Reading room
Sally Brandel reviews a unique record of life in New Zealand
The biographical dictionary comes with prose, a dull CV promise shuffled in head and shoulder photos, and a notable word riff (in other words, those left behind should feel so bad about it. Why not). Family history is a single-lens story that puts some families in the limelight and shuffles others toward their wings as soon as they become polite.
Thanks to Helen Brown and Michael J. Stevens, editors of the Ngāi Tahu Archive Team. Tāngata Ngāi Tahu: People of Ngāi TahuThe second volume of a continuous series depicting the lives of descendants of, Ngāi Tahu, Ngāti Māmoe, Waitaha (pre-Ngāi Tahu and all tribes of Ngāti Māmoe) paves the way for avoiding resume rotation. Use only the broadest rationale to include. The 50 entries in this volume not only pay attention to genealogical information, but are also fascinating and heartwarming for personal details.
See the opening sentence of Joe Kaletai’s entry. “William Joseph Kaletai (Joe) was tall, walked straight and looked straight at the world.” Kaletai was a fan of Nagai Tough Langitira, an orator, a blues guitarist, and Val Dunican. .. The word is engraved on his tombstone. As a teenager, he was hit by a train and lost his leg and spent several years on a farm in Teurewela. When he returned to the Banks Peninsula in the 1950s, he learned the history of Tewai Pounam, worked at the Little River post office, wrote unpublished children’s stories, and set up a Lehua boys hostel for Maori trade trainees. Started to run and coordinate the South. Matua Whāngai Māori Island Branch of the Foster Care Program. He was a strong man, Brown wrote. He loved country music and all blacks. A perfectionist with a deep voice and laughter “like the roar of a lion”.
Or the story details of William John Matengaroa (Te Ao Hou) Nutira. Called Ben by his grandmother in honor of London’s Big Ben, he was one of eleven children who grew up during the Great Depression and lived near Leeston. Life and sustainability dodge local rangers to harvest eels, collect puha and cressons, collect swan eggs, balance with the gentle back of horse Donald, and to immature apples on nearby farms. It revolved around reaching.
These short biographies, drawn from family manuscripts, historical stories, investigator notes, newspaper archives, and conversations about what must have been countless teas, are from Ota Christchurch, South Island. , And forms part of an evolving tribal family album that spreads across the country. Some slow down by opening statements that try to quickly get important details such as date of birth and place of birth, direct family, etc., but beyond that speed bump, the community and hardgrafts, langatilla, community Tells a vivid story of leaders, Marae supporters, politicians, activists, athletes, scholars, fishermen, farmers, pruners, gold miners, mutton birders, gardeners, tag-o-war champions, fuzzy heroes, teachers, Broadcasters, Pounam sculptors, weavers, musicians, and the entire family were built around communities, beliefs, sports, Mahinga, and political activities.
Some themes are well known, including politicians, fashion icons, and fencing champion Tini Whetu Marama Tirikatene-Sullivan. Soldiers, orators, scholars, and community leaders Ropata Wahawa Hasterling. Leader, plaintiff of Te Keleme, practitioner of Mahinga Kai, Hennale Rakihia Tau. Lawyer and rugby legend Thomas Langiwahia Ellison has recorded 43 tries on the 1888-89 UK and Australia tours by the New Zealand native football team, writing: Rugby football art..
Others are not so much. In the preface to Volume 1 of 2017, Tā Tipene O’Regan, chair of Te Pae Kōrako of the Ngāi Tahu Archive Advisory Board, explained that hunter and gather Tieke (Jack) Pukurākau lived alone near his mouth. .. Waitaki died in 1925 as a bachelor and without children. Pukla Kau “slipped down, the world has moved forward,” he writes, but such people “deserve a place in our memory as much as a more impressive character roaming our history.” “.
In this book, I read the story of Elihapetti Patahi, who was told in Wharenui in 1863 by the gold explorer William Martin on the banks of the Taramakau River on the west coast. She had a sealer, a whaler, trader Edwin Palmer and two children, and she later saved his life when their ship was wrecked on the way to Sydney. By 1844 she had been estranged from her children. Palmer claimed that his “native wife” had died. After marrying a former whaler on the Banks Peninsula, she headed to the west coast with a former slave of Te Rauparaha, where they lived in a squeaky, thatched-roof little house. I cooked it. In the evening she carved Pounam. When she finished her story, Martin wrote, “Patahi held her head in her hand and sat quietly on her floor.”
Pātahi is one of the 28 Manawahine featured in this book and is a modification of the first book, “Majority-Male Cast”. Work on this volume began in 2018, the 125th anniversary of women’s suffrage in New Zealand. Brown writes that the story of the battle for a women’s franchise is primarily that of Pakeha. “Most Wahine Maori in the 1890s lost land and resources.” But the weight given to women in this book is a kind of nod to that anniversary.
These entries include Airini Ngā Roimata Gopas, a seasoned musician and broadcaster who “paved the way for Maori medium-sized broadcasts.” Here is shown in a portrait of her husband and respected artist Rudi Gopas.
And Master Weaver’s Flora Meileili was named after the daughter of a landlady whose parents rented a house in Dunedin. After moving from Moeraki to a small settlement in Wairarapa, she raised eight children, cooked on an outdoor fire, participated in a dance to raise money for local Maori soldiers, and every Thursday at Fuzzy. Played (including the “Underground” competition in Petone) and worked as a director at Masterton’s Rondo Zip Factory, where he learned, taught, promoted and exhibited the art of weaving while traveling the country.
And the Evangelist, temperance activist, activist, and soprano soloist Heramelie Katherine Manro. Munro was a member of the Salvation Army Maori Party who visited Australia in a packed house in the late 1890s. She was one of two female vice presidents of the new Young Maori Party (YMP). She is a member of the first women’s synod of the Anglican Church in New Zealand. She is one of the few women named in the official court records of the Maori Land Court in assisting Te Keleme.
Munro’s story is illustrated by elaborate Victorian photographs of the Salvation Army concert party of 1898-99. Use of official photographs throughout the book – uniformed soldiers, wedding portraits, sports clubs, a team of West Coast ax soldiers competing in Tasmania in 1960, the first General Assembly of the Maori Women’s Welfare League in 1951, Ngāi Tahi. Third Reading Claim Resolution Bill-Set with a more intimate image of people at work-Digging potatoes, harvesting Titi, tailing Koura, making Mokihi (light rafts), weaving, entertainment, Raweis , “Unique rituals, strange music, Maori solemn incantations”.
In summary, the stories and images in this book are dotted with stunning photographs of the islands, harbors and coves of Tewai Pounam, providing a unique and highly readable record of community and political life. In the history of the tribe, its precedents are Wharenui, Fakatauki, Fakapapa’s readings, figures carved inside the dim interior of Wharenui (censored by early missionaries or taken to local museums), framed photographs. Includes: Brown on the cover of both volumes exhibits 12 framed reproductions reminiscent of the walls of the Ngaituff family, Lunanga Hall, and Wharenui, and a photo of Tipna “watches over the activities of their descendants.” “.
This 200-year-old version of Ngāi Tahuwhānui captures its proximity, inclusive yet warm people and places, as if infused with the sounds of bowls and gentle laughter that prompted these shared stories. Make a collection of. Brown suggests not only tribal storytelling, but also victorious insights into the story of Aotearoa in New Zealand.
Tāngata Ngāi Tahu: People of Ngāi TahuEdited by Helen Brown and Michael J. Stevens (Bridget Williams Books, $ 49.99), can be purchased at bookstores nationwide.