'Kia Rongo Mai Koutou ki Taku Whakaaro': Maori Voices in the Alexander Turnbull Library

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 43, 1 January 2010, Page 97

'Kia Rongo Mai Koutou ki Taku Whakaaro': Maori Voices in the Alexander Turnbull Library

PAUL MEREDITH AND ALICE TE PUNGA SOMERVILLE 1

In 1846 an unnamed person from Ngati Ruanui began a short piece of writing, now in the Alexander Turnbull Library, with the invocation: 'kia rongo mai koutou ki taku whakaaro' 2 [listen to my view]. 3 By inviting us to attend to his whakaaro, the writer draws our attention to the relationship between writer and reader; in this essay we extend the invitation to pay attention to Maori voices in the Alexander Turnbull Library. The huge bulk of Maori writing there confirms the high level of Maori literacy in the nineteenth century and beyond, and demonstrates a wide variety of uses to which such writing has been put within the Maori world. This essay poses some possibilities for reading Maori texts alongside English-language ethnographic texts. Attending to Maori voices not only exposes areas of archival neglect, the limits of relying on published work, and the dangers of accepting a single account of 'traditional' understanding, but also makes us aware of the particular perspectives we bring to our reading.

Maori Voices?

In 1882-83 the colonial official and amateur historian John White ran a regular panuitanga [advertisement] in the Maori newspaper, Te Korimako, offering 'tangata mohio' [knowledgeable persons] £5 per 300 pages of 'korero' or written tribal narratives. 4 Tangata mohio provided Pakeha collectors of traditions with Maori intellectual knowledge, thereby becoming native informants. A great deal of the primary writings by tangata mohio (including those who informed John White 5 ) have found their way into the Alexander Turnbull Library, while the published works of the Pakeha ethnographers have enjoyed a much wider audience, shaping much of the contemporary discourse around Maori culture and traditions. 6 The Pakeha texts have come under criticism in recent years for being 'imbued with the Eurocentric and racist assumptions which were a seldom-questioned feature

of much academic and popular writing about Maori by Pakeha'. 7 Jahnke and Taiapa have described them as 'cultural philanthropists', intent on recording for posterity the last vestiges of the Maori race. 8 Rev. Richard Taylor, in his preface to Te Ika a Maui , or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants (1855), remarked: 'The Author's aim has been to rescue from that oblivion into which they were fast hastening, the Manners, Customs, Traditions, and Religion of a primitive race'. 9 These Pakeha ethnographers often had dual interests, combining their study of Maori intellectual knowledge, custom and society with their roles as colonial administrators, officials, adjudicators or missionaries.

Advocating for the Maori voice does not mean we unilaterally disregard these Pakeha texts. Edward Said's Orientalism reminds us there is richness in texts from the colonial period, even when they appear to be politically or ethically compromised. 10 Indeed, sometimes such texts can be quite illuminating about Maori customs. For example, an 1861 newspaper editorial questions the propriety of Maori runanga or councils, and in doing so inadvertently leaves a rich record of Maori practice:

But with the Maori Runanga, all must assemble together, the small and the great, the husband, the wife, the old man, the old woman and the children, the knowing and the foolish, the thoughtful and the presumptuous: these all obtain admittance to the Runanga Maori, with all their thoughts and speeches: this woman gets up and has her talk, and that youth gets up and has his. 11

Certainly, Pakeha writings continue to have value for their explicit as well as unintended contribution to our collective memory. However, when Te Papa Press republished several of the ethnographer Elsdon Best's works, he was described as: 'New Zealand's foremost writer on pre-European Maori life. His books are a uniquely valuable record of traditional Maori culture, social customs and beliefs. Without him, we would know little of the customs and traditions of these times'. 12 But is Best's work 'uniquely' valuable? Where do the texts written by Maori, kept in archives and research libraries like the Turnbull, fit with Te Papa's claim? European-authored texts do not contribute the only - or perhaps even the 'foremost' - perspective. Linda Smith notes that, 'while Best lives on as an expert, the names of his informants and the rest of their knowledge lie buried in manuscripts and archives'. 13 Our intention in this essay, and in our respective research projects, is to attend to these 'buried' Maori voices.

