Hiwa, p.24
Hiwa, page 24
She describes this story, ‘Faithful and True’, as her ‘first foray into fiction using a prophetic history as a background’ and part of a young adult book-in-progress set in Rua Kēnana’s community at Maungapōhatu in Te Urewera. Morey conceives this as ‘twelve stand-alone short stories, told by five or six different narrators’, covering the years 1906–1918.
Her fascination with Rua Kēnana and the Māori prophetic movements dates to an undergraduate paper on contemporary Māori art, and the relationship between the historical and contemporary became the subject of her Master’s thesis. She has long wanted to write about Ngā Poropiti – Peter Webster’s book Rua and the Māori Millennium (1979), Morey says, ‘sits permanently on my desk’ – but sees fiction as the best vehicle for her research. ‘It gives me the opportunity to bring the past to life,’ she says, ‘because it’s the little things that make it sing, make it feel real. The stuff that never makes it into history books.’
In ‘Faithful and True’, Morey juxtaposes Te Kooti and the New Zealand Wars with a disparate community being called to hui, and ‘kids messing around just being kids’. She sees all the stories in the planned book as a complex balance ‘between the real and the fictional, history and domestic, noa and tapu, big and small, Māori and Pākehā, and in my case, the magic realism and the actual realism’.
The early years of the twentieth century, when the story is set, is a time when Māori culture ‘is on the cusp of being lost,’ Morey says, ‘as the Pākehā world relentlessly encroaches on te ao Māori. I’m writing about the things Māori have already lost, but also the things they have gained, as the old world passes into the new.’
Faithful and True
Near Waikaremoana, early winter, 1905
Māmā calls us in from where we’re playing outside with Hine’s latest litter of kittens. They emerged from under the woodshed, where Hine had gone to have them, about ten days ago.
‘We’re going to the marae,’ Māmā says, giving me a wet, soapy rag to wash my little brother and sister’s grubby faces and dirty hands.
‘Who’s died?’ I ask, because it’s not a worship day.
Māmā shakes her head and smiles. ‘Nobody. This time. It’s him. Rua Kēnana. He’s come at last to our rohe and has called us all to the whare rūnanga to hear his word.’
‘Where’s Pāpā?’ I ask.
‘He’s there already,’ Māmā says. She looks out the window and across the paddocks. ‘And here comes Nanny Kaa now.’
Nanny Kaa is Māmā’s kowhaea. She has her own little whare down near the creek under the kohekohe. Some of the other kids have nice nannies but ours is a taniwha. ‘Bloody kids,’ she always says, shaking her rākau at us. ‘Bloody kids.’
Whero, Nanny Kaa’s big red kurī who likes biting the ankles of tamariki, arrives first, pushing his way into the house, taking up more room than he’s entitled to. A length of broken rope is dragging from around his neck.
‘Get out Whero,’ Māmā shouts. ‘Bloody dog.’ And a well-timed kick follows. ‘Take that!’ Whero yelps then reluctantly leaves.
Nanny Kaa is puffing when she appears a minute or so later at the door. ‘The bugger chewed it through,’ she says in explanation picking up the end of the rope that Whero’s dragging.
Bloody dog.
‘Be a good girl, Huia, and lock him in the woodshed,’ Nanny Kaa tells me. Whero has been banned from the marae. There’s been too many instances of wrongdoing. Too many crying and bleeding children and too much stolen food from the kitchen. He’s a bugger that Whero.
Bloody dog.
‘Come on you,’ I say to Whero, dragging him across the grass to the woodshed by the privy. This isn’t the first time he’s been banished to the shed, so he’s reluctant. But I’m strong after a summer of working in the gardens and Whero is no longer a match for me, though there was a time when he could have, and had, dragged me along the road or over the paddocks, my face, elbows and knees crashing into the ground as I bounced along behind him.
Bloody dog.
‘Get in there,’ I say, giving him a final shove and slamming the woodshed door shut and latching it.
With Whero locked up, and Nanny Kaa recovered of breath, we set off down the road. Nanny Kaa and Māmā, with Pania on her hip, lead the way with Ahu and me messing around, getting further and further behind them until we drop out of earshot.
