Published for the Maori Cultural and
Promotional Committee, $1.10

reviewed by Ernest E. Bush

On 10 February 1973, a Maori canoe was placed in the water at Tauranga with all the traditional ceremonial adherent to such an occasion. And now the story of the building and launching has been told. For those who followed the saga of the canoe from its inception, the booklet will be a souvenir. For those who know not the story, and for future generations, Te Awanui will tell the story of an ambitious project that was brought to its courageous fruition.

The concept of a ceremonial canoe for the city of Tauranga took shape when, prior to the visit of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the city fathers looked around for such a canoe to meet the Royal Yacht, ‘Britannia’, and escort it to moorings. No such canoe seemed available; the idea was born of building a canoe that would belong to the city and to the people of Tauranga, so that, when need arose, ceremonies could be carried out with all the ancient tradition of the Maori people.

For such a canoe, two requirements (apart form the financing of such a project) had to be met: the canoe would require a suitable tree, and the tree would require a very skilled and dedicated carver.

This, then, is the story told by Mr Morris. He records the finding and felling of the selected kauri and the traditional ceremonial attached to each stage of this. The committee did not have to search very far to find a master carver capable of transforming this giant of the forest into a masterpiece of the carver's art. Tony Tukaokao, Tauranga-born, was a craftsman, a mastercarver, and, as it proved, an artist who could take a piece of dead, inert material, and give it life, vibrant life. This is how the author describes the stages of the construction. He sees the carver as a creator, planning, designing, hewing with loving touch, so that each adze-cut etches into the wood the very embodiment of loving care.

Mr Morris describes the stages in the technicalities of the Maori method of canoe-building, for this canoe was to be truly representative of the Maori way of life that the committee was set up to promote. It began with the selection of a kauri that would lend itself both from its size and its shape to the fulfilment of the project. Such a tree was found in the forests in the vicinity of Tauranga, the chain saws bit into its living side, and very soon it lay, crumpled, lifeless, and awaiting its future.

The lower limbs were carefully trimmed, for from some of these would come paddles, carved adornments, and other extras added to the exterior of the finished canoe. So the trunk was brought to the heart of the city, where a rough shelter had been erected for the carver to do his work, and where the public, citizens and visitors alike, could see in 1972 the re-creation of a traditional Maori canoe, built in all respects like the canoes that gave service to the Maori of the past both in peace and in war.

For ease of handling, the canoe was to be built in two sections. Meanwhile, the timber seasoned slowly under damp sacking; at the same time planning and designing, and much other preliminary work had to be carried out. By early March, 1971, one half of the hull had assumed its hollowed shape solely by the use of the carver's adze, and in due course the second half was ready to be joined to the first. To give lasting life to the canoe, the two halves were taken to a treatment plant for impregnation.

The traditional Maori joint known as haumi ensures that the canoe will ride safely in deep waters and through the roughest of storms; proof of the safety and the security of the haumi lies in the long and safe voyages of the great canoes of the past. And so the hull is now one again, and ready

for the second stage. For the canoe is but a shell, lacking gunwale, prow, a bow-piece and a stern-piece, seats, paddles, and the adornments that will all transform this hollowed-out tree trunk into a thing of beauty, a dug-out into a ceremonial canoe.

Slowly, inch by inch, the carings appeared. Watched by the public, the carver chiselled and shaped, until design and form began to appear. The architect of the shape was now the artist, creating beauty from wood, giving by spiral and whorl the impression of motion, of the restless sea, making this canoe worthy to be consecrated to Taronga, the Sea God.

By November of 1972, that tree, which had been growing for 300 years, which had taken less than an hour to fell, was now, after 21 months of loving labour, of dedicated skill, of inspired artisry, a majestic reincarnation of the living force that had made it one of the great ones of Tane, and must now take its place in the roll of the great ones of Taronga.

The author of the descriptive booklet is a Tauranga poet who has won wider recognition. He has brought his poetic mind to bear in this booklet, first when in poetic language he traces the genealogy of Ngaite-rangi, whose ancestral canoe Mataatua has passed its spirit on to Te Awanui, and, second, in writing the Dedication in which he sees Te Awanui as ‘A whole concept of ancient Maori history floating free — revered into Eternity.’

So Te Awanui rides upon the waters from which it takes its name. Thirty paddlers will wield the paddles that will give the power and momentum for the 46-foot canoe to surge across the waters. Perhaps another royal occasion will arise when Te Awanui can play its allotted role. Whether it will bow to Royalty is of little concern, for Te Awanui is regal in aspect. Te Awanui is a Queen as she rides the waters in all the pomp and majesty of a ceremonial Maori canoe.

