The musky smell of wood permeated the atmosphere of the whakairo workshop, not the treated pine of the building site, but the rich aroma of natural native timber: totara, rimu and kauri. It was the first day of the Paematua traditional Māori carving course. There was one other Pākehā in the whakairo class, a young guy called Pierre, a bit younger than Ethan anyway. Ethan would get to know all his classmates in due course but it seemed inevitable that he would strike up a friendship with Pierre.
Te reo Māori was frequently, though not exclusively, spoken in the workshop and it soon became evident that Pierre was a fluent speaker of te reo. “Parlez-vous Français aussi?” Ethan asked, as a conversation starter.
“No,” said Pierre, “I’m not French. My parents just liked the name.”
And indeed there was no French accent, just the distinctive Māori accent. “So, how’d you learn te reo?” Ethan then asked.
“I just picked it up,” Pierre said. Ethan seemed to be waiting for more explanation, so he added, “I was brought up in a Māori community.”
The class comprised twelve students, or learners, as the administrators preferred to say, or ākonga was the word used in the workroom. The tutor, the whakairo tohunga, a heavyset guy with long dreadlocks and tribal tattoos, introduced himself as Matiu and asked each of the ākonga to introduce themselves and give a bit of personal information, including why they were doing the whakairo course.
Some spoke in te reo Māori and some in English. Everyone gave their iwi affiliations, mostly Tainui but also Arawa, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Apakura, and Tuhoe. Ethan had done the Level One and Two classes in te reo Māori at the Raroera campus in Hamilton and was able to give an introductory pepeha but unable to answer a question put to him in te reo. He said his iwi was Ngāti Pākehā and he mentioned, in English, his background in art, his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, and that he was working as a builder, working for his father, from whom he had learnt the carpentry trade. His classmates would know he was a bona fide artist and that he was also working class.
There was a variety of occupations among the ākonga: a teacher, a social worker, a forestry worker, an accountant, a plasterer, an architect, a Department of Conservation worker, an unemployed. Ethan was interested to know what they all did for a job and what they were giving up to go full-time on the course for thirty-eight weeks. The others seemed more interested in where everyone came from and their whakapapa. Most were locals. One was from Auckland, one from Taranaki and one, Hēmi, was from Hamilton. There was an opportunity for carpooling for the commute from Hamilton to Te Awamutu.
Ethan was surprised to see there were three women on the course. He leaned toward Pierre and said, “I thought this was for men only.”
“Times have changed,” Pierre said.
There was one young woman, Mārama, whom Ethan quickly noted was particularly attractive. He couldn’t remember the names of the other two.
Matiu began with a presentation on safety, course requirements and general introduction. The first practical work was drawing traditional patterns. A good opportunity for Ethan to demonstrate his artistic skills. He chatted with Hēmi at morning break and asked him about carpooling. Hēmi agreed it was a good idea but he said he would be driving an extra ten minutes to Kihikihi to pick up and drop off his cousin each day, starting next week, and it would only work out if Ethan was prepared to pick her up too.
“Is your cousin on the course?” Ethan asked.
“Yes, her name’s Mārama.”
“Yeah, that should be fine,” said Ethan. Yes, Ethan thought it would be fine to pick up Cousin Mārama and get to know her.
For the next tutorial Ethan picked Hēmi up from his home for the drive to Te Awamutu. “That’s a nice piece of pounamu,” Hēmi commented, inspecting the greenstone hei tiki that hung on a thong around Ethan’s neck. “Where’d you get it?”
“I bought it at the gift shop at the Waikato museum.”
“You bought it for yourself?” Hēmi said. “You know, traditionally you only get pounamu as a gift. Someone has to give it to you.”
“I’ve never heard that before,” Ethan shrugged. They chatted about this and that, quite a lot about sports. Hēmi played touch rugby and he did waka ama. He grabbed Ethan’s bicep and said, “You look pretty fit. We need another man for our waka ama team. Interested?”
“Yeah, why not,” said Ethan. “I can paddle a canoe.”
“Better come to a practice to make sure.”