///
Now, prophets are nothing new to Ahu and me. We are Ringatū, Church of the Upraised Hand. Te Kooti’s faithful. Even though our Prophet is no longer with us, he died before I was born, his teachings and the things that he did remain here in this place. Held between the land and the sky. With us people in-between.
Our koro from our pāpā’s people, who lives at Te Karaka, he was a boy when Te Kooti and his faithful came to Te Urewera. Our koro tells us stories about how Te Kooti escaped from exile on Wharekauri with his people, sailing a commandeered ship back to Poverty Bay. And about the dark times when the Prophet exacted utu, savage and swift, on those who had wronged him.
‘They’re too young for those stories,’ Māmā says to Koro.
But Koro won’t be stopped. ‘They need to know,’ he says. ‘Never forget,’ he tells us. ‘Never!’ And he makes us promise. Hand on heart.
So the stories continue. About how Te Kooti was hunted across the land by the Government militia, many of whom were his very own people. Kūpapa. How Tāwhiao the Māori King refused Te Kooti’s petition for sanctuary in the King Country. Kūpapa. And that it was us, Ngāi Tūhoe, who offered the Prophet and his faithful a place to bury their feet into the land though the cost to us was great. To punish us the Government militia burnt our papa kāinga to the ground and destroyed our cultivations and pātaka kai bringing hunger and death to Ngāi Tūhoe. Auē.
‘Oh the hunger,’ our koro, who was there, tells us. ‘It was a terrible thing.’
And how even in this hardship Ngāi Tūhoe didn’t turn on the Prophet for this calamity that had ridden in on his coat tails but instead embraced his teachings and became Ringatū. How we, Ngāi Tūhoe, not his own people, put him to rest in our land when he died, because he was one of us and we are his faithful and true. We keep his name and teachings alive, gathering at our meeting house which is painted like a garden in the Ringatū way, to hear his scriptures, sing hīmene and keep the faith. The belief in a deliverance that is near at hand. That soon the Pākehā will leave. That this is the Promised Land, our land, like the Old Testament says. Those prophets, the ones in the first Holy Book of the Pākehā, not the Gospels, are not so different from us.
An eye for an eye.
A tooth for a tooth.
Utu.
‘Will he be on a white horse do you think?’ Ahu asks as we dawdle along behind Māmā and Nanny Kaa.
It’s a fair question. Te Kooti said that the new Prophet would make himself known to us by riding a white horse called Faithful and True, the white horse Te Kooti himself rode. ‘He might,’ I say. But I think there may be other signs as well. Our world is rich in tohu, they are woven into the warp and weft of our everyday existence. They are the hukahuka that embellish our living in the same way they decorate the korowai. Well, that’s what Nanny Kaa says anyway.
Other families join us on the track. Young and old. We’ve been waiting a long time ever since word arrived that Rua Kēnana was doing a tour of marae across Tairāwhiti and into Te Urewera. Finally it’s the turn of our rohe. We’re not far from the marae now. The horses in the paddocks we walk past near the marae are browns, chestnuts and bays, their coats shaggy now that winter is here. There is no white one in their number, so I wonder how Rua Kēnana got here.
‘Would you look at that,’ Māmā says as we walk through the waharoa and onto the marae. ‘Everyone is here.’
Māmā’s right. Those from the valleys over from us and further up the crease of the land where our hapū live, have made the journey, carrying the infirm of body and mind since the Prophet is said to be a healer. Old man Puha with his rotting leg, Nanny Te Kaha who only sees the ghosts of the past, Ahikāroa who has tuberculosis, Rewa who has fits, and Ariana who almost drowned in the river and has been funny in her head ever since. All making the journey here in the hope of being made whole again.
Māmā’s sister, Karitane – with her lazy husband Piri and their children – are here too. Their whare is at one of the papa kāinga, up in the hills, about half a day’s walk away, Ahu and I latch onto our cousins Hōhepa, Anahera and Maata, and we disappear through the crowd as our respective mothers and Nanny Kaa start to exchange news and gossip. We head for the kitchen hoping we’ll find nice aunties who will give us something to eat, not taniwha aunties who’ll chase us away. We strike it lucky. Auntie Tūī, the kindest of them all is standing by the door slicing bread, still warm from the oven.
