Maori Identity Theme Analysis

Karanga mai, karanga mai, karanga mai.

So the whale rider uttered a prayer over the wooden spear, saying, “Let this spear be planted in the years to come, for there are sufficient spear [sic] already implanted. Let this be the one to flower when the people are troubled and it is most needed.”

And the spear then leaped from his hands with gladness and soared through the sky. It flew across a thousand years. When it hit the earth, it did not change but waited for another hundred and fifty years to pass until it was needed. The flukes of the whale stroked majestically at the sky.

Hui e, haumi e, taiki e.

Let it be done.

The human had heard the young whale’s distress and had come into the sea, playing a flute. The sound was plangent and sad as he tried to communicate his oneness with the young whale’s mourning. Quite without the musician knowing it, the melodic patterns of the flute’s phrases imitated the whale song of comfort. The young whale drew nearer to the human, who cradled him and pressed noses with the orphan in greeting. When the herd traveled onward, the young whale remained and grew under the tutelage of his master.

“A girl,” Grandfather, Koro Apirana, said, disgusted. “I will have nothing to do with her. She has broken the male line of descent in our tribe.” He shoved the telephone at our grandmother, Nanny Flowers, saying, “Here. It’s your fault. Your female side was too strong.” Then he pulled on his boots and stomped out of the house.

I could understand, however, why the old man was so against the idea. Not only was Kahutia Te Rangi a man’s name, but it was also the name of the ancestor of our village. Koro Apirana felt that naming a girl-child after the founder of our tribe was belittling Kahutia Te Rangi’s prestige. From that time onward, whenever Koro Apirana went past the meetinghouse, he would look up at the figure of Kahutia Te Rangi on the whale and shake his head sorrowfully. Then he would say to Nanny Flowers, “You stepped out of line, dear. You shouldn’t have done it.” To give credit to her, Nanny Flowers did appear penitent.

“Never mind, girl,” she said to baby Kahu. “Your birth cord is here. No matter where you may go, you will always return. You will never be lost to us.” Then I marveled at her wisdom and Rehua’s in naming the child in our genealogy and the joining of her to our lands.

When a child is growing up somewhere else, you can’t see the small signs that mark her out as different, someone with a destiny. As I have said before, we were all looking somewhere else.

In many respects the parallels with the Maori in New Zealand were very close, except that we didn’t have to advance as many years in one lifetime. However, our journey was possibly more difficult because it had to be undertaken within European terms of acceptability. We were a minority and much of our progress was dependent on European goodwill. And there was no doubt that in New Zealand, just as in Papua New Guinea, our nationalism was also galvanizing the people to become one Maori nation.

“Will we be ready?” he asked. “Will we have prepared the people to cope with the new challenges and the new technology? And will they still be Maori?” I could tell that the last question was weighing heavily on his mind. In this respect we both recognized that the answer lay in Koro Apirana’s persistence with the school sessions, for he was one of the very few who could pass on the sacred knowledge. Our Koro was like an old whale stranded in an alien present, but that was how it was supposed to be, because he also had his role in the pattern of things, in the tides of the future.

“E nga rangatira,” Kahu began, “e nga iwi”—she looked at Koro Apirana’s empty seat—“tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.” There were stars in her eyes, like sparkling tears. “Distinguished guests, members of the audience, my speech is a speech of love for my grandfather, Koro Apirana.”

Nanny Flowers gave a sob, and tears began to flow down her cheeks.

The heartache of that separation had never left the whale, nor had the remembrance of that touch of brow to brow in the last hongi.

Yes, people in the district vividly remember the stranding of the whales, because television and radio brought the event into our homes that evening. But there were no television cameras or radio newspeople to see what occurred in Whangara the following night. Perhaps it was just as well, because even now it all seems like a dream. Perhaps, also, the drama enacted that night was meant to be seen only by the tribe and nobody else. Whatever the case, the earlier stranding of whales was merely a prelude to the awesome event that followed, an event that had all the cataclysmic power and grandeur of a Second Coming.

I thought I saw something flying through the air, across the aeons, to plunge into the heart of the village.

A dark shadow began to ascend from the deep. Then there were other shadows rising, ever rising. Suddenly the first shadow breached the surface and I saw it was a whale. Leviathan. Climbing through the depths. Crashing through the skin of sea. And as it came, the air was filled with streaked lightning and awesome singing.

Koro Apirana gave a tragic cry, for this was no ordinary beast, no ordinary whale. This whale came from the past. As it came, it filled the air with its singing.

Karanga mai, karanga mai,

karanga mai.

“But then, […] man assumed a cloak of arrogance and set himself up above the Gods. He even tried to defeat Death, but failed. As he grew in his arrogance, he started to drive a wedge through the original oneness of the world. In the passing of Time he divided the world into that half he could believe in and that half he could not believe in. The real and the unreal. The natural and the supernatural. The scientific and the fantastic. The present and the past. He put a barrier between both worlds, and everything on his side was called rational and everything on the other side was called irrational. Belief in our Maori Gods […] has often been considered irrational.”

“[The whale] is a reminder of the oneness that the world once had. It is the birth cord joining past and present, reality and fantasy. It is both [real and unreal, natural and supernatural]. It is both, […] and if we have forgotten the communion then we have ceased to be Maori!”

[…] “The whale is a sign. […] It has stranded itself here. If we are able to return it to the sea, then that will be proof that the oneness is still with us. If we are not able to return it, then this is because we have become weak. If it lives, we live. If it dies, we die. Not only its salvation but ours is waiting out there.”

Without really thinking about it, Kahu began to stroke the whale just behind the fin. It is my lord, the whale rider. She felt a tremor in the whale and a rippling under the skin. Suddenly she saw that indentations like footholds and handholds were appearing before her. She tested the footholds and they were firm. Although the wind was blowing fiercely, she stepped away from the sheltering fin and began to climb. As she did so, she caught a sudden glimpse of her Koro Apirana and Nanny Flowers clustered with the others on the faraway beach.

She was the whale rider. Astride the whale, she felt the sting of the surf and rain upon her face. On either side, the younger whales were escorting their leader through the surf. They broke through into deeper water.

“Which of the boys?” he gasped in grief. “Which of the—”

Nanny Flowers was pointing out to sea. Her face was filled with emotion as she cried out to Kahu. The old man understood. He raised his arms as if to claw down the sky upon him.

“Very well,” the ancient bull whale said. “Then let everyone live, and let the partnership between land and sea, whales and all humankind, also remain.”

And the whale herd sang their gladness that the tribe would also live, because they knew that the girl would need to be carefully taught before she could claim the place for her people in the world.

Kahu looked at Koro Apirana, her eyes shining.

“Oh, Paka, can’t you hear them? I’ve been listening to them for ages now. Oh, Paka, and the whales are still singing,” she said.