*
On the drive home to Hamilton, Ethan asked Hēmi about Mārama. “She said her iwi were Ngāti Apakura and Ngāti Maniapoto,” Ethan recalled, “but I think there must be some Pākehā in there as well.”
“No mate, like I said, she’s my cousin and I know for a fact she’s pure blood Māori. You think that because she’s so pretty that she must be part European?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” Ethan wouldn’t admit to Hēmi that that was his thinking but he had to admit it to himself. He didn’t actually believe there were even any full-blooded Māori still in existence but he wasn’t about to argue the point with Hēmi, who was making the claim for his own family.
Hēmi laughed and said, “I can see you’re keen on her.” He laughed easily and often, with no hint of derision.
*
On the commute to the Wānanga to pick up Mārama, Ethan drove through Te Awamutu and into Kihikihi and, following Hēmi’s directions, turned into a tree-lined drive that led to an old villa with twin bay windows and a veranda between. Overgrown peach and plum trees shaded the house and a rusting Holden Commodore sat in long grass at the side of the drive. Hēmi went to the front door and was greeted by his grandparents. He hongied his grandfather and kissed his grandmother on the cheek, and Mārama when she came out. Ethan did the same. “Tēnā koe Matua”, hariru, hongi. “Tēnā koe Whaea”, kiss. “Tēnā koe Mārama,” kiss. “Tēnā koutou.” A proper Māori greeting, which pleased the old couple and also Mārama, he hoped. What would it be like, he wondered, to kiss her on the mouth.
“You live here with your grandparents?” Ethan asked Mārama, as they drove off.
“Yes.”
“And your parents?”
“They’re gone.”
Gone? Did she mean they were dead or that they had moved away, or what? Ethan’s questions drew only terse answers from Mārama, so he didn’t persist with asking about her home life. He could always ask Hēmi later.
As they drove through Kihikihi, Ethan asked Hēmi and Mārama about the history of the local area. He’d noted the monument to Rewi Maniapoto in the main street and the sign post to the Ōrakau battle site. “Ōrakau. There was a big battle hereabouts in the Māori wars, wasn’t there, at Ōrakau.”
“Yes, down there,” said Mārama. “Arapuni Road cuts right through the middle of the site.”
“Really? You’d think they’d preserve the site and put up some kind of memorial.”
“Yes, you’d think so,” said Mārama. “There’s a plaque on a monument up on the hill. But there’s no monument to the eighty Māori in a mass grave there. Our tipuna, our ancestors. I wish they’d show more respect for our history and our people and I wish people would stop calling it the Māori Wars,” she said pointedly.
“The Land Wars then,” said Ethan.
“Better,” said Mārama, “but why not just the New Zealand Wars? It wasn’t only about seizing land. It was about seizing the power, and who was going to control the country.”
This could be interesting, Ethan thought. I hope it doesn’t turn unpleasant. “Whoever wins the wars gets to write the history,” he said.
“You’re right there,” said Mārama. “If you can call it the Māori Wars, why not the Pākehā Wars. The Pākehā were the invaders.”
“The British,” said Ethan, feeling a little uncomfortable with the blanket term of Pākehā.
“Yes, and the colonial government, and the settler militias,” Mārama said. “People know about the Battle of Ōrakau because of the story of Rewi’s Last Stand. They even made a movie about it years ago. Romanticised bullshit. It was a massacre. Fifteen hundred professional soldiers and heavy artillery against three hundred men, women and children in a makeshift pā, running out of ammunition, food and water. They were our ancestors. The blood of our ancestors was spilled there.”
After a brief silence, Mārama said, “And while we’re doing a tiki tour, a bit further back there is the Tokanui Psychiatric Hospital.”
“Right,” said Ethan, “it closed down some years ago, didn’t it?”
“Yes, but it’s still there. Well, some of the buildings have been demolished but the village is still there. It’s like a ghost town, I mean with actual ghosts – kehua. Most of our people won’t go there. There’s a cemetery, unmarked graves of more than five hundred patients buried there over the years.”
“So is it just abandoned?” Ethan said.
“It’s a working farm,” Hēmi said. “It’s run by the Ministry of Agriculture.”