‘I know what you little hua want,’ she says, reaching into the meat safe above her and taking out a tin that once held golden syrup. Hinu. Mutton fat poured off from every roasted haunch that’s passed through the marae kitchen’s ovens. White and waxy, it’s marbled with juice from the meat. The magical golden syrup tin, constantly dipped into and eternally topped up. Hinu. The only thing sweeter is pork fat. My waha fills with saliva. Auntie Tūī gets a knife and smears hinu on crusts, one for each of us, then sprinkles the hinu with salt. ‘Now on your way,’ she says handing the crusts over.
We sit down on one of the benches around the back of the kitchen where the aunties have their smokes and tell their lies, and eat our bread and hinu. We take our time. But even then, all too soon it’s gone. We’re discussing a second approach on Auntie Tūī’s generosity when we hear the door of the kitchen open, followed by the sound of the aunties’ feet on the floorboards as they leave. We look at each other. It’s begun. The arrival of the man we call Rua Kēnana. Wiping our greasy fingers on our clothes we head back to the meeting house at the front of the marae. We’re almost there when the karanga begins.
‘They chose Aperira to do the karanga,’ I say. ‘I recognise her voice.’
She’s one of our other cousins, older than us, but still very young to be chosen kaikaranga for a visitor as important as Rua Kēnana. Like tuna we flick over and under and around the sea of legs until we’re almost at the front. From where I stand, peeking out from behind one of the kuia, I can see our kaumātua gathered on the paepae and the backs of five men being welcomed onto our marae and into our house. Though I can only see their backs, the five men look ordinary. Everyday. No different from our father, or even useless old Piri. And I feel disappointed I suppose, even though I’m old enough to know that that’s not how mana works. That it doesn’t make itself present in obvious ways. That it’s about a person’s whakapapa, their words and deeds, not how they look.
So there they stand, the man who says he is Te Kooti’s successor and four of his faithful. Rua Kēnana, I reckon, well he has to be the one in the middle. Slight, but tall like many of us Ngāi Tūhoe are, and dressed in a pair of riding breeches, the tall riding boots that the Pākehā love so much, and a checked coat. His boots are dull and muddy from his journey to our rohe, their ankles broken into folds from years of hard wear.
By the time the pōwhiri is finished and we are all welcomed into the meeting house, the shadows are lengthening into twilight, golden and hazy. The winter solstice is nearing. Heat drops out of the day as the sun disappears below the ridges to the west of our valley. I shiver, but don’t know whether that’s because I suddenly realise that I’m cold, or if a kēhua has touched my soul. I used to be able to see them, the kēhua, but not anymore. But I know they are all around. Playing games with us, the living.
‘Come on Huia,’ Māmā says walking by with Nanny Kaa. Pania is asleep on Māmā’s shoulder. ‘Where’s that brother of yours?’
‘I don’t know.’ I had lost sight of Ahu when we split up to slip through to the front of the crowd. ‘Maybe he’s gone inside already.’
We walk up to the paepae. Because we don’t have shoes, we have none to remove, though there are a few pairs of boots lined up neatly, including the riding boots worn by one of our visitors. The tops have flopped over, the leather so worn it’s soft.
The lamps inside the house are all lit, and the smell of the white spirit burning, is somehow comforting. Inside, the visitors sit with our elders at the far end of the house under the paintings done in the time of Te Kooti and some photographs and lithographs of tūpuna that have been bought back here from the Pākehā world. Our meeting house is a garden with a creek running through it, like it does in our valley. The boards, rafters and pou have been whitewashed, then painted in blues, yellows and greens. There’s a single flash of red, the painting of the rose that blooms over and up the far wall, its thorny tendrils hung with clusters of red blossom and the pictures of our tūpuna. I recognise the rose; we all do. It grows over the remains of an abandoned mission house on the track between us and Waikaremoana to the south. Painted vines of puawānanga, native honeysuckle and akakiore are planted in pots at the feet of the pou, their stems intwined around the posts, reaching up to the rafters. From between the leaves and white and yellow flowers, the faces of our ancestors, birds and lizards, and atua are painted. Our maunga, Maungapōhatu, the holy cross, the wairua tapu, the King of clubs, hearts and diamonds with the King of spades and the black joker standing apart. They’re all there too. And Queen Wikitōria, the English Queen who is now dead, sitting in a waka beneath the shooting star and the crescent moon. Our house is beautiful and it speaks of both our Ngāi Tūhoe and Ringatū whakapapa.