Heineman, $3.80 and $1.95

reviewed by Paul Katene

The book is a collection of short stories, closely knit on various levels by a number of themes. The locality is Waituhi on the east coast, and in the main, the people have their counterparts in real life. The author has garnered from his own experiences and being at one with his characters both in sympathy and kinship he has sketched them adeptly and lovingly. The Other Side of the Fence is the odd ball, having a suburban setting. Its place would more properly have been in a possible sequel to this book, particularly as a follow-on to In Search of the Emerald City. Two themes are important: the death theme and the theme of change.

The death theme is strong in four of the ten stories, with oblique allusions in two others. A Game of Cards has its sequel in Fire on Greenstone. Nanny Miro's physical death is recorded in the former, and in the latter, her old house — the museum — becomes her personification. It must die also, if only to let her spirit rest, and its burning satisfies this demand. In Beginning of the Tournament the death allusion is conveyed in the slow decline of the annual fixture. Hockey is dying on the coast, we are told, but the tournament is important for social reasons and the dwindling supporters clutch at the passing shadow.

In The Child the death of the old kuia on the beach while gathering shells for her mokopuna is sweetly sad. The death theme in The Whale is heavy with lonliness and impending tragedy but is not without a touch of grandeur. The kaumatua, a desolate, rejected figure sits in the dying meeting house in the fading light and communes with the past. There is the air of ritual about this final act. Death is on the beach and he is inexorably drawn to it. A whale is stranded on the sand. The scavengers are already at work. The

description of the fate of Tangaroa's offspring reflecting the kaumatua's end is powerful writing. Tangi is the return of the son to the village marae where his father's body lay. Rightly, it is the last story and has the effect of gathering all the threads of life's expression into the last surviving ceremonial occassion of ritual Maoritanga.

The theme of change is oft times synonymous with the death theme — death being a change in itself. At times it is a change of attitudes as in The Makutu on Mrs Jones. Mr Hohepa, terrible in his arrogance, is challenged by the indomitable Mrs Jones. Out of the conflict is born mutual respect and unity. One wonders if the author is expressing in this microcosmic setting the story of New Zealand — its Maori and Pakeha people. The change in One Summer Morning is physical with the signs of emerging manhood eagerly awaited, enjoyed and exalted in. “Don't be too much in a hurry to be a man,” the father sadly whispers. In Search of the Emerald City tells how the whole family is uprooted and moved off in the direction of Wellington.

The theme assumes tragic proportions in The Whale. It is ominous, engulfing and soul-destroying. The kaumatua has painstakingly taught his mokopuna to appreciate things Maori. She had been the only one to show any interest. A visit to the city had changed her. They quarrel. “It is not a Maori world,” she flings at him. His chopping down of the kai-house door and his agonising accusation is a searing indictment against spiritual change — the eroding of values on his turangawaewae. It is incredible that this incident actually took place in real life. It provides the climax for the book.

The title is abstracted from Fire on Greenstone. He looks into the greenstone, the rare, milky opalescence of inanga, not the deep, mysterious kawakawa as the cover would suggest. The author sees the richness and spirituality of the values that underline the Maori way of life.

Witi Ihimaera is one of the high priests of the reflective movement in contemporary Maori, creative writing. The Te Kaha conference revealed an impatient and strident demand for writings in line with the political and social protestations of today. It claimed that the action was in the city. Witi is a young man, a city man, right in the midst of this great transplant of Maori manawa — heart — from the open hills to the concrete jungle. He has seen the rejection of some tissues resulting in resentment and alienation. His message is spiritual, as a source of strength, a fibre strong enough to support a people in its adjustment.

To many, looking into the greenstone would be much like seeing through a glass darkly. But for those who are attumed, the message will be clear. Justification comes from the kaumatua; “He had taught her well and one day her confusion would pass and she would understand.”

Two small grizzles: the use of “nanny” for both sexes, and the boob on ‘Haere ra’ in Emerald City.

⋆ ⋆ ⋆

We also reprint the review which appeared earlier this year in the ‘Times Literary Supplement’.

This collection of short stories is not just a collection. The stories constitute a whole; they are all firmly and deeply grounded in the life of Maoris of today, a life seen through a Maori eye and a Maori memory which fuse truthfulness, faith to the facts, with love. Realism in fiction, because historically it is associated with the battle to give the whole truth and so in practice the battle for the right to include the ugly, is too often loosely assumed to connote only the certain presence of the ugly. Witi Ihimaera's realism is like sunlight which conceals nothing but which, because it contains and controls warmth, a humorous affection, makes the drabbest of detail, the commonplaces of rural and urban poverty, come alive, human, and acceptable.