“It was all ancestral Ngāti Maniapoto land,” Mārama said. “The government took ten thousand acres: five thousand for the mental hospital and five thousand across the Puniu River for Waikeria Prison. A lunatic asylum and a prison – both consequences of colonisation. A lot of our people have been inmates of both institutions.”
“Every society has them,” Ethan said. Mārama was sounding like one of those resentful Māori radicals, and he saw her receding out of reach, beyond a barrier of us and them.
“The government banked all the Tokanui land for a Treaty settlement,” Hēmi said, “but it’s just been sitting there for years. The iwi offered to buy the land back but the government wouldn’t sell. The iwi wanted to use the site for the Wānanga but of course it got built where it is now at Apakura, right here”, he said, as they pulled into the car park.
*
On the drive home Ethan remarked to Hēmi, “Mārama is pretty hot about colonisation and Māori grievances, eh.”
“I thought you were just going to say Marama’s pretty hot,” Hēmi chuckled. “She’s got some personal issues,” he said. “Her mother was suffering from postnatal depression and her father committed her to Tokanui Hospital. The whānau thought she just needed some professional help and she’d come home after some time out, but her condition just got worse in the institution and she never came home.”
“What happened?”
“She wasn’t responding to medication so they gave her ECT treatments.”
“Electric shock therapy.”
“Yeah. Nothing seemed to help and she just got more severely depressed. She hoarded some pills and took an overdose.”
“Wow, so she died there.”
“Yeah.”
“Is she buried in the cemetery there?”
“No, they stopped burying people there years ago. She’s buried in the urupā at the marae.”
“What about her father? What happened to him?”
“Uncle Wati. He disappeared out of the picture not long after Mārama was born. He took up with another woman. He was part of the problem, really.”
“A rough start in life for Mārama,” Ethan said.
“Yeah, I think she’s got some rejection issues,” Hēmi said. “She was brought up by her grandparents. That’s quite common in te ao Māori. In the old days the first born was often given to the grandparents to raise.”
“But not still these days?” said Ethan.
“It still happens.”
*
At the end of the week, Ethan met the Te Rongopai waka ama team at the yacht club at Rotoroa, the Hamilton Lake, and together they carried the outrigger canoe into the shallows. Only after some acrimonious territorial dispute with a few members of the yacht club were they able to launch the waka. Ethan took his place in seat four of the six man crew in the sleek fibreglass craft. They paddled in unison around the Hamilton Lake and Ethan managed to keep pace, digging his paddle in, swapping his paddle to the other side on command, keeping up the pace. It was a strenuous workout and Ethan’s arms were aching at the end of the one hour training session.
“You’ll need more practice,’ Hēmi said, “but you’ve got potential.” He was being understated. The rest of the crew were more approving of Ethan’s efforts. There was no training or racing on Sundays because Hēmi and his crew all belonged to the same church and observed Sunday as a Sabbath rest day. Ethan spent most of his Sundays in his garage studio. He’d also started learning more reo Māori online with the Te Whanake course. He trained with the waka crew for a few weeks and joined them on a Saturday race day. They finished in the middle of the field in their race, which was not a bad result for a team with a novice paddler.
*
For his first whakairo project at Apakura, Ethan chose to carve a wakahuia, nothing too ambitious. He cut out and formed the bird shape of the body and drew rauru patterns onto the totara wood: interlocking spirals, typical of Waikato decoration. He then cut the pattern with a chisel and mallet and blew the fine shavings from the wood to clear the work.
Matiu happened to be checking his progress and said, “Don’t blow on it. You break the tapu. That’s what your brush is for.”
Okay, chastened and noted. Ethan continued cutting the lines and cutting the ridge patterns. Then he bisected the body through the band saw and hollowed out the bowl of the interior and the lid.
Some of the men, led by Matiu, were undertaking a joint project of carving a waka, in an outside covered area. Ethan was keen to be part of this project but they wouldn’t accept him into the group. He thought they were being racist in excluding him, but then Pierre was accepted into the group.
“It’s a matter of wairua,” Matiu told Ethan. “A traditional waka is a thing of great tapu. Whoever works on it must know the appropriate karakia and the incantations and approach the work with the right wairua, the right spirit.”
