The Realm of Koura

This is the realm of Koura, of Māori, of Aotearoa. Located at the center of the Kelburn campus of Victoria University of Wellington, Te Herenga Waka was the first university marae in Aotearoa New Zealand when it opened in 1986. The marae complex includes an ornately decorated house that was largely carved under the guidance of Takirirangi Smith. The carved pou1 around the walls of the house were strategically selected to ensure that every Māori student and staff member would have at least one tupuna represented there.2 In a conventional carved meetinghouse, at least one post in the center of the room supports the large ridgepole that runs down the middle of the house and thereby maintains the separation between Ranginui and Papatūānuku.3 Te Herenga Waka is a tūrangawaewae of a particular kind. As well as being a home place in which the Māori world is centered, the whare is also a manifestation of Māori knowledges: library, map, encyclopedia, and periodic table in one. When you enter through the main front door, the first poutokomanawa4 you see is Pacifically themed: Te Rangihiroa (yes, Te Rangihiroa from earlier in this book) on the bottom, with Pacific carvings reaching above him to the roof. It is not entirely unusual to represent non-Māori people in carved pou in whare, but what is interesting about the Pacific poutokomanawa at Te Herenga Waka is that rather than simply reading the figures as non-Māori, we recognize them as Pacific; they are there as our relatives and, more specifically, as our tuakana. This is the realm of koura, where, after two centuries of interacting with colonialism, Māori continue to recognize that our place is in the Pacific. If this is the case, though, why are we—Māori—not talking about this dimension of what it is to be Māori in New Zealand, and why aren’t our writers producing more texts that explore this part of our experience? 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? If there is a prominent Pacific supporting post in Te Herenga Waka, why is Māori not considered to be Pacific? Is it something to do with Aotearoa that defaults “Pacific” out? Is it something to do with the Pacific that cannot imagine Aotearoa?

Although the Māori village has been a permanent and durable feature of the Pacific represented at the Polynesian Cultural Centre (PCC) in Hawai‘i, the presence of Māori in the Pasifika Festival, a celebration of Pacific culture, food, arts, and language that is the largest single event held in Auckland and the largest single Pacific event in the world, has been remarkably unstable. Over the course of two days—the one-day event was expanded because the crowds could not fit into the Western Springs Park venue—an estimated 250,000 Pacific and non-Pacific people gravitate to this huge event each year.5 At times the festival, which started in 1993, has included Māori as a part of the Pacific in the same way as other Pacific communities (Sāmoa, Tonga, Niue, Cook Islands, etc.) by allocating a stage or village to “Aotearoa,” and at times the festival has included Māori as tāngata whenua through processes of consultation and the use of tikanga for opening ceremonies and related events. Pasifika ’93 had three performance stages—“Main,” “Community,” and “Contemporary”—which were joined by a collection of food vendors, information tents, displays, and stalls. Pasifika ’95 included a “cultural village” to better organize the cultural aspects of what had already become a huge event, and the village structure changed again in 1999 to include several villages organized by distinct Pacific communities for the first time. The shift from a whole festival to a tribal or island village structure took some working out, and the configuration of the villages for the 1999 Pasifika Festival was finally confirmed by early February. The informational pamphlet distributed at the 1999 Pasifika Festival read,

The NIU millennium. Pasifika 99 encompasses the NIU as the past, present and future for all things Pacific. The introduction of villages will bring you even closer to experiencing the uniqueness and diversity that is Pasifika, and with the many highlights and associated events leading up to the festival this will surely be the biggest and best Pasifika yet.6

Because of the hegemonic national configuration of the Pacific (“all things Pacific”) at events such as Pasifika, in New Zealand, one would be surprised to find an iteration of the Pacific that did not include Sāmoa or the Cook Islands and yet has permission to be surprised to find communities from Kiribati, Wallis and Futuna, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, or, indeed, Aotearoa. At the bottom of a list of typed considerations for the Festival Komiti7 to consider in February 1999 is a handwritten question: “What does NZ village mean?”8

