Vaughann RapatahanaOnce Were Pacific: Māori Connections to Oceania, by Alice Te Punga Sommerville, (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 288 pp., $61.99.
Their knowing the use of this sort of Cloth doth in some measure account for the extraordinary fondness they have shew’d for it above every other thing we had to give them.” [Cook, Edwards, Beaglehole 1955/1968]
‘For Māori at Uawa in 1769, the usual European trade goods and trinkets that had been prepared for exchange by the Europeans on board the Endeavour were trumped by large sheets of tapa recently acquired in Tahiti … As they interacted with navigator-explorers Tupaia and Cook, Māori communities drew on existing narratives of connection and exchange with the broader Pacific.’ [Sommerville, 2012]
Alice Te Punga Sommerville’s important thesis is that not only do all Polynesian peoples share a Pacific Ocean heritage and ethnicity, but that it is well past the time that mo ngā iwi Māori o Aotearoa and Polynesians from elsewhere started to share a lot more than they currently appear to do, whether in the tight urban-suburban boxes they tend to inhabit within New Zealand, or in their increasing intermingling in diasporal sorties.
Both groups remain marginalised, both groups still do not have a reasonable bite of the socio-economic pie, both groups’ numbers are growing at a rapid rate. Any perceived differences – stemming more from ngā iwi Māori toward other Pacific people rather than the other way around – need now to be put aside and, given their original common Pacific genesis, gestation and subsequent groupings, all New Zealand Polynesians should get together to de-marginalise, demand, defend. After all, Māori too are Pacific Islanders: ‘Pacific identification does not dilute Māori identification.’ It is an age of inclusiveness, an age of the ‘Hawaiiki nation.’
There are significant connotations here, of course, for Māori as regards Indigenousness to their whenua or land and their concomitant first-people rights, which Sommerville addresses. Asking the vital question: ‘Does being Pacific – being migrants from across Te Moananui-a Kiwa – default us out of conventional modes of articulating ourselves as Indigenous?’ she sees no dismantling of Māori first nation rights whatsoever, but envisions rather a wider-angled lens whereby, quoting Ngahiwi Tomoana (2008): ‘Indigenous peoples across Aotearoa, the Pacific and the Hawaiiki nation’ can ‘agitate for their rights in the context of the United Nations Declaration [on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples]’. And to quote from Will ‘Ilolahia (1973): ‘This doesn’t mean that the Māori lose their Māoritanga and replace their Māoriness. No, it means [the] opposite, because by obtaining and using one’s own Māoritanga, Maori way of life, Māoris [sic] become more Polynesian.’
Māori should, Sommerville argues, not feel threatened by their Pacific cousins, but join with them, and in so doing their bonding would make for an even stronger case for all their rights within Aotearoa, which for her is not the ‘mere’ land mass of a Pākehā-prescribed New Zealand, but which manifestly extends well out into the Pacific and incorporates not only Pasifika people, but also the masses of Māori who live beyond this ‘New Zealand’, because: ‘Māori also spend time in Pacific spaces.’
Indeed, for her, it is precisely because of their shared lower socio-economic status within Aotearoa that any rivalries commenced in the first place: ‘the economic struggle that I argue has underpinned and exacerbated much of the prejudice between the communities’, as she says. This diurnal economic rivalry, rather than any threat to Māori Indigeneity needs to be seen for what it is. For this reviewer, such rivalry has been and still remains part and parcel of a deliberate Pākehā plot, whereby Polynesians were transplanted into cities as the equivalent of coolie labourers. All Polynesians have suffered because of Pākehā oppression and suppression (think of New Zealand’s military presence in Samoa in 1929 and the brutal murders of Mau Samoa protestors, and don’t get me started on Pākehā-on-Māori atrocities like that which happened at Handley’s Woolshed in 1868, let alone more recent incursions into Te Urewera.)
This then is Sommerville’s quite novel, timely and necessary thesis: ngā iwi Māori could and should become more enlightened about their continued antithesis to ngā Pākehā and consider far more the value of their mutuality with Pacific Island peoples.
