Holding up a Mirror to Empire

Michael O’Leary

The Parihaka Woman, by Witi Ihimaera (Vintage Books, Auckland, 2011) 318 pp., $39.00

Discussing ‘Romance Fiction’ in The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, Professor Terry Sturm writes of the novelist Edith Lyttleton [aka G.B. Lancaster] that: ‘In the second phase of her career [she] turned more directly to one of the major forms of romance – the historical romance – organizing her epic treatments of colonial history in New Zealand, Australia and Canada around the perspectives of a series of highly intelligent, independent and rebellious female protagonists. The image of Empire which emerges, despite the colouring of romance, is distinctly critical’.

To refer to Ihimaera’s latest novel, The Parihaka Woman as ‘historical romance’ is not meant to be disparaging, for while it is definitely a ‘page turner’, it is by no means a ‘bodice ripper’ — if anything it is discreet, almost coy, in its dealing with sexual matters. Yet Sturm’s description of Edith Lyttleton’s writing does serve as an apt summary of The Parihaka Woman, the significant difference being that in Ihimaera’s tale of colonial history the ‘highly intelligent, independent and rebellious female protagonist’ is a Māori woman, Erenora, and the ‘image of Empire’ comes from the Māori mirror held up to that of the Pākehā settlers and Government so as to reflect from another angle the land greed and the murderous behaviour which took place in Taranaki in the 1860s to the 1880s.

It is against the story of late nineteenth-century holocaust and hardship that the main conceit of this novel is set. And just to make sure we understand that there is no mistake in the use of the word holocaust, Ihimaera quotes from a contemporary newspaper the feelings being expressed immediately preceding the attack on the Parihaka township: ‘The time has come, in our minds, when New Zealand must strike for freedom, and this means the death-blow to the Maori race!’ Also quoted is ex-premier Harry Atkinson who was reported as saying at a public meeting that he hoped: ‘if war did come, the natives would be exterminated.’ Following the aftermath of the racist rhetoric through, Ihimaera quotes from the 1996 Waitangi Tribunal Taranaki Report: ‘The graphic muru of most of Taranaki and the raupatu without ending describe the holocaust of Taranaki history and the denigration of the founding peoples in a continuum from 1840 to the present’.

Despite such unequivocal talk of extermination from Pākehā settlers and their leaders, throughout the wars of the 1860s to the 1880s the Parihaka leaders forbade the use of arms, and when they spoke condemned violence and greed. They challenged the Colonial Government over the illegality of the wars, the confiscation of the land and the punitive policies enacted against the Tangata Whenua. By 1879 European encroachment on Māori land actively threatened the Māori settlements. Te Whiti sent out his people to obstruct the surveys and to plough on confiscated land. When arrested the ploughmen offered no resistance, but were nevertheless often treated harshly. In the novel Ihimaera depicts this in a powerful and often humorous way, until the reality of Pākehā greed and revenge begins to take effect.

The novel’s structure is based on a libretto Ihimaera wrote, Erenora, which was inspired by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven whose work Fidelio is an opera of aesthetic and political outlook. Fidelio’s narrative of personal sacrifice, heroism and eventual triumph, with its underlying struggle for liberty and justice mirroring contemporary political movements in Europe, perfectly corresponds with the Taranaki story. Some notable moments in the opera include: the ‘Prisoners’ Chorus’, an ode to freedom sung by a chorus of political prisoners; Florestan’s vision of Leonore (the Erenora of Parihaka, who sometimes speaks in German); and the finale, which celebrates Leonore’s bravery with alternating contributions by soloists and chorus. Ihimaera’s novel is divided into six ‘movements’ or ‘acts’: Prologue (Taranaki); Act 1 (Daughter of Parihaka); Act 2 (Village of God); Act 3 (Three Sisters); Act 4 (Horitana); Epilogue (Always the Mountain); and each of these acts in turn is divided into several chapters of varying length.

The story’s framework’s provided by a retired teacher who becomes interested in researching the ‘real’ history of New Zealand Aotearoa, as opposed to the one he had taught in the ‘official’ curriculum. He finds, through his researches, a manuscript written by a Māori woman, Erenora, (‘the Parihaka woman’), who has kept a personal record of her experiences before, during and after the invasion of Parihaka. Much of the novel is written so as to quote directly from her diary. This account is given further meaning by the fact that she is one of the teacher’s own tipuna. After the attack on the township, Erenora and her two sisters, Ripeka and Meri, set out on a journey to find their husbands who have been taken to the South Island as prisoners; and it is this quest and their adventures along the way, which constitutes the second half of the book. On their haerenga obstacles and hurdles arise, both from being three women alone (even though Erenora is disguised as a man), and also from being Māori.

