“Watery sounds like ocean waves rushed … raging hot, like the ngawha down in the back yard.”
Review of Tahuri, A Limited Edition 2017, by Ngahuia te Awekotuku
When I want to show my students just how much is possible in short prose, I assign them sections of Tahuri, by Ngahuia te Awekotuku. In the space of a few pages, te Awekotuku creates whole, living, breathing worlds, with characters that speak to us and spaces that become three dimensional. Every word is necessary and nothing is left out. This is not Once Were Warriors, this is always-have-been and continue-to-be powerful Māori women of mana. While te Awekotuku doesn’t shy away from depicting violence, the galaxies of Māori life she so deftly weaves in this collection demand that the reader witness how much more there is to being and remaining Māori in today’s world.
The collection was originally published in 1989, with short segments published previously in anthologies. The stories collected in Tahuri depict the experiences of a takatāpui young woman around the time of te Awekotuku’s adolescence in Rotorua in the 1950s and 1960s. As te Awekotuku mentions in the foreword, “Tahuri may be a relevant character in the 21st century, so I decided to introduce her, with a few extras, to a new generation. She is still out there, and still with us; in the city, in the pa, on the rugby field or the haka stage.” And so she is, in these astonishing, heartbreaking, visceral stories.
To enter the world of Tahuri is to enter a solidly Māori world, so I offer my own whakapapa as necessary protocol.
Kia ora tātkou.
Ko Te Moana Nui a Kiwa te moana.
Ko Grizzly Peak to maunga.
Ko Strawberry Creek te awa.
Ko Lys / Robertson te iwi.
Ko Northbrae te marae.
Ko Lynley toku ingoa.
Tēnā koutou katoa.
On my father’s side I am the descendant of English and Scottish Pākehā settlers in Aotearoa New Zealand. My father was born and raised in the sheep farming town of Dannevirke, in the Manawatu-Wanganui district of the Tararua region of Te Ika a Māui, North Island. The traditional guardians of this area, the area known in Māori as Tāmaki Nui a Rua, are the Rangitāne and Ngāti Kahungunu iwi. I acknowledge these Māori iwi as the proper guardians of the land and am committed to supporting Māori iwi in their ongoing efforts toward tino rangatiratanga and the perpetuation of Kaupapa Māori. As the current situation at Ihumātao makes clear, there is much work to be done in restoring the rights and lands which have been taken from Māori iwi.
I greatly admire the work of Ngahui te Awekotuku in LGBTQAI advocacy and the resurgence of the takatāpui identity, as well as her relentless work in Māori traditions including textiles, carving, women’s traditions of moko facial tattoos, and Māori practices of death and dying. Other major works by te Awekotuku include Ruahine: Mythic Women and her collection of speeches and essays, Mana Wahine Maori.
To enter the world of Tahuri is to enter a space of Māoritanga, a space in which a young takāpui woman navigates her identity, grounded in the love of her kuia, the ngāwhā, and the Māori world of the pā and urban spaces of Rotorua. It is to enter a space of kōrero and karanga, a space where waiata and haka exceed Western notions of the All Blacks haka to take on their deeper cultural meanings as forms of song and dance that perpetuate Māori life. To enter the world of Tahuri is to enter Aotearoa through a Māori lens, where the Māori world is central and the Pākehā gaze is turned back on itself.
When I introduce my students to the possibilities of generating complete worlds in two pages or less, the vantage points I bring first are the stories “Sunday Drive,” and “Red Jersey,” with their vast complexities and keen insights on interpersonal relationships. Te Awekotuku moves seamlessly between the perspectives of a variety of characters through a third person omnicient narratorial voice. Even the characters we don’t see carry a noted presence in these stories. The telling resembles a carefully crafted session of talking story with a beloved and highly gifted elder who knows exactly how to draw us in, when to pause, and when to keep us guessing. There is pleasure in the telling and in the listening, and in the connecting of the clues left along the way like the strands that weave a tight basket together.
Te Awekotuku discusses the unique trajectory of Māori feminism in her collected speeches and essays, Mana Wahine Maori: Selected Writings on Maori Women’s Art, Culture and Politics. She asserts, “for a Maori woman coming into a sense of political consciousness, being un-Maori is unthinkable.” Her views on feminism are necessarily grounded in a Māori world and worldview. She writes about the specificity of Māori women’s feminism, “Maori women are being put down for being female. Recognizing that, and wanting to work through it, is becoming feminist. In a Maori way. There is no contradiction; for that is the message in the phrase, ‘Mana Wahine Maori’ — reclaiming and celebrating what we have been, and what we will become. It is not a re-action to males, and their violence against us; it is a pro-action, a determining of ourselves as Maori women, with authenticity and grace.” These concepts infuse her storytelling in Tahuri as well, where Māori feminism is embodied and grounded in the pā, the ngāwhā, and Te Reo Māori.