Engaging with Maori Voices The search for Maori voices has been central to our research as we attempt to make visible Maori agency in the study of traditions and the history of encounter. We believe that scholarship on Aotearoa New Zealand is inadequate when only Pakeha texts are on the reading table. Alongside the few Maori writings which have been widely read, such as the correspondence between Apirana Ngata and Peter Buck 14 and the Maori niupepa [newspapers] which are increasingly recognised as 'an unprecedented witness to Maori activities and opinion', 15 there remains a rich archive of writings by less prominent figures, waiting to be brought into conversation with the better-known texts and writers. Our interest is to have as many contributions to this conversation as possible; to include the mass of unpublished and published writings, and visual and recorded texts by Maori held in the Alexander Turnbull Library. These offer the opportunity to examine through Maori eyes the strategies and tactics Maori employed as they negotiated and mediated colonial structures in their encounters with Europeans.

Engaging with Maori texts can extend our shared understanding of particular concepts and histories, and correct inaccuracies and assumptions which have developed in the absence of alternative perspectives. For example, in his work Maori Custom and Law Affecting Maori Land (1942), Norman Smith articulates four general take [principal rights]: discovery, ancestral rights, conquest, and gifting and transfer. 16 While these four, when coupled with the necessary ingredient of occupation, are indeed organising principals of land tenure, an 1890 s letter to Elsdon Best from Ngati Porou leader Major Rapata Wahawaha outlines some 28 variations of take whenua [principals of land rights], 17 suggesting that Maori had a more complex configuration of traditional property rights than Smith allows. Maori texts can also correct errors which on one level appear to be simple factual mistakes, but which have implications far beyond that, as in the case of mana whenua, whose authenticity as a traditional concept has been called into question. In a 2006 New Zealand Herald article, 'The Battle for Auckland', historian Michael Belgrave claims: 'The term mana whenua does not exist. ... It's a creation of the land court period and became very fashionable in the last two decades. It has absolutely no currency in describing custom'. 18 Yet the term was used by Te Arawa intellectual and important early ethnographic source, Wiremu Te Rangikaheke, in a letter to Governor Gore Browne of 9 July 1861, pre-dating the Native Land Court, when he referred to the Treaty of Waitangi as, 'te whakaaetanga a te Kuini i te mana Maori kia tohungia mana tangata, mana whenua (the Queen's consent to the 'mana' Maori being respected in regard to the men and the land)'. 19 Belgrave suggests the contemporary use of mana whenua is a case of invented tradition in the context of a specific legal space, but Te Rangikaheke's use of the term in 1861 suggests an etymology that both predates and goes beyond the Native Land Court.

Maori voices can also intervene to offer a different perspective on specific cultural practices, framing them from within a Maori cultural context. To illustrate, while early European observers tended to criticise hakari [feasting] as 'gluttony and wanton waste', 20 one letter to the editor of a Maori newspaper draws attention to its social function: Ko te hakari e utua ana ano kite hakari, ara kite kai. ... ki taku titiro iho e mahi tikanga ana hoki hei oranga mo tatou, ara, i nga tikanga o te ture. Ko taua mahi ko te mahi hakari na nga tangata rangatira. [The feast is reciprocated with a feast, that is, with food. ... To me it is, according to customary law, appropriate practice for our well-being. That practice of feasting is one of chiefs.] 21

While Pakeha tended to dwell on the apparent moral and physical excesses of the practice, this Maori commentator focuses on the opportunity provided by hakari to extend hospitality and reinforce relationships.

This case is echoed in the one-off newspaper, Rongo, published in 1973. 22 Kongo broadens our understanding of historical connections between Maori and Pasifika communities. It was produced by a conglomerate of interested parties, most notably the Polynesian Panthers and Nga Tamatoa, and includes articles in English, Maori, Samoan, Tongan and Niuean. The Turnbull Library holds one of the only remaining copies of this virtually unknown newspaper, which, despite its relatively recent publication, remains almost completely off the historical record. Kongo provides a snapshot of specific collaborations in the moments immediately preceding the land march and dawn raids, events which solidified the categories 'indigenous' and 'migrant' in ways that overshadowed the panPolynesian identification advanced by Kongo. Here, rather than being a corrective to specific inaccuracies, the Maori voice works to re-frame narrow or dominant (mis)understandings.

