Cacao, here in Aotearoa. Bring a kūmara & an open heart. Come to listen, receive, share & initiate the weave of this kaupapa. Here we begin the conversation, the re-telling of the stories. Here we re-awaken dormant pieces of ourselves that lie within our blood & bones. Activating another layer of remembrance & returning to our ancestral ways.
Where: The Cacao Embassy - Christchurch
When: Friday 24th October 2025
Time: 5pm-7pm
Cost: Sliding Scale | $25 - $77
Kūmara & Cacao: Online Immersion
Awakening the Plant DNA Within us
8 Moon Cycles of connection, intention & unravelling with Kūmara & Cacao
Where: Online - Access it from anywhere in the world
When: Each New Moon
Time: 7pm NZST
Cost: $555
Moon 1 - Nov 20th 2025 | Acknowledgement of Plant Spirits
Moon 2 - Dec 20th 2025 | Origins, Stories & Planting
Moon 3 - Jan 19th 2026 | Spiritual Ancestry & Sovereignty
Moon 4 - Feb 18th 2026 | Evolution of Kūmara & Cacao
Moon 5 - Mar 19th 2026 | Culture & Songlines
Moon 6 - Apr 17th 2026 | Culinary & Medicinal Purposes
Moon 7 - May 17th 2026 | The Mystery
Moon 8 - Jun 15th 2026 | The Harvest
MY STORY
How this came to be..
I’ve always had a deep love for Kūmara. Back home in Kayaban we call it Dokto (Ibaloi for Kūmara). When I came to Aotearoa many moons ago, I continued eating Kūmara. Not quite realising the profound remembrance it provided me, until later in life. The familiarity, the joy, the nourishment that my heart & soul deeply needed.
The Younger Years
When I was a baby, my grandmother, Mama Emilia, would wrap me on her back as she tended to her garden. Humming, digging, planting & harvesting under the hot sun. As I grew into a young girl, I would spend days walking the land with my great grandmother, Nanang Rosa. I remember watching her prepare the soil & planting the tips of the kūmara. Watching them grow until it came time to harvest.
The Remembering
On my most recent journey home, my love & passion for this sacred ancestral food was reignited on a deeper level I had not experienced before.
It was my grandmother's 95th birthday. My uncle brought over a giant sack of Kūmara for us to cook & share with the many guests that would visit. I sat & watched my aunties peel each & every one. Chatting, laughing & enjoying the mundane task of preparation. They lit the fire & filled the giant pot with water, bubbling & boiling, cooking enough Kūmara to feed the village.
I witnessed its presence again at my uncle’s funeral. Once again, feeding the people. At this same gathering, I met the elder women who grew the kūmara we had at my grandmother's birthday. She asked if we enjoyed it, with such brightness in her eyes. The same joy I remember from my own great grandmother, when we would harvest & share our kūmara.
Re-Awakening
As I sat with its wisdom, I became deeply aware of the way it weaves itself between the sacred & mundane. Its presence was acknowledged as an essential part of community, nourishment, grounding & offering.
I realised, everywhere I go, the kūmara is present. At home in Kabayan, at home in Aotearoa & everywhere I journey on my travels. I didn’t think I could love it anymore than I already did, but now I do.
Curiosity sparked
I thought to myself, maybe this is the food that keeps my DNA alive? The food that brings me home no matter where I am in the world. Seeing the threads of kūmara weaved into the soil from many lands. Feeling the journey it has made across many waters. It made me think…
How did it make it’s way to my lands?
How did it nourish the soil where cacao trees now grow?
What codes did the kūmara leave in the soil that now informs the cacao of how to grow there?
The Weaving of Cacao
My first reconnection with the Cacao was through a woman named Connie. She grew up in South America & shared with me this medicine with such great joy.
I witnessed and watched this medicine permeate our community. Not just in Aotearoa, but everywhere! I see how cacao is being remembered, and through that we are remembering ourselves. It’s profoundly powerful, in such a gentle way. Both grounding & expansive, blurring the lines between sacred & mundane.
It inspired me to look into the whakapapa and my own relationship to this plant. Does it grow in my homelands? How did it get there?
Something interesting that I found, Kūmara & Cacao both come from South America. And both grow in my homelands!
The same land my great grandmother once tended to, is now home to an abundance of cacao trees that have recently been planted there. Funded by my tribe & community across the world. Remember when we got hacked & lost all the savings in our account? Well when we received koha from our community, we had a surplus, and we invested it into these trees.
The root of the cacao, steeps in the memory of the kūmara in the soil.
More Thoughts & Questions
I think about how cacao now carries many names. She’s branded, graded, hierarchically debated. But kūmara, it remains as it is. Its name only changes through the tongue of the lands we walk.
So much curiosity, so much relationship, so many differences, so much sacredness within the regular everyday. It’s sparked something in me.
The Quest
Together they visited me, Kūmara & Cacao, wanting to tell a story. One that honestly I am still unravelling. But a story that I trust in the power of, deeply.
Both are medicines of love and of grounding. Not one in the same, but two that carry some of the same qualities. The same messages.
Both carry a capacity to return us to the rituals of our ancestors. To help us remember the song lines. To remember their stories, their voyages, their journeys. Their stories, and our connection to them, have shaped who we are & continue to do so to this day.