In “Sunday Drive” and “Red Jersey,” the strength of the main characters’ ties to their Māori identities require that engagement with feminism be grounded in these ties. While the term feminism derives from Western and Pākehā concepts of gender, Te Awekotuku disputes the idea that feminism can only be an imported and foreign pākehā concept. She states, “feminism is what we make it … how we define it for ourselves, in terms of our own oppression as women. … in the last two centuries Maori women have lost, or been deprived of, economic, social, political and spiritual power; and this loss, this erosion of power — or mana — or authority, invites a feminist analysis, or feminist view, of what has happened.” In the two stories from Tahuri, the results of this oppression and loss directly impact how each character navigates relationships with people and spaces.
While Tahuri concerns Māori feminism and Māori spaces, the characters also navigate the complications of life with Pākehā people and the inequities that necessarily follow from colonization and Pākehā settlement in vast areas of Aotearoa. The stories “Sunday Drive” and “Red Jersey” delve into the complexities of relationships, from the most intimate to the most casual, from relationships between people to familial relationships between people and land. Each character in “Sunday Drive” and “Red Jersey” navigates spaces of conflict in Māori-Pākehā relations and social norms of dating. Each story concerns one character who negotiates a taboo relationship, and her immediate female family members and social group.
“Sunday Drive” relates the story of three Māori women who go on a drive to look at a wealthy Pākehā district on the edge of town. Aunt Jessie has use of the car for the day and her sister, Pipiroa, agrees to go on a drive, with the condition that Pipiroa’s daughter Tahuri come along. The story takes place inside the family’s old Prefect car, with only the two sisters and Tahuri present. Tahuri witnesses the landscape and the conversation between her mother and aunt.
The story is told in the third person and presents Tahuri’s perspective. For example, Tahuri notes “Aunt Jessie’s manicured fingers curled around the jiggling gearstick, her nails all shiney with varnish. She was a nurse and a natural polish was allowed, but red wasn’t, she had informed her niece one day.” Aunt Jessie has a strong sense of social rules and fashion. Tahuri also sees that the Pākehā district has very little tin roofing, which is likely prominent in the Māori areas, but a significant presence of “the healing steam. Ngawha,” which serves as a feature of the region. Listening to the sisters’ conversation, Tahuri hears, “‘They call it thermal here, dear,’ wise Jessie informed her sister. ‘Some of them even have what is known as a native bush,’ she continued, pleased with her knowing so much. ‘Full of Māori trees specially. Natives, they call them. What do you think of that?’” Pipiroa remarks cynically, “Maori trees but no Maori people.” Here, we see that all three of them know the Māori term for the ngāwhā, and that Aunt Jessie is also well-versed in Pākehā terms and social practices.
Inequalities in relationships between Māori and Pākehā people have been discussed and analyzed in the anthology Sexuality & The Stories of Indigenous People, edited by Jessica Hutchings and Clive Aspin. In the chapter by takatāpui author and public health specialist Marewa Glover, “Eroticising Equality, Coming to Power,” Glover cites her experience in relationships with Pākehā women in the late 1980s and early 1990s, noting that Pākehā women in relationships with Māori women
“got access and often acceptance into our whānau, a phenomenon … not reciprocated by Pākehā families. Also the structural racism did have negative effects on me. … In relationships with Pākehā women, it was their cultural ways, language, food and social culture that were practised. They were less likely to support me getting a moko, for instance.”
This observation reveals that while Māori women in relationships with Pākehā women have been facing social pressure to know Pākehā culture and social norms, Pākehā women are not under a similar obligation to learn Māori culture. In “Sunday Drive,” this trend applies in a broad sense to social relationships between Māori and Pākehā people.
The drive, and the story, dead-end for a moment in a cul-de-sac, revealing Aunt Jessie’s motivation for the outing. The cul-de-sac faces a house divided from the street by multiple barriers of tall hedges, a metal gate engulfed by more hedges, an extensive front lawn, and curtains stiff as petticoats blocking the front windows. As Tahuri gazes at a lithe cat ornament perched on the hood of a sleek car, “She hear[s] her mother’s voice. ‘Jaguar. He’s got a bloody Jaguar. That’s why you brought us here.’ There was chilling anger beneath her words. And there was pain roiling beneath Auntie’s sniffles.” Whether or not Tahuri knows the full implications of the situation, she picks up the sisters’ body language and emotional landscape.