Na Waite Whakaaro: Critically Engaging with Maori Voices We are careful to distinguish between treating Maori texts as written versions of native informants, and treating them as writing that demands and deserves to be read with a critical eye. We are committed to engaging with their multiplicity and their specificity, and strongly resist the idea that Maori texts are beyond or outside critique. Like any texts, they are highly mediated and come with their own interpretative and contextual biases. Drawing on Spivak's interrogation of the construction of 'Native informant' 23 through specific interactions with ethnographers, anthropologists and so on, we turn to American Indian scholars like Robert Warrior and Lisa Brooks, who prefer to treat texts by indigenous writers as examples of 'Native intellectual history'. 24 Brooks notes that some scholars have limited native voices by interrogating their degree of 'nativeness' on a 'contrived scale of corruption and purity', rather than as writers like any other with 'roles as participants and contributors'. 25

In some cases Maori themselves may have adopted Pakeha interpretations of Maori texts. An obvious example is the myth of the seven waka [canoes], in which the ancestors of Maori are said to have migrated to Aotearoa. 26 A more specific example is found in Elsdon Best's lecture on Maori origins, where he provides a cosmological genealogy: From Te Pu (the very origin) sprang Te More (the tap-root). From Te More sprang Te Weu (the rootlets or fibrous roots). Then came Te Aka (the creeper or vine). Then Te Rea (the increase). Then Te Wao-nui (the great forest or tree). Then followed Te Kune (the forming, the conception). Then Te Whe or Wheke, which represented sound. Then Te Kore (void) and Te Po (darkness). 27

This whakapapa [genealogy] is frequently cited and taught today by Maori as esoteric knowledge of Maori origins. Yet the nineteenth-century scholar Hoani Te Whatahoro Jury, in the rich records of the Maori Purposes Fund Board, has referred to its more exoteric nature as a fable for pedagogical purposes:

Ko te whakapapa i timata mai ra ia te Pu ia te Weu, he whakapapa matanui tera ki waenga i te honotangata hei Purakau ki nga tamariki ko reira kitea ai te Tamariki kamakama kite hopu korero, whakapapa taki korero ranei ka tangohia tena tamariki ki roto i te wharemata ako ai. [The genealogy that starts with te Pu te Weu is a generic genealogy within humanity, which serves as a fable for children, and if it is seen that the child has the aptitude to capture traditional accounts, then that child will be taken into the school of learning to train.] 28

Rather than producing an alternative version of Best's account, Te Whatahoro proffers a way to read it and contextualise its genre and use. Best may well have been provided with this genealogy and understood it to be reliable, however, Te Rangihiroa, writing about the native informant, reminds us that:

There are sources of error. A Native may misunderstand a question and thus give the wrong answer, or he may deliberately give the wrong answer, an individual form of humour. The stranger who is arrogant or patronizing is very apt to be told strange stories which form excellent material for magazine articles but have no foundation of truth. 29

This case highlights the limitations of relying on a single version of Maori cultural understanding, especially that disseminated by English-language ethnographic texts. It also reminds us that multiple strands underlie our engagement with these texts. For reasons not disconnected from the very colonial project in which this information has been collected, Best's texts are more widely accessible than Te Whatahoro's. Access to Maori Purposes Fund Board material is restricted at present, and the legacy of Maori-language loss prevents many people from searching for and understanding Te Whatahoro's intercession.

Many early Maori writers were themselves readers of Pakeha ethnographies. In a letter to James Cowan dated July 1920, Raureti Te Huia of Ngati Paretekawa confirmed he was pleased with the written notes of his interview regarding local history, which Cowan had sent him to sign. Te Huia noted he had a full set of John White's Ancient History of the Maori , but requested that Cowan source him a copy of Sir George Grey's Nga Mahi a Nga Tupuna: 'ko nga tino pukapuka kei te hiahia ahau ko nga korero a Kerei' [the books I very much desire is Grey's work] . 30

Writing in 1929, Wi Repa commented on Grey's work as 'kei te urungatia e te ao hou hei paipera mo te reo Maori. ... Ara, kei taua pukapuka te whakapono a nga tangata marama o tenei wa' [having become a Bible for the Maori language in the modern world. ... That book contains the beliefs of the knowledgeable people of today]. 31 However, Kapua Rangataua Keepa criticised Wi Repa for his reliance on Grey's work: 'i hopu koe he tipuna pakeha maana e whakaatu mai nga korero ki a koe' [you have seized on a European ancestor to inform you]. 32 These examples show a layering of readerships: White and Grey's informants were interviewed by White and Grey, who were revered or criticised by Raureti Te Huia, Wi Repa and Kapua Rangataua Keepa, who are read by us. They engage with each other, and we only diminish them if we frame them as mere receptacles of cultural truth rather than as real people with their own specificities and contexts. In this respect we agree with Lisa Brooks, who recognises that all native texts:

emerge from within [an] Indigenous space of exchange, not, as is often portrayed, from displaced [native] individuals reflecting on the state of their lives in relation to the colonial world. [Early native writers] weren't individuals 'caught between two worlds'; they were Native thinkers who inhabited many spaces of interaction, just as we do today. 33