The question “what does NZ village mean?” is ostensibly about a specific “village” in a specific time and place, but it is a question with which the organizers of the Pasifika Festival have grappled over the course of successive festivals. What, indeed, is a New Zealand village? What is a “village” when it is in New Zealand? As the crowds attending the Pasifika Festival grew, so, too, did the urgency of questions around the event: what counts as Pasifika? The formal evaluation of Pasifika ’98 argued,

Pasifika AND Maori should be a combined festival. We are a part of the culture and heritage of the Pacific afterall [sic].9

A note in the late 1999 minutes of the festival committee reads, “Aotearoa/ NZ village—change to Aotearoa.”10 Pasifika 2000 was themed “Dawn of the New Millennium,” and the Aotearoa village, like the others, focused on culture in the forms of food, art, and performance:

Watch young and elderly Maori weavers produce incredible art such as Kete (bag), Kono (food basket) and Potae (hat) woven from flax. Enjoy tasting traditional hangi food (meat and vegetables). Listen and watch Kapa Haka (Maori cultural performance) groups entertain you while you explore this village.

Had the Aotearoa village been included in the Pasifika Festival each year, there would have been sufficient material to conduct an interesting comparison between the festival and the PCC in and of itself. However, another transition was yet to take place: the village previously named “Aotearoa” was renamed “Niu Sila,” signaling a shift at Pasifika in which the Indigenous (and Pacifically) imagined “Aotearoa” vanished and the diasporic host “Niu Sila” appeared. In minutes of a Komiti meeting in late 1999 about the 2000 villages, we read,

Content of this [Aotearoa] village is to be all inclusive of Maori and NZ born Pacific people.11

Certainly New Zealand–born Pasifika presence and representation at the Pasifika Festival deserves its own discussion, and yet the appearance of this new Niu Sila village apparently required the removal of an Aotearoa village. Reflecting a struggle to account for the specificities of Māori experience and the specificities of Pasifika experience in New Zealand, the question “what does NZ village mean?” could apparently only have one answer, and Indigenous and diasporic Pacific communities are forced to compete to represent the national space.

Jumping forward to Pasifika 2004, Aotearoa had completely left the building. Nine villages were dotted around Western Springs Park for the festival (Tonga, Fiji, Sāmoa, Kiribati, Niu Sila, Tokelau, Cook Islands, Niue, and Tuvalu), each of which was represented by a national flag on materials handed to Pasifika Festival visitors. As in 1999, the pamphlet included an appropriate greeting, information about specific events, and features of that village over the course of the day. How, one might wonder, would the Niu Sila village be described? The first sign that Aotearoa is definitely gone is the greeting “Welcome to Niu Sila Village,” where a formal English “welcome” (unusual in New Zealand, where a Māori greeting is common in almost all such spaces) is offered in place of “Kia ora.” The cultural dimension of Niu Sila is “showcasing New Zealand businesses from academic institutions to small business.” According to the pamphlet, the details about specific features of the 2004 Niu Sila village include the following:

• Performances [not elaborated]
• Fresh BBQ-flamed mussels, prawns, crabs and mussel fritters
• Information stalls from Ministry of Fisheries, Department of Labour, Pacific Pulse, the University of Otago, and Tenancy Services for Housing New Zealand
• Handcrafts and Pacific Island Food

I wish this were a joke. No aspect of the Niu Sila village makes any reference to Māori, making those Pasifika communities involved complicit with the removal of tāngata whenua from the national imaginary. Furthermore, the “information stalls” of these government agencies and businesses are a stereotypical lineup for a Pasifika crowd. Since the first Pasifika Festival, there had been a range of educational, cultural, political, and governmental agencies and representatives in various tent sites and stalls. Now there was Niu Sila: the government (and business and education) had a village through which it could sell its wares. Although the difference between an Aotearoa and Niu Sila village had been intended to make room for New Zealand–born Pacific communities—Pasifika, indeed—the Niu Sila village is not a rich and complex diasporic space but simply a settler nation.

In 2005 at the Pasifika Festival, the Niu Sila village again greets visitors in English and again emphasizes its position as the settler host state. On the program, the Niu Sila village is set slightly apart 1n its own text box. Whereas Aotearoa was able to pass as an island village, Niu Sila has trouble mixing in with the rest:

Welcome to Niu Sila Village. Come and visit our great craft and food stalls or speak with people from the government and tertiary institutions.