I will leave aside here the vital question: will ngā iwi Māori katoa ever take heed of this brave writer, and note that at the very least ngā kaituhi Māori may now respond to some other questions posed by Sommerville: ‘Where are the novels and short fiction and poetry and plays by Māori that are set in the brown suburbs of Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch and that include mixed Māori-Pasifika families and friendships?’ Tika tēnei patai. Me, mo ngā iwi Māori hoki; and what about: ‘One does not stop being Māori when one is living in the Pacific, does one stop being Pacific when one is living in Aotearoa?’
However, I have some reservations in the actual presentation and symmetrical logic of the thesis presented here, and worse than this – some claims just do not stand up.
To summarize: In the first place, this is not an academic sociological tract in any sense of the word. Statistics are as elusive as sylphs, while case-studies of ‘real’ Māori and Pacific peoples are few and far between, although some space is given to the curious case of the removal of a Māori youth as a ‘Pacific Island representative’ from a Te Papa poster in October 2007, and to the mixed-up messages pertaining to the naming of, and Māori representation in, any pavilion supposedly representing New Zealand/Aotearoa at the various Auckland Pasifika festivals over the past few years. Everyone, it seems, is confused by the ‘actual’ existential basis of current Polynesian groupings, let alone what to attribute as to nomenclature. In both scenarios there was, and is, a reluctance to attribute Pacific-ness to Māori.
So, rather than sociology, this is a delving into literature – primarily fictive and poetic – and a literary critique (despite Sommerville’s early notation that the book is an exercise in interdisciplinarity) in an attempt to ‘prove’ what in many ways seems a pre-ordained thesis, formulated well before the evidence here presented. And the entire book is very resonant of an academic doctoral thesis with snatches and patches of other writings glued in at various stages (see Sommerville’s note that ‘it has emerged from an aspect of my doctoral research.’) Which is why there are two pages of publication history at the end of the book, and – somewhat frustratingly – no bibliography whatsoever. Which is also why – for me anyway – the Introductions are far too many, and somewhat repetitive. The entire book is something of a patchwork quilt, and I cannot quite see where Albert Wendt gets his back-cover blurb comment ‘accessible’ from, because in places it is densely, even tortuously, textured.
Sommerville herself admits to finding a scarcity of literary evidence in this litero-anthropological critique of some literature, particularly with regard to ‘disconnections’ between Māori and Pacific. Thus some analysis is rather sparse on the ground – and some – such as, for example, her introduction of Evelyn Patuawa-Nathan’s Opening Doors as a Māori writing about Pacific is stretching things a bit too thinly. (Although Sommerville eventually admits: ‘Indeed, very little of the book explicitly engages Pacific connections at all.’) I don’t see enough of her avowed desire to discern ‘Māori articulations of connections with the Pacific’ here, probably because there haven’t been many! A bit more meat on the bones would have been tastier eh. That said, Once Were Pacific will, I hope, persuade more such articulation.
Sommerville herself admits to finding a scarcity of literary evidence in this litero-anthropological critique of some literature, particularly with regard to ‘disconnections’ between Māori and Pacific. Thus some analysis is rather sparse on the ground – and some – such as, for example, her introduction of Evelyn Patuawa-Nathan’s Opening Doors as a Māori writing about Pacific is stretching things a bit too thinly. (Although Sommerville eventually admits: ‘Indeed, very little of the book explicitly engages Pacific connections at all.’) I don’t see enough of her avowed desire to discern ‘Māori articulations of connections with the Pacific’ here, probably because there haven’t been many! A bit more meat on the bones would have been tastier eh. That said, Once Were Pacific will, I hope, persuade more such articulation.
It is, however, great to see that Patuawa-Nathan and Vernice Wineera have been brought into the world of light by Sommerville, while – at long last also, Hinewirangi gets some of the attention her writings so well deserve. I wish Alice Te Punga Sommerville luck in her impending Ghost Writers project concerning ngā kaituhi Māori ngaro.
Several omissions intrigue me though. Other than the very obvious point that the focus is here entirely on English language literature, not indigenous language works, there is no scope given to many Pacific zones whatsoever – perhaps through the author’s lack of connection to them. Thus, for example, Fiji, Vanuatu, Nauru, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Solomon Islands, Palau, Marshall and Caroline Islands just don’t rate much or indeed, any mention, while the Philippines may as well not exist. Yet their strong genetic and linguistic connections to ngā iwi Māori should establish that such nations need to be involved in this project as well.