It was just a big totara log being shaped into a canoe, in Ethan’s view, but he kept that view to himself. The men began shaping the log with a chainsaw, not exactly a traditional tool. But apparently you could use any tool you pleased as long as you did it with the right wairua.
One of the other women, whose name Ethan couldn’t remember, was carving a mythological creature called a manaia, a sinuously curved human figure with a beaked head like a bird and a fish tail. Mārama was also carving a wakahuia, in a less traditional style than Ethan’s. On the lid was an actual huia, carved in relief, with its distinctive curved beak. With its fine clean lines it was a taonga of exquisite beauty. Ethan had been watching Mārama dextrously working the tools on the wood. She had elegant hands with smooth, brown skin but they were also the hands of a nail biter. He admired her work and asked her if she would be working on any bigger projects, like the waka. “Maybe a pou,” she said, “but women don’t work on waka. That would break the tapu.”
“Ah well, they don’t want me on the waka either,” Ethan said. “Not the right wairua, eh.” He found himself code switching, unconsciously affecting a Māori accent.
Mārama looked up from her work, flicked back a lock of glossy black hair, and said, “Do you know why you don’t have the right wairua? Your way of seeing is too superficial. You need to see beneath the surface of the carving to see the wairua of the whakairo, not just the āhua.”
Okay. Ethan nodded knowingly.
“Would you like to know what Matiu said about you? He said you’re a tiki wearing Pākehā, who doesn’t have insight into te ao Māori. You’ve only got an academic and commercial interest in Māori art and you’re too self-absorbed to be a team player.”
“Well, don’t hold back. Tell me what he really thinks.” Ethan tried to make light of the criticism but he was stung by it. His first thought was that it was just discrimination but there was Pierre fitting in and working on the waka, hacking away with a steel adze. He had to admit, to himself, there was some truth in what Matiu had said. He had always been interested in sculpture but his interest in whakairo was more pragmatic than aesthetic. He had observed in recent times, something of a renaissance of Māori art, particularly their principle art form of wood carving and there was a ready market for well-made pieces. He would get on board the bandwagon once he got up to speed.
“What do you think?” Ethan asked Mārama. “Do you think Matiu’s right?”
“Yes,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“So what do I need to do?”
“You’ve just taken the first step. Humble yourself. Question yourself. Be open to learn. Give more attention to the spiritual side of whakairo.”
This was not the sort of relationship Ethan had hoped to form with Mārama. But it was a relationship of sorts, one that might still be exploited, by accepting the role of needing mentors. Mārama could be a mentor.
“Hēmi likes you,” she said. “I think he could help you if you worked with him.”
Mārama saying that Hēmi liked him probably meant that Hēmi was an exception. Ethan hadn’t really been accepted by the group. Mārama was nominating Hēmi, not offering anything herself. Hēmi was happy for Ethan to help him on the project he was undertaking to carve a number of poupou for a whare whakairo, a carved meeting house, each panel depicting a particular Māori prophet or ancestor. He had already completed a carving of a stylised human figure with a broad body and upraised hands. It had a fearsome visage, with a protruding tongue and an impressively large phallus. “Yeah, I modelled it on my one,” Hēmi said, with that distinctively Māori laugh, with the rising pitch.
“Yeah, right.” Ethan rolled his eyes.
“This is the great warrior prophet, Arikirangi Te Kooti, founder of the Ringatū movement.”
“What’s the story behind all the spirals?” Ethan asked. “These double spirals on the shoulders and knees.”
“The double spiral is the nebula,” Hēmi explained, “the emergence of the cosmos. It’s the elemental wairua and the wairua of the man. The coming of Te Kooti was prophesied by his grandfather, Toiroa Ikariki. Toiroa was a matakite, a visionary, a seer. He foresaw the coming of the Europeans three years before the arrival of Captain Cook. He drew images in sand and made models of what he saw: wheeled carts, horses, hats, trousers, pipes, things never seen before in Aotearoa. He said white men would come, a people whose god is called Tama-i-rorokutia, the son who was killed, a good god; however the people will still be oppressed. They say that when Toiroa uttered his prophecy, he arched his back, raised his arms and splayed his hands and took on the form of a lizard.”
