Warriors Once More, Glenn Belverio [the dot read aloud .TXT] 📗

In the chilly early morning hours, as large clouds of steam merge with fog that drifts down from the surrounding mountains, Maori men, women and children bathe in outdoor stone tubs in Whakarewarewa Village. Mineral-rich, boiling water from natural pools that surround Lake Rotoatamaheke trickles down narrow, shallow trenches into the tubs, while cold water from garden hoses regulates the temperature. A few metres away, water that is twice the temperature of boiling cascades down stone terraces that are encrusted with the white, yellow and orange residue of calcium, sulphur and copper.

“Nature is its own best artist," observes Auntie Chris, a chestnut colored Maori kui

(elderly woman) who has lived in the village for forty years. She’s wearing earrings shaped like miniature straw bags and her straw sun hat is covered with silk butterflies. Nearby, the Purerehua

(butterfly) weather pool flows and gurgles following a long dormancy. “When the pool reactivates, it means a good summer is on the way," explains Auntie Chris. “And the monarch butterflies come to dance with the waters.”

Whakarewarewa Village, which is located in the Rotorua area of New Zealand’s north island, is three-hundred-years old and is inhabited by Maori families who live in small houses that have been passed down through generations. None of the homes have indoor bathtubs since any washing involving hot water, including clothing, is done outside in water from the boiling pools. Food is cooked in the hot pools and also in wooden steam boxes which utilize the extreme steam heat from the underground thermal streams. “The modern world would become the Third World if there was a major power outage, but we would still have our hot water for cooking, bathing, and laundry," Auntie Chris notes wryly. “How many Auckland women can wash their laundry by hand? They couldn’t even wash their handkerchief!”

Auntie Chris takes us over to the Parekohuru, a boiling, vivid blue "champagne" pool thus named for the tiny bubbles that constantly rise to its surface. We try some corn on the cob that has been boiled in the pool, its flavor enhanced by the water’s rich minerals.

Whakarewarewa Thermal Village, along with the rest of Rotorua’s wonders, is a big draw for tourists causing it to be referred to sneeringly by Aucklanders as “Rotor-Vegas." There is a sentiment among some Aucklanders that the quasi-utopian Whakarewarewa Village is a grossly inaccurate representation of contemporary Maori life and, with wording that veers uncomfortably close to racism, they will tell you of the rampant unemployment, welfare dependency, “laziness” and drug abuse in Rotorua’s Maori communities. Of course this is nothing new when you look at the history of other indigenous cultures, like those of Native Americans and Australian Aborigines--not to mention Black and Latino communities in the US.

What is also not new is the white man’s reluctance to take responsibility for contributing to the abject circumstances that exist in minority communities. In The Maori Situation

, a 1935 book that discusses the impact of European colonization, author I.L.G. Sutherland writes, “Little attempt is commonly made to understand the causes which produced those Maori characteristics which have become almost proverbial amongst us. To put it frankly, we blame the Maori for becoming what we have made them.” Amusingly, he also notes: “There is on record a letter from a wealthy Roman landowner to his agent in Britain telling him to ship no more British slaves ‘as they are so lazy and cannot be trusted to work.’ Similar causes produce similar effects; we should be less ready with hasty judgment and hasty blame.”

Reconciliation between the Pakeha

(Europeans) and the Maori continues to be an issue today. In the pages of Mana

, a Maori news magazine, topics such as the Deed of Settlement, in which the Crown apologized for breaching the Treaty of Waitangi, are under constant discussion. (The obligations of the Treaty have been in contention ever since the day it was signed by a group of Maori chiefs and the British government in 1840.) Letters to Tu Mai

, another Maori news magazine, continue to pull back this historical scab. “THE RENT IS OVERDUE. The Pakeha have had it their way for too long. We as Maori should stand up! Take back what belongs to us, even if that means by force! Only then will the Pakeha take us SERIOUSLY” read one particularly radical missive. There are, of course, many people of Maori descent who are apolitical and view these issues as outdated (“The Maori are a dead race. There are no full-blooded Maori left," a part-Maori shop owner told me in Queenstown) but there are also just as many who feel they must keep their heritage alive.