Whether you want to learn, or just lie around and listen to the DJ, there is something for you in Niu Sila.12

In this short introduction to the village, long-held configurations of the settler metropole and diasporic subject loom large. On one hand, Niu Sila village renders the local Indigenous community illegible and untraceable, while extending a beckoning hand with promises of the “great craft and food stalls” found in originary homelands, with the added bonus of governmental and educational opportunities. This is, indeed, a place to come and experience a better life. On the other hand, we find the eternally precarious division between worthy and unworthy diasporic subjects: those who take advantage of particular kinds of opportunities “to learn” and those who are content to passively consume, to “just lie around and listen to the DJ.” The special event at the Niu Sila village in 2005 is a competition:

Jump up on our village stage during one of our dance-off competitions and you could win a Pasifika Festival T-shirt to remember your day by.

It is tempting to read this allegorically rather than literally. Beckoning with stores of resources and infrastructure, the settler metropole entices the diasporic subject to engage in competition—capitalism, the forces of the market—in which, while it is unlikely, you may just win. (Presumably those who choose to “lie around and listen to the DJ” are the least likely to win in this competition.) Niu Sila village uses identical wording in 2006 and adds a Fijian singer and an open microphone at which people can perform if they so wish: “See our village MC and we might give you your 15 minutes of fame . . . or 15 seconds!” The “we” who have the power to “give” space for people to be heard in “Niu Sila” are unnamed, anonymous, hegemonic.

“Kia ora” is back in 2007, although it is paired with “welcome,” and there is no other sign of Aotearoa:

Kia ora and welcome to the Niu Sila Village. Come and visit our great craft and food stalls or sit for a spell in Aunty’s house (themed by Cargo Cultures), and learn about the New Zealand Pacific Island experience.13

The Niu Sila village has taken on a more deliberate New Zealand–born Pasifika theme and has also more clearly targeted non-Pasifika attendees. Significantly, by 2010, the villages had become more diverse (and the number of villages increased to ten) and “Aotearoa” had come back, albeit by another name. Alongside Sāmoa, Tonga, Fiji, Tokelau, Tahiti, Niue, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Tahiti is a Tangata Whenua village, a space designated by the Indigenous position of the people rather than by the name of a collective (or perhaps a nation).14 In this book, I argue that we once were Pacific; in the Pasifika Festival, at least until we came back as tāngata whenua, we once were Aotearoa.

In the realm of koura, the Pacific is dynamically present within the boundaries of the nation-state of New Zealand, and despite the earlier roots of Pasifika communities in rural labor and the presence of Pacific people in rural and provincial schools from the early twentieth century, the story of Māori and Pasifika connections is largely an urban story. To put it plainly, the relation between Pasifika and Māori communities is more likely to be a salient day-to-day experience for Māori in the major metropolitan centers and, indeed, in the brown (often lower socioeconomic) neighborhoods of those centers such as Maaka’s beloved Ōtara or my own beloved Glen Innes.15 Curiously, even though the overwhelming proportion of Māori live in urban centers, including the majority of Māori writers, the balance of interest is not mutual between published Māori and Pasifika texts. While many Pasifika people are talking about their relationship with Māori, very few Māori—or at least Māori whose texts are widely distributed—are talking about the same relationship.16 (The obvious, and complex, exceptions to this are the creative people like Miria George and Che Fu who are of mixed Māori–Pasifika descent.) Furthermore, there would seem to be a compelling connection between the liminality of these (marginalized, disenfranchised, stereotyped) neighborhoods in the national space and the liminality of the literary genres within which an Aotearoa-based Pacific is most often articulated. Although some scholars and writers have engaged with the particular space of the city, much of this work codes the city as a not-Māori space, and this undermines Māori articulations of urban-centered perspective or experience and erases Indigenous presence from the land on which the cities are located.