'What of the Culture?' Maori Voices at the Centre Although much of our discussion in this paper has focused on the implications of reading Maori texts in the light of colonial relations between Maori and non-Maori, the texts are always so much richer than this. After all, the danger of investigating only Maori-Pakeha relations is that we risk reducing them to a simple coloniser/ colonised dichotomy; a history filled with cardboard characters. Because of the dominance of Maori-Pakeha histories of interaction, along with many scholars' lack of Maori-language capacity, we have seldom had the opportunity to ask: What would happen if Maori were placed at the centre of this story, if interaction with Europeans was but one of the concerns of Maori writers? Writing to Te Rangihiroa, Apirana Ngata criticised the grand tribal histories such as Leslie Kelly's Tainui (1949) 34 and George Leslie Adkin's Horowhenua (1948). 35 Of the former, he said: 'lt was like the English histories of our youth, which revolved round battles and the succession of kings and told little of the prior occupants of the present. ... What of the culture?' 36 Ngata regarded such histories as too like 'English histories', leaving the reader with a narrow, stereotypical view of Maori before European contact as warriors ceaselessly seeking utu or revenge. Ngata questions the way the material has been presented and the context from which it has been extricated, turning our attention

to questions of methodology and framing. 'What of the culture?', indeed. Ngata's question compels and challenges us to imagine the kinds of things we might notice if we read the texts in a way that took for granted the Maori - and perhaps iwi [tribal], hapu [sub-tribal] or local - worlds at their centres. The sheer bulk of the Maori written record in the Alexander Turnbull Library is both impressive and overwhelming, and we have the distinct sense we are merely scratching the surface as each text in turn is accompanied by its own linguistic, historical, cultural and political contexts. There is not a singular Maori voice but a multiplicity of voices: nineteenth-century voices, yes, but also twentieth-century voices. Hoani Te Whatahoro Jury's voice is found alongside Apirana Ngata's, but also alongside the voices of the 1970 s activist group, Nga Tamatoa. Some texts are exemplars of the Maori language at its most complex, fluid and fluent, and some - such as Rongo - were written in te reo Maori by authors for whom their own tongue was a halting second language. Finally, there are other kinds of Maori voices in the Alexander Turnbull Library: those of Maori scholars, researchers, students and communities. Kia rongo mai koutou. Listen to this cacophony of Maori voices - written, sketched, whispered, spoken, lived.

ENDNOTES 1 We would like to thank Dr Rawinia Higgins, Victoria University of Wellington, and this journal's peer reviewer for some most helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. 2 Henry Matthew Stowell, 'Reliable Ancient Maori History', Alexander Turnbull Library (ATL), qMS-929. 3 Translation note: English translations of te reo Maori in square brackets are the authors' translations. English translations in parentheses are from the original source material. 4 See, for example, Te Korimako, 14 April 1883, p. 9. 5 John White Papers 1826-1891, ATL MS-Papers-0075. 6 For his part, White was commissioned by the government to compile an official Maori history, seven volumes of which were published between 1887 and 1891. Michael Reilly has discussed White's ethnographic work, in particular his Ancient History of the Maori: 'John White: the Making of a Nineteenth-Century Writer and Collector of Maori Traditions', New Zealand Journal of History 23 (1989): 157-72, and 'John White: Seeking the Elusive Mohio - White and His Informants', NZJH 24, no. 1 (1990): 45-55. 7 D. V. Williams, Matauranga Maori and Taonga. The Nature and Extent of Treaty Rights Held by Iwi and Hapu in Indigenous Flora and Fauna Cultural Heritage Objects and Valued Traditional Knowledge (Wellington, Waitangi Tribunal, 1997), p. 110. 8 Huia Jahnke and Julia Taiapa, 'Maori Research', in Social Science Research in New Zealand, ed. by Carl Davidson and Martin Tolich (Auckland: Longman, 1999), p. 40. 9 Richard Taylor, Te Ika a Maui, or, New Zealand and its Inhabitants (London: Wertheim & Macintosh, 1855), p. vi. See also his papers in the Alexander Turnbull Library, MS-Papers-0254. 10 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979). 11 Te Manuhiri Tuarangi and Maori Intelligencer, 1 August 1861, p. 11. 12 See http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/TePapaPress/FullCatalogue/Pages/Elsdonßest.aspx. 13 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books, 2005), p. 85. 14 See Na To Hoa Aroha: From Your Dear Friend: The Correspondence Between Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck, 1925-50, 3 vols, ed. by M. P. K. Sorrenson (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1986).