‘There’s Pāpā,’ Māmā says. ‘And Ahu.’ We join them on the mats they have claimed for us. Once everyone is in and seated, and what a crush it is too, a hush falls over us. Our most senior kaumātua stands and says a Ringatū karakia which he works into the reason why we are gathered here tonight. He welcomes Rua Kēnana and his faithful once again, in a more intimate way now that the kōrero is held fast in the cupped hands of our house. Rua Kēnana rises from the bench where he is sitting with his men.
He is the one in the English man’s riding clothes. I was right.
His eyes drift slowly over us, our expectant faces and within to our expectant hearts, then he begins.
He tāngata.
He tāngata.
He tāngata.
Rua Kēnana speaks of many things that night.
Of the malaise that holds us in its terrible clutch. Of a people dying, in spirit, as our land disappears acre by acre and from the diseases the Pākehā has bought to Aotearoa.
Influenza.
Measles.
Rheumatic Fever.
Diphtheria.
Tuberculosis.
Typhoid.
Then he talks of Ngāi Tūhoe and how we came to be of this place. Descendants of the mist maiden Hinepūkohurangi and Te Maunga. Stories of whakapapa. Of whenua. Of tūrangawaewae. Of belonging. How the land and we are one. That we are made of breath, then clay, then light before transforming back to clay and dust, and finally breath again. He speaks of our land. Of Te Urewera and Waikaremoana. And of our maunga, Maungapōhatu. How of all the lands of Aotearoa this one place, the most sacred of places where our dead are buried in the cliffs in the heart of the forest, is the one place the greedy Pākehā and his hunger for land haven’t reached. A great tract of forest, maunga, valleys and ridges, wet and verdant, rich with plant and creature. A place where Hinepūkohurangi and her sister Hinewai lay their flowing white robes and milky fingers across the land. Born of maunga and mist. Ngāi Tūhoe, people of the mist. And by some miracle, after the Land Wars, when the Pākehā took his spoils, we were the one iwi who had held fast to our mana whenua. Ten years passed. Then ten more, and then another twenty and still Te Urewera was left unmolested.
‘We thought our maunga and our forest was safe from Pākehā hands,’ Rua Kēnana says, ‘until now. Now the Pākehā want this land too. They say they want to survey it. Build roads. They say we have abandoned it because we don’t live on it in the way that the Pākehā does. And because of that they have the right to take it.’
It has come to him, Rua Kēnana, in a vision, that the only way to heal this sickness in our mana and our bodies and to hold fast to Te Urewera is to make a new community, far from the Pākehā, on our mountain, Maungapōhatu. To stake our claim. To light those home fires. To stop the Pākehā taking this, our sacred place, from us. And if we do this, Rua Kēnana promises us, he has been told by God that like the Israelites we are the chosen people. We will be delivered and at last our mana will be healed.
The last thing he talks about is how he came to be chosen as the successor to Te Kooti. How he was told by the angel Gabriel to hīkoi to Maungapōhatu the place of his mother’s people. There, Rua Kēnana tells us, he was shown the black diamond, the guardian stone of our lands. It shone brighter than the sun, and wore Te Kooti’s shawl as a cloak and this was how he knew that this was his covenant with God. Our ancesteress Whaitiri appeared out of the mist and greeted him, welcoming him home to the maunga, followed by Christ who greeted him as a brother. Rua Kēnana says that these things are ngā tohu. That because of them he believes that he is the next prophet and will lead us into salvation and make the land well again.
But. Rua Kēnana says.
But.
He has heard that some of our people will not accept him until he completes the final task of Te Kooti’s prophesy. Now near the end of his hīkoi, travelling from marae to marae to spread his word, he will soon journey to Te Rongopai Marae, the most beautiful of the painted houses us Ringatū made in honour of our first prophet. If the doors of Rongopai are found to be locked against him, then Rua Kēnana says, he will know he is not the chosen one, that another man, another leader is waiting to make himself known.
‘But those doors won’t be barred,’ Rua Kēnana promises us. ‘Because the signs tell me that I am the true prophet.’
