Jeffrey Paparoa Holman
Ngā Kupu Wero edited by Witi Ihimaera with an introduction by Jacinta Ruru (Penguin Books, 2023), 368pp, $37.00
As a Pākehā koroua, on the Landfall marae to pōwhiri a new collection of Māori voices, I’m experiencing this as an honour, and a challenge. It might be argued that Māori have long heard enough from Pākehā on matters Māori. Yet this invitation is an opportunity to sit on the paepae, listening to the speakers, the tangata whenua, before manuhiri can rise to reply. On this marae—as on Te Māpou at Maungapōhatu, where my own work has been challenged and welcomed by Tamakaimoana—I take my seat, listening to the voices sounding here, and responding when called.
The book is set out as a hui, on paper, with formalities and cultural forms: the welcome, the challenge, the reply. For Pākehā readers, this may take some getting used to, but by realising you are listening to speakers, as much as reading writers, it makes perfect sense. The mihi whakatau delivered by Vaughan Rapatahana tells us that morning will reveal the Māori world; these words awaiting us will challenge, raising questions, as we gather. The first speaker to rise is Witi Ihimaera, styling the writers of Ngā Kupu Wero as ‘word warriors’ who ‘affirm the wero as one of our most distinctive literary devices’. Ihimaera should know: he’s been at the forefront of this challenge, this journey, since publishing Pounamu, Pounamu (1972) and Tangi (1973) more than fifty years ago. The wero, as he tells us, is the ritual challenge issued by warriors to manuhiri or visitors as they come on to the marae: ‘Only by accepting the wero can we … make all our worlds better.’
‘Kei muri ko mua / Kei mua ko muri / From the past / We step into the future’, declares Haare Williams, concluding his kōrero celebrating a founding moment in our literary history, namely the hui of the Māori Artists and Writers Association at Tūkāki Marae in Te Kaha in 1973, which he tells us was ‘the brainchild of Hone Tuwhare, Para Matchitt, Cliff Whiting, Selwyn Muru and others’. He states that, ‘this whare raupō led to new creations’, and cites Witi Ihimaera’s editing of the four volumes of the Te Ao Marama anthologies in the early 1990s.
Jacinta Ruru, from her legal background, celebrates the 2017 transformation of Te Urewera from a national park to ‘Te Manawa o te Ika a Māui, the heart of the great fish’. She describes her own involvement as a lawyer in the creation and writing of 2019’s government document He Puapua, setting out a vision for 2040’s bicentennial of Te Tiriti, seeking the decrease of kawanatanga and the empowerment of tino rangatiratanga.
The last speaker in the mihi whakatau is Hana Pera Aoake, speaking from the South, from Te Wai Pounamu: she is of Ngāti Waewae ki Kai Tāhu, Kāti Mamoe and Waitaha, along with Scottish, Irish and Jewish whakapapa. She writes of the baby she is carrying and the world into which the child will be delivered. From the elders on the paepae, to the life about to be born, this mihi whakatau embraces the old and the new, in what will follow.
Ngā Wero, the first group of speakers, lay down challenging thoughts to the gathering, each one interleaved by pitopito kōrero, literally, snippets, notes, serving to break down, to move the reader from one lengthy or weighty kōrero to the next, acting here as binding elements in a tukutuku panel of multiple voices. Tā Hirini Moko Mead, a mighty tōtara, is chosen to open the wero with ‘What is Mātauranga Māori?’ To him, a long-time anthropologist, historian, artist and writer, it speaks of: ‘a cultural system of knowledge about everything that is important in the lives of the people’, te iwi Māori.
The pitopito kōrero that follows is from Hēmi Kelly’s Sleeps Standing, a 2017 bilingual exploration—written with Witi Ihimaera—on the 1864 Battle of Ōrākau: it’s a one page snippet about moves to honour and memorialise the New Zealand Wars alongside Anzac Day. Readers familiar with what we might call ‘Pākehātanga’—the methodology of writing non-fiction in chapters advancing a thesis or point-of-view—will have to get used to the concept of voices speaking here on a virtual marae. These speakers may—or may not—be sequential in topic, yet still adhering to an unspoken kaupapa. The next speaker, or presenter, is Danny Keenan, on land, whakapapa, mana whenua and kinship structures: ‘For Māori, the land was inextricably bound up with identity.’ His kōrero is briskly followed by Morgan Godfery’s 2019 The Spinoff article entitled, ‘Treaty settlements are a fraud’. Godfery argues we live in ‘the only country where governments adhere to our founding documents “principles”—and not its text’. Did he foresee the three-headed taniwha, thrashing around, baring its teeth in 2024’s parliamentary arena? It will not be the first time in these readings that the writers’ works seem prophetic.