Finding ways to critically analyze this urban work is an important task for Māori literary studies. One possible place to turn for analysis of urban Indigeneity is the Indigenous studies work coming out of North America, and a specific parallel with the relationships between Indigenous people from the United States and Mexico seems a particularly promising prospect. In both cases, Indigenous communities experienced the region in specific spaces but had an ability to move according to a series of negotiated practices of encounter but an incoming colonial system, and specifically, the imposition of state boundaries restricted movement and produced rather different economic and political situations for people on either side. From the perspective of land-based people, I can imagine that the U.S.–Mexico border and the border between New Zealand and the rest of the Pacific could seem implausibly different because a border on continuous land (such as a continent) seems more arbitrary than borders drawn around islands that are already separated by ocean. Wendt and Hau’ofa remind us, though, that ocean is territory rather than empty space, and so surely, imposed national borders are no less arbitrary when they separate some places (such as American Sāmoa and independent Sāmoa) and join others (such as Kiribati or French Polynesia or the Cook Islands, all of which sprawl across a vast range of islands, many of which are geographically closer to islands that are now part of the next-door nation-state than islands with whom they share a capital, flag, and colonial language). Certainly the inclusion of Alistair Te Ariki Campbell in an anthology of Māori writing is less surprising when we recall that people from the Cook Islands are Māori too. A further similarity between these two cases is the marked economic differences that results in vastly uneven migration between the two places. Communities Indigenous to the U.S. side end up hosting yet more manuhiri on their already stretched and often alienated lands, and similarly, the members of Pacific communities who migrate to New Zealand because of the economic differences in this region end up on Māori land without anything but cultural and genealogical impulses to compel their recognition of tangata whenua.17 Given all these similarities and resonances, one next step for scholarship that engages with Māori urban experiences, including interactions with Pasifika communities, could be to further extend this comparison.18

I said in the introduction to this book that talking about disconnection and misconnection is hard. Treating disconnection between Māori and Pasifika communities is tricky because analysis risks lapsing into a discussion of “Natives behaving badly,” in which a moral position is asserted along with instructions for ideal interactions and reproaches for those failing to measure up. It falls on the critical scholar to be aligned with and contribute to the struggle for justice by carefully historicizing and contextualizing present predicaments, paying attention wherever possible to the role of power in the production of narratives and countering dominant configurations of power by ensuring that disempowered and marginalized voices have an opportunity to speak as well. The road from Tupaia’s conversations with Māori at Uawa when the Tahitian tapa was first seen to the present day, in which Harris and Sione are friends (chapter 5), Mila is manuhiri (chapter 6), but Romeo meets Tusi (chapter 7) is a long road that all Māori and Pasifika people experience a little differently. Certainly there is a stark difference between reconnecting with Pacific people from Hawaiki as emissaries from an originary home (perhaps like the carved post in Te Herenga Waka) and negotiating relationships with Pasifika manuhiri with whom you compete for scarce resources.

In another context, Hawaiian historian Kealani Cook reflects on the seemingly paradoxical position in which some Hawaiians venerate the Micronesian navigator Mau Piailug for the knowledge he has generously shared to inspire and reignite Kanaka Maoli (and, in turn, Polynesian) voyaging and navigation and, at the same time, hold strongly prejudiced attitudes about Micronesians living in Hawai‘i in the present day. Cook argues that Hawaiians engage with Piailug not as a Micronesian—indeed, despite his Micronesianness—and instead as an originary Hawaiian. It is worth quoting Cook at length on this point:

In the current effort to revive Hawaiian ties to other islanders, the scars of history, particularly of the twentieth century, must be examined. European and American discourses that define islanders as primitive, uncivilized, and pre-modern remain strong, even among many Islanders. Hawaiians revere Mau, but unfortunately many do so because they see him not so much as what a modern Islander can be, but what ancient Hawaiians were. It is not that far a conceptual leap between praising Mau as a cherished remnant of the Hawaiian past and denigrating Marshallese immigrants as primitive and ignorant.19

Cook draws our attention to the uncomfortable connection between contemporary antagonisms and a form of cultural parochialism, neatly sketching a possible explanation for how communities and individuals are capable of making this conceptual leap.