“Jesus, I’ve never heard that story before,” Ethan said.
“This is where you come in, Ethan. I’d like you to carve Toiroa.”
“Okay, one lizard prophet coming up,” Ethan said. “What are you gonna do next?”
“I’m going to carve Wiremu Tamihana. Here he is,” Hēmi said, opening his sketch pad to a drawing of a more lifelike figure of a man holding a book with a cross. “Wiremu Tamihana Tarapīpipi Te Waharoa, of Ngāti Hauā, Kingmaker and Peacemaker. A bit of a controversial character locally because, in the days before he became a Christian and a pacifist, he’d joined in an attack on a marae near here. But he’s revered as a hero in the Waikato and a champion of the Kīngitanaga.”
*
Carving Toiroa and Tamihana occupied Ethan and Hēmi for the rest of the week. On the short journey between Te Awamutu and Kihikihi, Ethan chatted with Hēmi and there was usually little engagement from Mārama in the back seat. One morning when Ethan drove to pick up Mārama, he decided to try local history again. “That river,” he said, “the Puniu River, became the boundary of the land confiscation, didn’t it, the boundary between the Waikato and the King Country, after the battles at Ōrakau and Hairini.”
“Yes, that’s right,” said Mārama. “It was the aukati line. You know about the battles at Ōrakau and Hairini. What about Rangiaowhia? What do you know about the sacking of Rangiaowhia?”
No immediate response from Ethan so she continued. “Forgotten history. Why don’t they teach the history of our own country in our schools? Rangiaowhia is only a few k’s from Te Awamutu. It was a Christian village with two churches: Catholic and Anglican. The British attacked that peaceful, undefended village on a Sunday morning, their Sabbath. The soldiers went through the village, killing, raping, looting and burning the whare. Why Rangiaowhia?” Mārama was interviewing herself. “It was a designated sanctuary for non-combatants: for women, children and elderly. General Cameron chose it as a soft target because he knew he couldn’t storm the heavily fortified pā at Pāterangi. With the help of a couple of traitorous kūpapa half-caste guides, he sneaked around the fighting pā in the dead of night and attacked Rangiaowhia to draw the defenders out.”
Hēmi sat back and let Mārama do the talking. Mārama gazed out the side window as she spoke, at the landscape of the history of her people, now mostly covered in dairy farms. Ethan also looked at the countryside as he drove and glanced at Mārama, in the rear view mirror. “The land around here was covered in fields of wheat, flour mills, and gardens,” Mārama said. “It was the bread basket of the Waikato. The British destroyed it all and drove our people out. They fled to the King Country. Many died of starvation and disease. There’s the history they don’t teach at school.”
Mārama was still talking about Rangiaowhia when they arrived at Apakura and she finished by repeating her refrain, “They were our ancestors.”
Ethan searched for something to say. “What can I say? I’d never heard of that. Like you said, they don’t teach that history at school. They should, of course they should.” He had hoped to gain a bit of credibility by showing a little knowledge and interest in local history but again just felt ignorant and chastened. He reflected for a moment and said, “I acknowledge the wrongs of the past but I don’t feel personally responsible. I wasn’t there. It’s in the past. We’ve moved on.”
“The Pākehā have moved on and prospered on our land,” Mārama said. “They took virtually all of the Waikato. How have we moved on? We still suffer the loss, the mamae, the pain. We can’t just move on,” she said with bitter emphasis, “until those wrongs are properly acknowledged and addressed.”
Ethan rebutted with, “Didn’t Waikato Māori get an apology from the government for past wrongs and a cash settlement and some land returned?”
“It’s a start,” Mārama conceded. “But it was also a hundred and thirty years late. Generations of our people have had to struggle back from being landless refugees.”
Hēmi felt to interject here and said, “The people of this country need reconciliation, Māori and Pākehā.”
“How do we achieve reconciliation?” Ethan asked.
“Like Mārama said: acknowledge the history and the injustice. Don’t just sweep the past under the carpet because it’s uncomfortable. The government needs to take the lead in educating our society.”
“Then what?’
“One of the keys to reconciliation is repentance,” Hēmi said.