Our good-natured Maori tour guide in Rotorua, Sonny, is fond of injecting moments of Maori pride into unsuspecting situations. During a visit to the "chapel" in Waitomo Caves, another guide explains how the acoustics in the space are especially suited for singing. (Rod Stewart is among the list of crooning visitors.) When she invites someone from the group to give it a try, a plump Aussie woman delivers a few pathetic bars of “Glow Little Glow Worm” as an homage to the caves’ famed fluorescent dwellers. When her weak voice gives out, Sonny upstages her by belting out a robust rendition of “God Defend New Zealand," the country’s national anthem, in the Maori tongue. His gesture is especially significant in light of an incident in 1999 when Hinewehi Mohi, a contemporary Maori singer, caused a public furor when she sang the national anthem in Maori at the World Cup, drawing complaints from New Zealanders who couldn’t sing along. These days, the anthem is sung in both Maori and English.

Currently, only about 20% of New Zealand’s Maori population speaks some Maori, but there are some who are actively working to change that. Sonny’s cousin Maggie, who has a Maori mother and an Irish father, is a school teacher and mother of seven who lives in a small house in a Rotorua suburb. Her entire curriculum is taught in 100% Maori and all of her children have been raised to speak the language fluently. “Mainstream education wouldn’t work for them because it’s all based on the Pakeha beliefs," says Maggie who recently took her class on a trip that followed the footsteps of Maori tipuna

, or ancestors. Even though her children speak the language, Maggie runs a conventional household that bears little resemblance to life at Whakarewarewa Village. “We have our little house with our little picket fence and yet I have the desire to live communally with other Maori. But the rest of my family is in Wellington, living their lives and paying their mortgages," she says wistfully.

Maggie believes that the Maori people are getting a raw deal from New Zealand’s dominant Pakeha culture, but feels that community action is often not that easy. “How can you be concerned about being political when you’re struggling to feed your family, struggling to find employment?” she asks. “People think that the politicization of Maori is about being anti-Pakeha, but it’s about equality. But that has been made difficult with multiculturalism since we now have other minorities, like Asians and Samoans, making New Zealand their home. I don’t believe that we are one people. We are not one people. That’s just a cop-out to say that. How can you treat Maori like Pakeha when we’re not?”

Of course, there are different viewpoints amongst the Maori. “I think as an aboriginal culture, Maori are the most privileged in the world," opines Maori fashion designer Nadine Freundlich. “Especially when you look at what’s been done to Native Americans and Aborigines. We have houses to live in and cars to drive.” However, Freundlich, who grew up in an upper-middle-class household, does acknowledge some of the angst that comes with assimilation and urban drift. “When I’m in a cultural situation such as a funeral at a marae

, an ancestral meeting ground, I have a sense of guilt because I’m not always familiar with the rules of the traditions," she admits. “I would love to be able to pass Maori culture on to my children. One of the problems in Maori communities is a lack of self-esteem.”

Sonny speaks frankly of these issues toward the end of our tour at a local McDonald’s, where the interior has been done over in Maori tribal carvings. “We have a lot of social problems: alcoholism, domestic violence, and drugs, especially speed," he says. “A lot of Maori didn’t like the film Once Were Warriors

because it focused on these problems. But we are now dealing with these problems.”

Assimilation versus resistance is a common theme amongst indigenous cultures. There is an old prophesy that was made by a dying Maori chief that reads disturbingly as a prediction of assimilation: "Shadowed behind the tattooed face a stranger stands, he who owns the earth, and he is white." But then again, there are enough Maori who are willing to prove him wrong.

Glenn Belverio 2003

Publication Date: 11-07-2009

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