I speak of what I know, as I have spent and continue to spend considerable time in such places across the Pacific, and I also would swear – rather as Sommerville does as regards Taiwan indigenous peoples – that I had seen my Māori uncles in Pampanga on several occasions, while words such as kutu and mata, among many others, rank with the exact same meanings in both te reo Māori and Tagalog.
To be fair to the author however, she does point out that the hoped-for result of her book is not only ‘the development of scholarship about Māori writing in English’, but also that she ‘yearns for the intellectual company of, parallel development of scholarship about Māori writing in the Māori language’ – as well as, incidentally, to going well ‘beyond the conventional forms treated in literary studies.’
Some statements, unfortunately, are just downright wrong: ‘There are only five published book-length treatments of (English-language) Māori literature’ rings hollow – especially in 2012, when Paola Della-Valle, Christine Prentice, Janet Wilson, Christine Stachurski, Nadia Majid, Michelle Keown, Melissa Kennedy, Michaela Moura-Kocoglu have had books published very recently, and some are indeed prominent in the new literature.
And what about this? With reference to the first poetry books by Wineera and Patuawa-Nathan, Sommerville writes that they ‘are impossible to buy’, which is just not true. I sourced my own copies and paid for them easily on the Internet this year – from www.bookfinder.com
Next: ‘Very few new Māori poets have come into publication over the past ten years.’ Not true at all. Other than Taylor and Sullivan and Baker, putting aside the fact that this sounds like a law firm and these are indeed referenced in this book, there have been many ‘new’ Māori poets ‘surfacing’ over the last few years – for example, Reihana Robinson and Marewa Glover as just two examples. And where is Michael O’Leary? Roma Potiki? And so on. (Sommerville, has, by the way, managed to smuggle in three of her own poems! She has insinuated here a good deal of personal-life self-referencing too.)
Given all of the last few areas of problematic assertions, as above, and given that Sommerville is at her best and does make for rather enthralling reading when she (re)introduces works that have not had much airplay, such as her detailed and intelligent interpretations of Whale Rider, the various incarnations of Romeo and Juliet, and especially the focus on Te Rangihiroa and – later – the student newspaper Rongo, all of which is very interesting, what is my final summation of Once Were Pacific?
Nēi ra, kei te pai tēnei pukapuka, This book is fine, that’s for sure. Engari kāore he taunakitanga nui kei konei hoki. But there’s also not enough evidence here. Ko nui ngā patai o nuinga mo tēnei pukapuka tonu. There are still many question-marks overall about this book. Heoti, he rangi ta matawhāiti, he rangi ta matawhānui. However, a person with a narrow vision sees a narrow horizon, while a person with a wide vision sees a wide horizon. Ko Alice Te Punga Sommerville tēnei tangata tuarua. Alice Te Punga Sommerville is this second person. She has grasped perspicaciously the ‘complicated dynamic of connection and derision that shapes the relationships between Māori and Pasifika communities in Aotearoa New Zealand.’ Ko te marangai rangimārie kei mua te āwhā tēnei pukapuka. This book is the quiet rain before the storm.
Nēi ra, kei te pai tēnei pukapuka, This book is fine, that’s for sure. Engari kāore he taunakitanga nui kei konei hoki. But there’s also not enough evidence here. Ko nui ngā patai o nuinga mo tēnei pukapuka tonu. There are still many question-marks overall about this book. Heoti, he rangi ta matawhāiti, he rangi ta matawhānui. However, a person with a narrow vision sees a narrow horizon, while a person with a wide vision sees a wide horizon. Ko Alice Te Punga Sommerville tēnei tangata tuarua. Alice Te Punga Sommerville is this second person. She has grasped perspicaciously the ‘complicated dynamic of connection and derision that shapes the relationships between Māori and Pasifika communities in Aotearoa New Zealand.’ Ko te marangai rangimārie kei mua te āwhā tēnei pukapuka. This book is the quiet rain before the storm.
VAUGHAN RAPATAHANA: Ko Te Atiawa te iwi, ko Ngati Te Whiti te hapu. Ko toru nga wahi o te kainga inaianei. He has a PhD in Existentialism from the University of Auckland and currently lives in Hong Kong.
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