Pipiroa goes on, “Him a doctor with his Jaguar car and big flash house and lawyer wife and fancy bloody ideas. He’s using you, using you, that pakeha. Can’t you see that? And now us coming up here in this clapped out old bomb, looking at the flash pakeha homes, you say.” We know already that Aunt Jessie is a nurse. Now Pipiroa mentions a doctor, filling in the identity of the “he” who owns the jaguar car. While the story never names the man, Aunt Jessie has a social and /or romantic relationship with a married colleague or potentially her boss from work.
As we know from Tahuri and from takatāpui author Marewa Glover, the women in the Prefect car are forced to be aware of Pākehā social norms and practices as well as Māori ones. As a nurse, Aunt Jessie has professional knowledge similar to the doctor’s, and further has professional and social knowledge specific to nurses. Related phenomena come to the fore in Sexuality & The Stories of Indigenous People, in a chapter by co-editor and public health researcher Jessica Hutchings, who asserts, “it is imperative that we identify and uproot the pervasive discrimination in our society towards Māori women and call for reorientation and redirection with regard to research, policy and societal values.” Tahuri learns from her mother and aunt’s conversation, and from their body language, the impact of this discrimination. Social and institutional barriers wreak havoc on Aunt Jessie’s personal and professional life. The old Prefect car constrains the socially conscious and carefully made up Aunt Jessie.
While Pipiroa’s cynicism towards Pākehā society is warranted, Aunt Jessie negotiates different social and professional spheres than Pipiroa, and thus has to learn for herself where the boundaries lie. For her part, “Jessie sniffed and neatly tucked the hankie under the turned-over cuff of her cardigan. She started the car. ‘I’m learning,’ she muttered.” Pipiroa and Aunt Jessie demonstrate striking self-control in the conversation that Tahuri observes. Throughout the drive, the two women face brutal reminders of Pākehā appropriation of land, erasure of Māori knowledge and culture, and constant barriers against socially and professionally mobile and qualified Māori women. Their quiet anger and tears model the strength and endurance of Māori women for Tahuri, mana wahine Māori which is internally driven and resists discrimination.
Connecting the stories “Sunday Drive” and “Red Jersey,” we can see continued themes of social and dating norms, hierarchies of power, and the role of mana wahine Māori. One theme that “Sunday Drive” alludes to, which is then further developed in “Red Jersey,” involves violence as a feature of the boundaries between various groups in the social hierarchy. In “Sunday Drive,” we don’t see immediate physical violence, but during the course of the drive, as the two sisters look out the car windows, we do have the ominous sounding comment, “The two women murmured to each other in low, quiet voices, almost like a prayer. Almost as if they were scared the pakehas in their flash houses might hear them, and come out, and say something rude or unfriendly about them, about their car.” This echoes the physical violence inherent in the establishment and maintenance of social hierarchies. The design of the houses and the neighborhood project a set of barriers between the public road and the occupants of the houses, which includes the renaming and appropriation of local landscape features, such as ngāwhā, explicitly associated with Māori culture and language.
“Red Jersey” evolves in a spiraling narrative centered on a failed social meeting between Tahuri and an older schoolmate, Teresa Taylor. Teresa and her sister Camilla have recently moved to town from Auckland, and their parents represent intermarriage — their mother is Māori and their father Pākehā. Tahuri seems to be older in this story than in “Sunday Drive.” An earlier edition of Tahuri gave the main character’s name as Whero, which can be synonymous with the color red. In this story, Tahuri’s cousin, Hina, is aware of Tahuri’s interest in her schoolmate Teresa, and arranges for the two young women to meet. However, she neglects to mention to Teresa that Tahuri is female, and Teresa assumes she is being set up with a young man.
We first meet Tahuri in this story as she returns to the safety of the bathhouse ngāwhā. She has just returned after a violent encounter with Teresa, Teresa’s sister Camilla, and Camilla’s Pākehā friend Sue, and “watery sounds like ocean waves rushed through [Tahuri’s] ears; hot, raging hot, like the ngawha down in the back yard.” Here Tahuri is identified with the ngāwhā — even her pain is tied to this Māori landscape feature. In this story, Tahuri and Teresa embody multiple positions fragmented by social rifts. Their expectations for each other reveal the social frustrations of each woman, and how each expects the other to embody solutions to these issues.