Ethan felt uncomfortable with the conversation taking a religious turn. “I can’t repent for something I haven’t done,” he said.
“Identificational repentance,” Hēmi said. “You can repent on behalf of your ancestors, especially if your ancestors are British. It’s a principle understood and accepted by most Māori. Our ancestors are still part of our lives.”
“I thought Māori followed the principle of utu – revenge.”
“That’s in the past,” said Hēmi. “Your missionary ancestors taught us a better way.”
“Not all Māori have accepted Christianity,” Ethan said.
“Many have embraced Christian principles,” Hēmi said, “more than you might think.”
“Something to think about,” Ethan said, noncommittally, as a way of ending the conversation. “We’d better get to class and do some more whakairo.”
“Yeah, you’d better get back to your lizard prophet,” said Mārama. “You know our Ngāpuhi cousins also had a prophecy: Kei muri i te awe kāpara, he tangata kē, māna i te ao, he mā. Shadowed behind the tattooed face, a stranger stands, he who owns the world, and he is white.”
*
Ethan did indeed go back to carving the Toiroa poupou and another two panels in the following weeks. He worked alongside Hēmi, mostly in silent concentration, but he mulled over what Hēmi had said in the car. “Okay.” he said, laying his tools on the workbench, “I get it. I’m sorry for what my people did to your people.”
“Kia ora, Ethan,” Hēmi replied. “You know there were atrocities on both sides. I’m sorry for what my people did to your people.”
“Kia ora. Hēmi,” said Ethan.
Hēmi laid his tools down and, grasping Ethan’s right hand, with his left hand on his shoulder, drew Ethan into a hongi, forehead to forehead, nose to nose, with a mingling of breath. That settled, they both returned to their carving. And Mārama, within earshot at her work station, continued with hers. Matiu inspected the seven panels of prophets and ancestors that Ethan and Hēmi completed, and approved of, even complimented, their work. To complete the project they loaded the panels into a Wānanga van and took them to the marae they were destined for. It was not a long drive but it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.
“Geez, it’s pretty run down,” Ethan commented as they drove up the gravel road to the whare whakairo. Only the urupā looked well cared for.
“Yep, she’s a doer upper all right,” Hēmi said. They got out of the van and he said, “Just wait here for Koro, the kaumatua.”
Hēmi’s grandfather appeared and welcomed them both again with a hongi. The old man was thrilled with the poupou. He ran his fingers reverently over the carvings and chanted a karakia. They brought the panels to the porch of the building and kicked off their shoes before bringing them inside to their appointed places. All the new poupou joined the other ancestors depicted in carvings around the walls of the whare whakairo.
“I don’t think we should put Toiroa here,” Ethan said, “not below a leaky window. It’ll get water damaged.” Koro looked to his grandson. He clearly appreciated Ethan being protective of the poupou. But what was to be done?
“Look,” Ethan said, “I’ll take the window out and replace the rotten timber in the frame and put in a proper flashing at the top and a drip tray under the outside sill. Matiu wants the job done properly.” Koro nodded and smiled.
The Wānanga had already been approached by the marae trustees for help with upgrading the whare whakairo and Matiu was happy for some of the ākonga to turn their work to a worthwhile purpose, some who were not involved in the waka project. The three women repainted faded kowhaiwhai panels on borders and rafters and repaired damaged tukutuku in the whare whakairo, when the tutor of Ngā Mahi ā te Whare Pora and her ākonga arrived on site with tukutuku panels they had prepared at the Wānanga weaving course. They were accompanied by a kuia of the marae, Mārama’s and Hēmi’s grandmother.
There was a budget for materials for structural repairs and Ethan was voluntarily tasked with the carpentry work, on the tools himself and supervising willing helpers. A noho marae was part of the course and their new workplace conveniently became their wharemoe. At the end of the day, the work was cleared away and mattresses for the manuhiri were brought out of storage for the communal sleepover. Most of the workers, including Ethan and Hēmi, stayed on past the obligatory few days of the noho. It saved the commute back to Hamilton and their hosts on the marae, the tangata whenua, continued to provide hot meals in the wharekai.
