Parable from Maori past

Press, 20 January 1979, Page 17

Parable from Maori past

Moa Hunter. By Eve Sutton. Hamish Hamilton.' 112 pp. $7.95. (Reviewed by Richard Corballis) Modern historians like to stress the kinship between Maoris and Moahunters (or Morioris, as we used to call them). Eve Sutton, however, has made literary capital out of playing up their differences. Her Moa-hunters are simple, peace-loving folk living in small, nomadic communities in the South Island. Her Maoris are a pugnacious race from the north. Physically they are distinguishable by their tattooed faces, and their bellicosity is confirmed by their possession (and use) of the dreadful mere. They also possess a renewable food-source — the kumara — which enabled them to stay put in their fortified pas instead of moving about in pursuit of food as the Moa-hunters are forced to do. The result of Eve Sutton’s poetic licence is, at one level, an exciting story for the young (eight-year-olds and above) and, at a deeper level, a parable for older children (even adults) about innocence and experience. This parable is not new. It is as old as the story Of Adam and Eve, and it has been served up recently by William Golding, whose “Inheritors” must surely have influenced Eve Sutton, and (closer to home) by Witi Ihimaera, whose latest title, “The New Net Goes Fishing,” is drawn from a Maori proverb w'hich Eve Sutton also quotes extensively. The burden of the proverb is that old ways must give place to new ways — a moral to which both Mr Ihimaera and Ms Sutton give qualified approval. But Eve Sutton has created a new and distinctive context for this Old theme, and, in spite of a slightly perfunctory ending, “Moa Hunter” must rank as an important and original addition to New Zealand’s literature. Tsuga’s Children. By Thomas Williams. Souvenir Press. 239 pp. $B.lO. Innocence and Experience clash again in “Tsuga’s Children.” The setting this time is the frozen waste of northern Canada; the opposing forces

are the Chigai (Experience) and Tsuga’s children (Innocence). Thomas Williams’s treatment of the theme is much more melodramatic than Eve Sutton’s. His goodies are pure enough to commune with animals and with the spirit world; his baddies ger in for unspeakable things such as childsacrifice. There can be no question of an ultimate compromise between these two forces like the one which Ms Sutton contrives: Tsuga’s children w in an absolute victory (after some very narrow squeaks). Mr Williams also displays a vein of mysticism unknown to Ms Sutton. This is a trifle pretentious — a pale imitation of Toikein and others, f prefer Ms Sutton’s plainer style, but I cannot guarantee that all children will agree with me.