However, in his writing about the Hawaiian context, Kealani Cook cautions us to recognize the hand of colonialism in any interaction between Pacific people:

So in these contemporary efforts to reconnect, we must be aware of how the discourses we are engaging in have been shaped by history, and make conscious choices about how we use and reshape them.20

Cook does not imagine a world in which genuine Pacific–Pacific engagement is impossible or foreclosed, and he does not limit the “history” that has “shaped” “the discourses we are engaging in” to colonial history, and thereby he leaves room for (and in his work, he deliberately pursues) an enlarged sense of the “history” in the Pacific. He argues that this engagement with other Pacific people is possible when we “make conscious choices” about the discourses available to us. It is not that we once were Pacific and now we are not but instead that the ways in which we articulate ourselves in relation to the Pacific are deeply inflected by the past two centuries.

Such a conceptual leap was made in the documentary Made in Taiwan: Oscar and Nathan’s Excellent Adventure, fronted by Oscar Kightley (of Brotown and Sione’s Wedding fame21 and the cowriter of Romeo and Tusi) and Nathan Rarere (popular Māori youth show TV presenter) and aired in early 2006.22 The pair had their genes tested by Oxford University and went on a trip through the Pacific from Aotearoa to the Cook Islands to Sāmoa to Vanuatu to Taiwan to trace histories of migration across the Pacific as “proven” by this genetic research. In each destination, Nathan and Oscar spent some time learning about the local place, and the journey also included “big reveals” to their family members in New Zealand and Sāmoa about their “real” origins. This is a fascinating and multileveled documentary, and yet it refuses to acknowledge either the very old and ongoing explanations of the peopling of the Pacific (the film is essentially a film of first encounters) or the connections between Māori and other Pacific people in a national as well as regional space. Made in Taiwan sidesteps the complicated histories of Pacific migration, and the various configurations of power, connection, and violence bound up in those histories, by simply repatriating people to their “home” islands throughout the film. While one has certain conversations on the road or at home, it is disappointing that, while they were engaged in what Cook would describe as a “contemporary effort[ ] to reconnect,” Nathan travels all the way to Rarotonga to discover the similarities between the New Zealand Māori and Cook Island Māori languages. Certainly there are Cook Islanders in Rarotonga, but whose purposes does it serve to simultaneously erase the long (albeit quiet) history of Cook Islander presence in New Zealand and reinforce the idea that Cook Islanders are not members of New Zealand’s contemporary national community but merely predecessors to Māori?

A careful negotiation is required to invoke claims of connection between Pacific people and at the same time recognize Indigeneity in a particular place. In some ways, this is a matter of balancing the realm of tapa—and its aspirational Pacific vision—with the national, local, specific realm of koura. In Rongo in 1973 Will ‘Ilolahia called on Polynesian people to unite on the basis of shared cultural backgrounds and political experiences of oppression (“POLYNESIANS [Maori and non-Maori Polynesian] have the same problem—That is racism”) and yet he leaves room to recognize that Māori are marked differently in this national space:

It is granted that land is strictly a Maori–Polynesian crisis and the non-Maori Polynesian can only take a stance of solidarity and support.23

Recognizing the question of land brings the role of the state right into the middle of the Māori–Pasifika relationship, and rather than privileging originary regional connections or flattening out all oppressions so a “land . . . crisis” is unable to be differentiated from any other form of racism, ‘Ilolahia names and calls for action to witness the specific experience of Māori in relation to New Zealand. His call is underpinned by his belief that “Polynesian” is a sufficiently robust identification to provide the basis for just struggle against injustice, and he refutes the idea that Māoriness is challenged or assimilated by Polynesianness:

This doesn’t mean that the Maori lose their Maoritanga and replace their Maoriness. No it means that opposite, because by obtaining and using one’s own Maoritanga, Maori way of life, Maoris become more Polynesian. A basic principle of Polynesian culture is what Maoritanga is all about. Communal living is Polynesia. Having AROHA is as much a part of Samoan or Tongan culture as it is to the Maori people.