Neither the characters nor the story are simplistic: they meet bad Māori, such as the one who gets Meri drunk at Ōtaki with the aim of selling her as a sex slave; and this is counterpointed by scenes such as that involving the old Irish couple who befriend and save them from the excesses of drunken and lawless men in Hokitika. There is a Pākehā whose reputation and deeds are so reprehensible he is only known by the Māori name, Piharo, because, as Erenora, states, his ihi (life force) is so dark and sinister. Indeed, the utu (revenge tinged with jealously) exacted on Erenora’s husband, Horitana, by Piharo is of such a diabolic nature that it is shocking but also unique in the annals of our literature, as when when she eventually locates her husband, discovering Horitana in the mokomokai.

But, as is sometimes said in Samoa, the Devolo is in the detail. One of the difficulties of Māori writers in the modern era writing of other iwi is that they often assume that one Māori lore applies to them all. So when Ihimaera states “To Māori, of course, the mounga has always been Taranaki”, this isn’t so. The name of the mountain to the local iwi is ‘Puke-o-Naki’ (the name of the mountain that was driven off the volcanic plateau after an unhappy love affair with another mountain, Pihanga), and a more ancient name is ‘Puke-haupapa’. There are also several others depending on iwi and hapū traditions. While his use of the local Taranaki ‘mounga’ instead of the usual ‘maunga’ for mountain works alright, I found the author’s use of an apostrophe instead of an ‘h’ to denote Taranaki dialect annoying rather than illuminating.

Also, fundamental to the background of Ihimaera’s tale is the ‘Pahuatanga’ — or rape — of Parihaka by Government-armed constabulary in November 1881. While the format of the historical novel affords a degree of creative license, there are certain formative elements of a given event which are not open to interpretation, as for instance, calling ‘Fort Rolleston’, the hillock, known to Māori as ‘Te Purepo’, where the cannon trained on Parihaka was sited, ‘Mount Rolleston’ — which is, of course, the name of a Canterbury sheep station. Even more unacceptable is the reference to the ‘meeting house’ of Tohu, a two-storied building named ‘Rangi Kapuia’, as ‘Toroanui’ which was, in fact, the great marae where the same cannon already mentioned on ‘Fort Rolleston’ was aimed at the more than 2500 people sitting in passive resistance.

There are also some irritating anachronisms, such as when the sisters are on their journey after leaving Ōtaki heading to Kāpiti in 1881 they see settlements, roads and ‘railway tracks, as if a taniw’a had slithered across the land’, a nice metaphor, but the railway didn’t reach this area until 1886. Another difficulty with The Parihaka Woman is the novelist’s almost compulsive attempt to acknowledge and thank everyone and any source that contributed to this work. Given the atrocious treatment he was subjected to by the googling Dickensian Gradgrinds who accused him of plagiarism in his fine novel The Trowenna Sea, this is perhaps understandable, but it doesn’t add anything to the novel, indeed this over-cautiousness detracts from it by giving an imaginative work the appearance of an academic treatise.

The Parihaka Woman is an intriguing and significant, if somewhat flawed, work. It tackles an area in our history which has been in recent years bowdlerised and masked by the fact that it is now known primarily as a music and peace festival venue. The horrific events at Parihaka in the late 1870s and early 1880s are brought into focus by this novel, and therefore, it is to be hoped, better understood by a larger audience beyond those in academic and historical circles — a book stall at the Parihaka Peace Festival might be a start.

The mixture of Māori and European cultural references give Ihimaera’s characters a richness which is both satisfying and accurate, because contrary to popular misconception, many Māori people became highly literate in the nineteenth century and embraced the European book culture that the Pākehā people brought here. Also, Ihimaera does what I have done in my own novels: that is, whenever there are sentences or concepts in te reo Māori he provides an English translation. His novels want to be inclusive and accessible, as well as provide amusement, instruction and illumination.

In the face of this ugly aggression, two figures, Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kākahi, led the non-violent Parihaka movement to resist the Pākehā invasion of their estates and to protect Māori independence. They drew on Māori ancestral kaupapa as well as Christian teachings to offer both spiritual and political leadership. Both men advocated good relationships, but only if Māori ownership of lands and self-governance was acknowledged and respected.

MICHAEL O’LEARY is a Paekakariki-based poet, novelist, publisher, performer and bookshop proprietor. He holds a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington.

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