Mārama had to stay over because Hēmi was staying and the other two women also stayed most nights. Ethan was acutely aware of Mārama’s presence to begin with, but less so as he became more immersed in the work. The less he noticed her, the more she noticed him, on the job, in his T-shirt, shorts and tool belt, up on the scaffolding, inside and outside the building, a skilled worker, overseeing the carpentry work, and a mentor for a few hammer hands keen to learn some carpentry skills. He did also help the women: Mārama, Hana and Aroha, with framing and mounting tukutuku panels.
A Health and Safety officer from the Wānanga kept an eye on the work and ensured proper safety procedures were followed. There were a few minor injuries but no serious mishaps. Ethan nearly took a fall when he and Hēmi were up on scaffolding, replacing rusted out guttering. Ethan snagged his hei tiki on a bracket, the thong snapped and the tiki fell onto the concrete path below and shattered. “You okay, bro?” Hēmi said. “Shoulda had a shorter thong, eh.”
Ethan had begun to enjoy the camaraderie of communal living, especially as he had garnered a bit of mana for his initiative and expertise as a builder. He was also learning more reo by using it for actual communication on the marae. He had learnt some karakia and waiata on the Te Ara Reo course in Hamilton and was able to join in the communal prayers and singing and he took a turn at saying grace in te reo before dinner. In the evening the wharemoe filled with singing and guitar strumming, storytelling and laughter, stories told in te reo Māori and in English, while ancestors gazed on with paua shell eyes, from the carvings around the walls. The living and the dead. The atmosphere was strangely at once both eerie and convivial. Ethan lay back on his mattress, gazing at the kowhaiwhai on the rafters of the vaulted ceiling, freshly painted, blood red, te ao mārama white, te pō black. Scrolling, swirling, interlocking, mesmerising kowhaiwhai: koru spirals of unfurling fern fronds, kaka beak, ocean waves.
*
The Whakairo crew returned to the Wānanga for the final few weeks of the course and left the marae with the whare whakairo in good repair, refurbished and decorated with new carvings. Now, they have returned again to the marae for a dedication ceremony to celebrate the new life of the building. They are formally welcomed onto the marae this time as honoured guests, and greeted with hongi from the assembled tangata whenua. Koro, as the kaikōrero matua, expresses in glowing terms, their appreciation for all the fine work the Whakairo ākonga have done. He mentions Ethan, especially, having made a tremendous contribution to the mahi. He wishes to present him with a koha, a token of appreciation, he says, and his mokopuna Mārama has been chosen to present the gift. Mārama holds up a lustrous pounamu koru, a traditional spiral form. An unfurling fern frond of new growth, Koro explains, a spiral of personal growth that comes of undertaking new challenges. Ethan bows his head to receive the taonga as Mārama slips the thong over his head and around his neck, necessitating a near embrace from her encircling arms. The koru also symbolises new beginnings, Koro continues, new possibilities.
***
Glossary of Māori Terms
āhua appearance
aukati border, boundary marking a prohibited area
harirū handshake
hei tiki neck ornament, carved image of abstract human form
hongi greeting, pressing noses together
huia extinct bird native to New Zealand
iwi tribe
karakia prayer
kaumatua an elder
koha gift
kowhaiwhai painted scroll ornamentation
kuia elderly woman
kūpapa collaborator
mahi work
mana prestige, status
manuhiri visitors
marae complex of buildings and courtyard for tribal occasions
matua father, uncle, respectful term of address for a man
mokopuna grandchild
noho marae stay on a marae
pā fortified village
Pākehā European New Zealander
pepeha self-introduction, including lineage
pou carved post, pole, pillar
poupou carved wall figures
tangata whenua people of the land, people of the marae
taonga treasure
tapu sacred, restricted
te ao Māori the world of Māori
tēnā koe formal greeting
te reo the (Māori) language
tohunga expert
tukutuku ornamental lattice work
urupā cemetery
waiata song
wairua spirit
waka canoe
waka ama outrigger canoe
waka huia treasure box
wānanga educational seminar, educational institution
whaea mother, aunt, respectful term of address for a woman
whakairo carving
whakapapa genealogy
whānau (extended) family
wharemoe sleeping house
whare whakairo carved meeting house