This, after all, is the realm of koura, and we have had enough narratives of assimilation here. Māori filmmaker and philosopher Barry Barclay describes Māori filmmaking as the “camera on the shore,” as opposed to the camera on the boat arriving from across the sea, and this concept of perspective and place can be extended beyond filmmaking. ‘Ilolahia’s arguments do not require Māori to relinquish our position on the shore to understand ourselves as Polynesian—as Pacific—but, instead, he suggests that through our connection to the shore, we reaffirm our connection to the ocean. Conceptualizing “Polynesian” as something Māori achieve by going through Māoritanga rather than by departing from it provides the opportunity for Māori and Pasifika communities to connect on the basis of shared experience of racism, yes, but shared cultural values—“communal living,” “AROHA”—as well. ‘Ilolahia’s turn to Polynesianness as a basis for connection is later echoed in texts like Romeo and Tusi and by Nesian Mystik (who extend it to Nesianness and thereby include the whole Pacific).

If the Pasifika Festival forces Māori and Pasifika communities to compete for representational space at the level of region, and if Made in Taiwan prefers Māori relationship with the Pacific to be ancient and migratory rather than present and proximate, and if ‘Ilolahia calls for shared experiences of racism and shared cultural practice to form the basis of a “we are all Polynesians” stance that still has room to acknowledge Indigeneity, what, then, do we do with Daniel Maaka? Does Te Papa demonstrate a commitment to recognizing Māori as distinct from Pasifika in the context of New Zealand when it downgrades Maaka’s presence on Pacific branding? Once Were Pacific does not have a perfect answer to the question of whether the image of Daniel Maaka should have been used in the branding of Te Papa’s exhibition, but part 2 has teased out the context in which this decision was made and why it matters.

In the realm of koura, many of the articulations of Māori and Pasifika connections have taken place in liminal spaces, and yet this is where these things are worked out. Participants in a discussion thread on the HiphopNZ.com site responded to the Daniel Maaka story in ways that demonstrate how and whether these questions matter. At first, the story that Te Papa was hoping to identify the man in the photo was posted on the site, to which one response read,

I wonder what would happen if they found the guy and discover a downward spiralling story of gang, drugs and jail. Not that thats what im hoping but ah, so much expectation for the guy, be interesting to see what then happens to marketing etc. Would he get money for his image being used like that too? Hmm ch-ching!!24

In the image, “Ōtara” is used to stand in for “Pacific,” but it cannot help but also stand in for poverty, and this person pairs observations about Ōtara and its reputation, including the range of possible futures for a young Polynesian man growing up in a racist and marginalized environment, with questions around the property of the image and, in turn, Te Papa’s economic interests in a photo that is significant for its representation of an economically impoverished space. A later post by another person—“as though wearing ŌTARA on ya t shirt means you’re down with the brown . . . pffffft”—cynically challenges the easy association on which Te Papa relies between the place of Ōtara and a particular set of experiences or political commitments. Once the update to the story was available, which explained that the photo of Maaka was no longer to be used as the “hero image” for the exhibition, people posting to the site were quick to respond. Some people preferred to emphasize the place of Te Papa in this negotiation:

Good shit they found him though . . . suxx that a mueseum with a Maori name wants to change their front man of the exhibition.

It is a pacific island exhibition though, and they have said he will still be a major focal point.

For goodness sakes get ya shit togehter Te Papa!

Echoing ‘Ilolahia, but also echoing Romeo and Tusi and more besides, one comment brings together the intersecting strands of nation, origin, and racism in the realm of koura:

Maoris ,Tongans Samoans Cook Islanders, Theyre all Polynesians. Irish Scottish Welsh English, Theyre all european.

Far No wonder nz is so racist so much sepratism.

Still others focused on the underlying question of whether Māori are Pacific, recognizing that Māori articulation of being Pacific is inextricable from the category “Polynesian” and the specificities of place. The discussants are adamant and engaged in this discussion, affirming the ongoing and diverse range of ways in which Māori articulate connections with the Pacific, and confirming that these questions matter:

But yeah, when are c—gonna recognize Maori are pacific islanders

True. aotearoa is in the pacific. there’s a nth island and sth island.

Thats what I thought! Or are Maori only considered Polynesians not Pacific Islanders? f—knows