15 Jennifer Curnow, Ngapare Hopa, and Jane Mcßae (eds), Rere Atu, Taku Manu: Discovering History, Language and Politics in the Maori-Language Newspapers 1842-1933 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2002), p. ix. 16 Norman Smith, Maori Custom and Law Affecting Land (Wellington: Maori Purposes Fund Board, 1942). 17 Elsdon Best Papers, ATL, MS-Papers-0072-39E. 18 Chris Barton, The Battle for Auckland', New Zealand Herald, 29 July 2006, pp. 81-83. 19 Letter from Wiremu Maihi Te Rangikaheke to Governor Gore Browne, 9 July 1861, Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives (AJHR), 1861, E-18, no. 22, p. 20. 20 See, for example, The Maori Feast', in Te Karere o Poneke, 24 September 1857, p. 2; Thomas Moser, Mahoe Leaves; Being a Selection of Sketches of New Zealand and Its Inhabitants, and Other Matters Concerning Them (Wellington: William Lyon, 1863), p. 37; 'Feasting and Waste', Poverty Bay Herald, 3 December 1912, p. 4. For a list of 14 large feasts, derived from a number of early sources, and documenting an astounding assemblage of foodstuffs, see Raymond Firth's seminal Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Maori (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1929), pp. 318-320. 21 Hapurona Tohikura, Te Waka Maori o Niu Tirani, 14 May 1873, p. 53. 22 Rongo 1, no. 1 (Summer 1973-74).

23 See Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak, The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, ed. by Sarah Harasym (New York, London: Routledge, 1990); Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York: Routledge, 1993); In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York: Methuen, 1987). 24 Robert Warrior, Tribal Secrets: Recovering American Indian Intellectual Traditions (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995). 25 Lisa Brooks, 'Digging at the Roots: Locating an Ethical, Native Criticism', in Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective, ed. by Craig Womack, Daniel Heath Justice, and Christopher B. Teuton (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), p. 248. 26 See D. R. Simmons, The Great New Zealand Myth: A Study of the Discovery and Origin Traditions of the Maori (Wellington: Reed, 1976); Rawiri Taonui, 'Canoe Traditions', Te Ara - The Encyclopedia of New Zealand, http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/canoe-traditions [accessed 20 October 2010]. 27 Elsdon Best, 'Maori Origins', in Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New Zealand 32, 1899, p. 294.

28 H. T. Whatahoro Jury, Notebook with Cosmological Information, Maori Purposes Fund Board, ATL, Ms-Papers-0189-8023, p. 62. Te Whatahoro himself is not without his detractors, who have criticised his role in the production of the lo tradition of a Maori supreme being. See, for example, Jane Simpson's 'lo as Supreme Being: Intellectual Colonization of the Maori?', History of Religions 37, 1 (August 1997): 75. 29 Te Rangi Hiroa, An Introduction to Polynesian Anthropology (Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1945), p. 31 30 Maori text is from Raureti Te Huia, ATL, MS-Papers-0039-11. 31 Te Ingoa nei a Aotearoa', Te Toa Takitini, 1 July 1929, p. 1,027. 32 Te Ingoa nei Aotearoa', Te Toa Takitini, 1 August 1929, p. 1,047. 33 Lisa Brooks, The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), p. 254. 34 Leslie G. Kelly, Tainui: The Story of Hoturoa and his Descendants (Wellington: Polynesian Society, 1949). 35 George Leslie Adkin, Horowhenua: Its Maori Place-names & their Topographical & Historical Background (Wellington, Department of Internal Affairs, 1948). 36 Na To Hoa Aroha: From Your Dear Friend: The Correspondence Between Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck, 1925-50, vol. 3, ed. by M. P. K. Sorrenson (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1986), p. 254.