At the opening of the story Tahuri expresses negative feelings toward the other women, calling them “those two quarter-caste cunts. And their dumbo pakeha mate;” however, as the story progresses, we see that Tahuri had great hopes for Teresa. Even after the violence, Tahuri looks for a motive, “And then she knew. She knew why Teresa was so wild.” While homophobia was one motivation for the attack, the text also suggests that other issues are at stake.
When Teresa first approaches Tahuri, violently grabbing Tahuri’s hand, “Tahuri curled up tight, all hard, cut off like she did when her stepfather was on her.” Later, when Tahuri discusses Teresa’s family, she offers, “Their mother was small and scared-looking and never ever went to the pa or anything; and their father was this big brawny pakeha with a red face and rusty whiskers,” whose eyes “were a funny colour when they weren’t scrunched up like a pig’s.” These details, and Tahuri’s assertion that she knows why Teresa is so wild, suggest that each young woman faces violence and abuse within the family. While Tahuri faces homophobia, both Teresa and Tahuri face social barriers as a result of other people’s sexism, racism, classism, and xenophobia.
“Red Jersey” continues the symbolism of red from “Sunday Drive,” and also picks up the thread of the petticoat as an indicator of social divisions. While in “Sunday Drive,” the imposing window curtains of the doctor’s house are likened to “frilly scallops,” or “petticoats,” in an earlier edition, in this story Teresa’s petticoats, in disarray from her fall, and blood-spattered from her injuries, indicate that social barriers between her and Tahuri have been breached, though not in the way that either of them had hoped.
In this story Teresa’s hopes, desires, and social preferences are brought to the fore in a way which would not be accessible to Tahuri. From Tahuri’s perspective, “Teresa … didn’t seem to need friends — she was self contained.” Tahuri says that Teresa’s father’s eyes are “lime green and glittery, like the swift summer currents of the river. Teresa’s eyes were sort of the same; but pretty. Like her shimmery bracelets.” When Teresa falls on the ground during the attack, Tahuri notes Camilla’s dismay at “tough, gorgeous Teresa” having lost that round of the altercation.
Tahuri’s hopes for her meeting with Teresa include, “Maybe they’d go and have a milkshake at Petits and Tahuri could ask her about life in the Big Smoke.” While it is clear from the story that Tahuri is lesbian, takatāpui, and / or queer (these are overlapping groups), her expectations of Teresa seem quite mild in this regard. She likes that Teresa is whiter than she is, and that Teresa comes from Auckland, and she assumes that Teresa can give her access to worlds she associates with these traits.
Teresa also has expectations for Tahuri. When Tahuri’s cousin Hina sets up the meeting between them, omitting the information that Tahuri is a girl, we see, “Intrigued, Teresa looked slowly over Hina. Noted her flawless golden skin and laughing dark eyes and wild red wavy hair and bright white toothpaste smile. Really fine-looking. Really Maori-looking.” We are presented with Teresa’s perspective — there is no way that Tahuri can know this information. The narration continues,
“Secretly, Teresa liked that. So tall too. And quite slim. If the cousin was anything like her… Teresa Taylor perked up. She need a distraction from this boring new school and smelly little town where the Maoris still lived in their pas, and the pakehas were all snooty snobs, except for that oversized Sue.”
Again we see Teresa’s view. In this case, smelly refers to the sulfur from the ngāwhā — even the air of the town presents barriers for her. Teresa then plans to “go home and get changed, do herself up. And check this Huri out. Huri. Turning. Nice name for a Maori boy who might just look like Hina.” She decides to take Camilla and Sue, “just in case he was a creep; then she could laugh in his face and prance off with the girls.” Teresa’s viewpoint includes knowledge of social hierarchies and barriers, and reveals the mismatch between Tahuri’s and Teresa’s expectations.
Teresa’s attitudes towards Māori people are not at all what Tahuri expects. Teresa finds Hina attractive, to the point of wishing Hina was a boy so that it would be socially acceptable to date her. Teresa doesn’t want to talk about Auckland, she wants to be accepted by Māori people, not excluded from the pā as well as pākehā society. She brings Sue and Camilla along for moral support, and likely wants to show off for her sister and Sue. Tahuri assumed wrongly that Teresa’s social isolation is voluntary — Teresa faces exclusion from both Māori and Pākehā students at school.