The talent revealed is all the more welcome because this is not only Mr Ihimaera's first book but the first work of fiction (we have already reason to be grateful to Maori poets like Hone Tuwhare) in which the Maoris of our time have emerged through

the imagination of a Maori writer of such skill and power.

The repeated word of the title, Pounamu, however translucent to New Zealanders, will be opaque to the English reader. It means ‘greenstone’, a New Zealand form of jade evocative of a past when it was the prized material of axe and ornament; and evoking also an early novel by William Satchell, The Greenstone Door, in which Satchell, a Pakeha, tried to do from the outside for the epic times of the Maori wars and in the romantic idiom of a former day, what Mr Ihimaera has now done from within for a time of transition, when the heroic has faded.

The problems of the Maori, making their transition from a communal primitive society to an atomized industrial society, lie behind many of these stories, and the inevitable clash of generations, conflict of loyalties, the pull of the past and the push of the present. Mr Ihimaera handles all this with subtlety and restraint, rightly making the creation of people his priority and leaving their problems to present themselves implicitly through the way his characters behave.

There are few writers who can write from love without stumbling into bathos or sentimentality; Mr Ihimaera can. This is the most interesting new writing to come out of New Zealand for a long time and implies a promise of more.

Reithmaier and Goodman Collins, $4.95

reviewed by Ernest E. Bush

The publication of this book will do much to bring to the notice and the knowledge of the citizens of New Zealand an appreciation of the country and the way of life that many of our Polynesians, now well-established as New Zealand citizens, have left; it should help us to a better under-sanding of that jewel of the Pacific we know of as Samoa, somewhat off the tourist track, unless it be visited as part of an islands' cruise on the monthly trip of the supply ship which has only limited space for tourists.

It is a book of photographs and text. Gregory Riethmaier has used his camera to good effect, and has captured much of the unspoilt beauty of the Samoan Islands. And this is the charm, both of the book and of the Islands of Samoa, that Samoa is unspoiled by the need to dress it up for the tourist. To those of us who have known the islands in the past, there is perhaps an element of surprise that little seems to have altered. The photographs taken by the author in 1972 could have been taken in 1952. The land seems still unspoilt, the people still charming and affable and smiling. The DC3 still lands at Faleolo Airport (though under different ownership). Flagraising day is still celebrated with the same programme.

Mr Reithmaier's photographs show that the women still wash their clothes in the time-honoured way in the streams and the children still show excited curiosity about the ways of the white man. The lava-lava continues to be, with his bush-shirt and helmet, the uniform of the Samoan policeman. Nor have tin shacks replaced the attractive Samoan houses, in which the Samoans appear still to sleep on their mats.

Changes there are of course, and the author has drawn on some pictures he took while sailing with von Luckner in 1398. But the photographs should be enough to entice the visitor to see for himself this lovely land, to meet its people, to feast his eye on the natural beauty and colour which is Samoa. And if he can't, the book will do it for him. Over 200 photographs, many in natural colour, say, THIS IS SAMOA.

The sub-title of the book advises the reader that the book is about the Samoan way of life, and in this respect it is a sociological study, without being an academic treatise. In his pictures the photographer has shown the people in their natural habitat, and performing their customary activities, whether they be at work or at play.

Since there are two Samoas, Eastern

American Samoa, and Western Samoa, under the aegis of New Zealand since World War I, and more recently independent, the author has treated each in its own section of the book. The reader-viewer gains an impression of the differences that exist between the two Samoas, partly geographical, partly social. One is able to detect the American influence underlying the way of life of the people of Tutuila.

To say what photographs cannot, Richard Goodman has collaborated with Gregory Reithmaier, and provided text that elaborates what the pictures attempt to depict. Richard Goodman discusses the topography, the economics, the politics of the two Samoas. He talks, too, about the people, their fa'a Samoa (their Samoana), their peculiar system of village government by the matai system; their work and their recreation; he shows how European customs and the use of money have tended to confuse the Samoan whose customs did not include the

use of money for barter or the possession of it as a sign of wealth and social standing. In appendices he discusses the flora and the fauna of the islands, and attempts to trace the origin of the Samoan people.

It is perhaps fitting that on the last page the authors have included the words and music of a line from a Samoan song of farewell. The words ring very true—

‘Oh, I never will forget you, Samoa …’