Michael O’Leary
Kāwai: Tree of nourishment by Monty Soutar (Bateman Books, 2024), 368pp, $40
The idiomatic saying ‘history brought to life’ translates in te reo Māori as: ko ngā mahi a ngā tīpuna i ora ai. This proverbial intention has been exemplified exactly, so far, by Monty Soutar’s projected trilogy of novels collectively called Kāwai. The second in this series is titled Kāwai: Tree of nourishment. (I have also reviewed the first book Kāwai: For such a time as this, which explores pre-Pākehā life leading up to first contact with Europeans.) This second novel opens in 1818 but begins with a prologue set in the early 1980s, where a young Māori boy asks an elder about the history of his tīpuna (ancestors)—a story that unfolds as the main narrative of the book.
Whakapapa (genealogy) is fundamental to whānau reality: it unlocks the mythologies of origin and descent entailed in the arboreal family tree—with its emphasis on primogeniture, protocols of inclusion and exclusion, and the fluid, sometimes opportunist, definition of whānau (family) that emerged in the nineteenth century. Although that fluidity was not normal in pre-contact te ao Māori whakapapa, it would become an issue in the claims of some individuals during the land sales to Pākehā in the second half of the nineteenth century. And though such ideological shenanigans are not a primary concern in this second novel, notions of unbroken genealogy are central. In the canonical nineteenth-century Pākehā novel, examples of genealogical deconstruction can be found in authors such as Austen, Thackeray, Trollope, Gaskell, Emily Brontë, Eliot and Hardy. Ironically, Kāwai: Tree of nourishment, a Māori-centric narrative, is set out very much like a nineteenth-century European novel. It has a genealogical (whakapapa) table, followed by a list of characters, their relationships to each other, and the pā or village to which their family belongs. There is also a drawn map showing all the pā where the action takes place on that particular part of the east coast, north of Gisborne.
So, the kōrero of this novel begins with a question: a young man asking his koroua about ancestry. Caught in a heavy rainstorm overnight in an old whare, they begin talking about kēhua (ghosts) and tohunga. The young man wonders why we don’t see them nowadays. His koroua answers: ‘Auē, I tae mai te Pākehā.’ This prompts the young man to ask how the arrival of Europeans changed the old way of life, and the old man begins the story of his important ancestor: Hine-aute.
Each chapter begins with a whakataukī (proverb) that relates either metaphorically or directly to the characters or events dealt with in that chapter. The whakataukī is presented first in te reo Māori, followed by an English translation. Soutar follows this tikanga tuku iho ō whakamāoritia, the tradition of translation of what is written in Māori into English. This approach greatly increases non-Māori readers’ ability to follow the novel’s action and understand the characters’ dialogue, which appears to be one of the main ngā kaupapa of the Kāwai series.
The action begins with Hine-aute running through bush and streams carrying the head of her father, who has been recently decapitated by one of his own relatives. She vows vengeance or utu for her father’s murder: ‘Taria te wā ka ea te wāhanga ki a au. Kei te mōhio taku hinengaro ka taea e au tēnei mahi.’ She tells herself that she is the one to carry out the task of utu ahead.
The rest of the novel is concerned with the conflict brought about by the gradual loss of the old ways of utu and other ancient customs, as they are gradually displaced by foreign traditions and new realities, such as the arrival of new technologies, new religions and new diseases. All these world-changing phenomena are embodied in the way they affect Hine-aute and her immediate whānau—her husband, Tuhē, and their two sons, Ipumare and Uha. Throughout the novel, Hine-aute becomes increasingly resistant to accepting the demands of the Pākehā.
The first manifestation of the new order takes the form of a surprise attack by a northern tribe on the rohe of the iwi at the centre of the narrative. The weaponry used by the strangers is completely unknown. They appear to be pointing sticks from mamaku—a well-known tree in the area—at them. But these sticks make a loud bang. Out of the end of the branch comes smoke and fire, and the person the stick points at falls down wounded or dead. Thus begin the ‘musket wars’ in the life of Hine-aute and her whānau.
Next come the trading ships. Their crews want food and other items in exchange for their own goods—including the now highly prized muskets. As part of their trade deals, young women from the pā are sent to the Pākehā ships to give the sailors some long-desired female company. In exchange, the women receive gifts. Eventually, as becomes clear later in the course of the story, many carry the consequences of these encounters in the form of venereal diseases.
One of these women is Kairau, considered the most beautiful young woman in the village. She later marries Ipumare after she is rejected and ill-treated by her previous husband because she cannot conceive children as the result of a sexually transmitted infection.
In fact, both sons of Hine-aute desire to be with Kairau over a period of several years, which becomes a source of frustration and annoyance for both their parents. Hine-aute is glad when both sons eventually seem to get over their love for Kairau. Ipumare becomes a tohunga and Uha marries Tahuna, with whom he has four children. One of those children, Kaurapa, becomes the grandfather of the koroua who relates the main story to the young man—their great-great-great-grandson.
Another shift in Hine-aute’s world comes with the death of her husband, Tuhē, who succumbs to the disease brought by the Pākehā. By the 1830s, these newcomers are beginning to arrive on the motu of Aotearoa in greater numbers. Finally, her way of life is disturbed beyond redemption by the arrival of Christian missionaries who are out to destroy all traces of what they consider paganism.
This fulfils the prophecy of the tohunga Manākura near the beginning of the story, when he tells her of the future fate of her children: ‘Their souls will be captured instead by the power of another atua, the atua of the people I saw in my vision. The hearts of your children will turn away from the teachings of our ancestors just as the prophetic dream showed. You will see with your own eyes the fruit I am speaking of, but you will not partake of it.’
And so it comes to pass. The adoption of Christianity—firstly by Uha, and then by Ipumare, who has to give up his tohunga life after several years of study as a pupil of Manākura in order to marry Kairau. He, too, tends towards the new monotheistic faith as they, like many others, embrace it as a way to put a stop to the endless rounds of utu and kai tangatatia.
Kāwai: Tree of nourishment may not be that mythical beast, the ‘great New Zealand novel’, but it may become, more importantly, part of a great nation-defining series of novels under the fern umbrella of Kāwai. A hint of the shapes of things to come can be garnered from the last conversation between the koroua and the young man during which they are talking about the Māori Battalion during World War II. The young interlocutor asks which war the older man is talking about. His koroua replies that he is asking about wars that happened overseas without knowing about wars that actually happened in Aotearoa New Zealand. The grandson thinks to himself: ‘The more I learned about the past, the clearer my journey ahead would become. I wait expectantly for him to continue.’
I think we can safely deduce from this ending to the novel that the next instalment of the Kāwai series will be set during the Land Wars. Like the young man, I await the continuing narrative with anticipation. Soutar is a great storyteller who knows his subject and is keen for others to hear an authentic version of the history of our country. Having worked with the Waitangi Tribunal and other Māori organisations, and possessing a deep knowledge of his own whakapapa, Monty Soutar is eminently suited for the task he has set himself: namely to take history out of the cut-and-dried history books and put it into the realm of the flesh-and-blood lives of men and women as they would have lived it.
MICHAEL O’LEARY is a poet, novelist, publisher and bookshop proprietor. He holds a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington, and his most recent publication is the two-volume T.A.B. Ula Rasa, Collected Poems, published in 2025 by Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop.
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