Teresa is under the misapprehension that she can impress Sue and Camilla by dating a Māori boy, while Camilla is described as “dark enough for it to matter, but still not really Maori dark … for Camilla, it looked important to have rich pakeha friends in their new school; so she did.” Teresa’s expectations for her sister and Sue are no more accurate than her expectations for Tahuri. Teresa wants to interact with Māori people, and homophobia is only one of her reasons for being disappointed and attacking Tahuri. Non-coincidentally, the extensive homophobia of the surrounding Pākehā society at the time was well-known. While Teresa initiates the violence, and uses homophobic language, these may well be influenced by Pākehā social norms. Each woman brings unrealistic expectations to the meeting rather than waiting to find out what the other actually has to offer.
The two stories foreground the spaces created and inhabited by female characters. In “Sunday Drive,” the three women travel in the closed space of the old Prefect car, viewing tangible evidence of Pākehā appropriation and colonization of Māori-specific landscape features, and Pākehā terms to mask ignorance of Māori concepts such as ngawha. “Red Jersey” takes place mainly in the bathhouse where Tahuri recovers from the attack, and in the Travel Centre where the attack occurs. Tahuri associates strongly with the pā and Māori spaces, while Teresa and Camilla are linked to the city space of Auckland. In “Red Jersey,” locations serve as metaphorical as well as physical spaces — the Travel Centre suggests ties to Auckland and hosts the hopes and disappointments of Tahuri and Teresa. The bathhouse embodies Tahuri’s retreat to pā, ngāwhā, and Māori family.
Teresa finds no welcome in either the Pākehā society and spaces of the town, or the Māori spaces and the pā. This motivates her to meet Tahuri in the first place — to find a point of access to the Māori spaces. Similarly, Aunt Jessie in “Sunday Drive” also navigates between Māori and Pākehā spaces, and finds herself not quite belonging to either. In these stories the bathhouse and the ngāwhā serve as spaces of women’s and takatāpui sources of empowerment. We see this in Tahuri’s association with the ngāwhā, and her retreat to the bathhouse, as well as the ngāwhā as metaphor for Tahuri’s condition after the failed meeting with Teresa.
Conflict occurs between Teresa and Tahuri occurs because Teresa can’t offer Tahuri access to Auckland and a space between Māori and Pākehā culture, and Tahuri can’t offer the link Teresa seeks to the local Māori culture. Each young woman is confronted with the unrealistic nature of her expectations rather than finding the partner she seeks to expand her social horizons. Tahuri expects Teresa to be worldly and socially savvy, and instead is confronted with provinciality and violence. In return, Tahuri could offer ties to the Māori community, however, Teresa deals with multiple social constraints that prohibit a relationship with Tahuri.
When Teresa expresses her disappointment with anger and violence, she receives violence in return as Tahuri defends herself. The Travel Centre, rather than opening a space for a productive relationship, dead-ends like the cul-de-sac in “Sunday Drive.” In the latter, we see that Aunt Jessie is not allowed to wear red nail polish and chooses not to cause a scene at the house of the doctor, with its petticoat window curtains, while in “Red Jersey” the color red marks the physical contact between Teresa and Tahuri — Teresa’s nails, the blood-stained tulle of the ruined petticoats, and Tahuri’s retreat to the bathhouse, with the ngāwhā running in her ears.
“For Kuia’s Sake”
“She rested her neck on the edge of the bath, concrete and cracked, where little furrows of green moss sucked in the steam.” — Ngahuia te Awekotuku, “Red Jersey”
The Māori women and wāhine takatāpui in the stories of Tahuri inhabit a world in which they navigate between Māori and Pākehā spaces, urban and rural environments, and industrial and living landscapes. They negotiate between the world of the pā and life in towns and cities. In Ngahuia te Awekotuku’s nonfiction work as well as her fictional work, this negotiation involves relationships with physical and social spaces, ties to tīpuna, particularly kuia figures, and embodying strength and mana wāhine as identity and in the face of oppression.
Tahuri has a kuia who knits her clothing and is associated with traditional arts and craft practices. Te Awekotuku’s other artistic projects embody traditions including women’s moko practices, waka carving, Māori ways of death, grief, and dying; and kōrero centered on mana wahine Māori. These traditions ground individuals in tradition and enable them to embody and wear the threads that connect past, present, and future. As te Awekotuku’s works attest to the guidance and leadership of her kuia, te Awekotuku and her creations continue to serve as kuia to the takatāpui and Māori LGBTQI communities in Aotearoa and abroad.
“Watery sounds like ocean waves rushed … raging hot, like the ngawha down in the back yard.” was originally published in Anomaly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.