To catalogue and describe the twenty-plus authors here is beyond the remit of my short overview, whether it might be Hirini Kaa on the arrival of Christianity, or the thirty pages of Alice Te Punga Somerville filleting the legacy of Captain James Cook: ‘Can we blame Cook for everything that followed? … Should we talk about Cook? The question is, what other stories might we be able to tell? … We desperately need stories that explain how we connect to places other than London.’
What matters in this anthology is the liberation of many voices; the marae has not been set up here for a narrative march through a forest of text. The reader might feel free—as I did—to wander through the offerings and stop to focus on, for example, Moana Maniapoto interviewing the legendary Angela Davis on fifty years as an activist writer, teacher and critical theorist, in the cauldron of US race relations. In marae culture, we’re meant to hear living voices, and be moved, swayed, persuaded.
As a poroporoaki, the final pitopito kōrero in this wero comes from the late, beloved Renée, who left us in December 2023 with the legacy of a life lived with courage and grace. As her moko Naomi pours wine, her kuia declares, ‘I regret nothing, I say. Nothing? Nothing.’ ‘E Renée, e te māreikura, haere atu rā, moe mai rā!’
What follows in Ngā Kupu Wero—whaikōrero in response—will see Ani Mikaere and Witi Ihimaera open by honouring the late and deeply lamented activist and thinker, Moana Jackson, who died in 2022. ‘Moana believed in holding us all to account for the promises made in 1840’ and how they should bind the nation today. Annette Sykes is recalled, speaking at his tangihanga, of ‘the bravest person she ever knew’. We hear in these kupu—these words—a response to challenges heard in Ngā Kupu Wero: ‘Bravery is just the deep breath you take before doing something difficult.’
There are seasoned campaigners here, such the poet and teacher Ben Brown, remembering his mother showing him the knack of how to gather the flax leaf of the harakeke, and also celebrating the power of the word, of reading. He stands shoulder to shoulder with a new generation: essa may ranapiri offering ‘a takatāpui response to Whiti Hereaka’s novel Kurangaituku’, and Shilo Kino discoursing on ‘The power of being a Māori journalist’. Made visible is a rising generation (tore kai huruhuru), one standing alongside veteran warriors (kairākau), as it should be in a healthy culture. Tainui Stephens writes about embracing ‘the taniwha of shame’ that haunts language loss, and his own te reo Māori journey; Hana O’Regan writes on the revival of mōteatea; and Hēmi Kelly, again, lecturer, author and translator, talks about how ‘new words keep te reo alive’.
What is most encouraging is the range and contrast of contributors that enrich and strengthen this bold venture: scholars, artists, poets, novelists, storytellers—along with others: the musician Stan Walker; the funeral director star of The Casketeers, Francis Tipene; and the ‘face of Farm4Life’, Tangaroa Walker. This impressive multiplicity of voices, in age, range of backgrounds and experience, all serve to give the effect of being on a marae, hearing convictions and opinions voiced by many different whānau, hapū, iwi, yet unanimous in realising the kaupapa, the wero of Witi Ihimaera, to ‘pick up the taki laid down’.
All conversations are then drawn together, towards concluding this hui on paper.
In Turukitanga, an epilogue, three writers—Coco Solid, Te Kuru o te Marama Dewes and Witi Ihimaera—lead the reader, or listener, towards rest, the opportunity to reflect on time, distance and travel: ‘Karakia filled our sails,’ says Ihimaera, ‘propelling us from Te Kore to Te Pō, from past to present.’ The waka, the book, is drawn up to anchorage with Whakautu, where three speakers ask the question, ‘What are the main problems facing Māori today’, and offer their views in brief answers. Maisey Rika sings the reader out with ‘Waitī, Waitā’, a waiata about the stars of Matariki, connected to food harvested from the sea. The implication is that the nets are now full.
This is a unique collection: by Māori, for Māori (and any Pākehā willing to come on to the marae), speaking with such a multiplicity of voices that it just can’t be viewed as a literary anthology in the traditional sense. It’s also a bicultural work, in that it is written primarily in English, discussing our cultural location in time and space. In my experience—as a Pākeha manuhiri on many marae—the mana of the pōwhiri is in the skill of the speakers with their oratory; the waiata that support each one who stands to speak; the physical exchange of unity in the hongi afterwards; and of course, the hākari, the banquet, the feast. A book must provide such physical delights figuratively, as is the case here, acknowledging a richly metaphorical tikanga. Readers who enter onto this marae and partake, will certainly leave replete—perhaps with more questions than answers, as such rich kōrero will always provoke.
JEFFREY PAPAROA HOLMAN studied at the University of Canterbury, where he graduated with a PhD in Māori Studies in 2007. A poet, historian and memoirist, his books include Best of Both Worlds: The story of Elsdon Best and Tutakangahau (Penguin, 2010). His poetry, articles and reviews have variously appeared in the New Zealand Listener, Landfall, the Christchurch Press and many other publications.
Leave a Reply