Authenticating Mäori Physicality: Translations of ‘Games’ and ‘Pastimes’ by Early Travellers and Missionaries to New Zealand

Abstract

This paper theorizes how knowledge of indigenous tribal epistemologies was made ‘knowable’ through Enlightenment rationalism in an early colonial context. Specifically, the paper determines how and what knowledge of Mäori tribal physical activities was interpreted and authenticated through early travellers' tales and missionaries’ accounts in New Zealand. The central thesis argues that what was established as authentic and truthful aligned with Enlightenment rationalism, while those Mäori physical practices incomprehensible to Western understandings were deemed inauthentic and, consequently, were obscured and/or discarded. Throughout, the article theorizes the translation of knowledge into meaningful Western discourses and how these translations came to be crystallized in the colonial imagination.

Notes

 [1] Mäori is a generic word that initially meant ‘normal’ but has come to incorrectly represent the tribal based indigenous peoples of the Pacific Islands, now called New Zealand. Mason Durie has this to say about being Mäori: ‘Before European contact, the word Mäori simply meant normal or usual. There was no concept of a Mäori identity in the sense of cultural or even national similarities. … The original inhabitants of New Zealand did not refer to themselves as Mäori; rather they were Rangitäne or Ngäti Apa or Tühoe or any of forty or more tribes': Durie, Te Mana, Te Käwanatanga, 53.

 [2] I intentionally use the word ‘tribal’ here because prior to colonization the formation of a pan-Mäori national identity was previously irrelevant. That is, prior to around 1840 (the year when New Zealand's founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, was signed) there was no concept of a homogenized Mäori culture. A unified culture, as such, could have only been a creation of the Päkehä imagination. That is, Mäori only came to think of themselves as ‘Mäori’ through the Päkehä gaze. Here, I recognize the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in relation to the genesis of the concept of Mäori because it was the first time that Päkehä attempted to convene a unified ‘Mäori’ voice.

 [3] Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 60.

 [4] In Mäori culture, genealogy or whakapapa is inherently linked to spirituality because Mäori oral history provides genealogical ties to the gods.

 [5] Mäui Tikitiki-o-Taranga (commonly referred to as ‘Mäui’) is the most renowned (in legend) of the semi-divine Mäori ancestors for his feats, such as fishing up the North Island of New Zealand, which is still known as ‘Te Ika-a-Mäui’ (i.e. the fish of Mäui).

 [6] Mount Taranaki is a well-known North Island landmark found in the province of Taranaki.

 [7] Te Arawa is a North Island tribe located in the province now known as ‘Bay of Plenty’.

 [8] Translated from Best, Games and Pastimes of the Maori (2nd edn), 63–7.

 [9] Ibid., 161.

[10] Ibid., 157.

[11] Ibid., 51–2.

[12] Ibid., 131.

[13] Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 5.

[14] Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, 165.

[15] Yate, An Account of New Zealand, 112–13.

[16] Ibid., 113.

[17] Thomson, The Story of New Zealand, 197.

[18] Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 8–9.

[19] Mangan, The Imperial Curriculum, 10.

[20] Thomas, In Oceania, 16.

[21] Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, 15–16.

[22] Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 79.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Binney, ‘Introduction’, v.

[25] Cited in Best, Games and Pastimes of the Maori, 15.

[26] Wilkes, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, 175.

[27] Brown, New Zealand and Its Aborigines, cited in Best, Games and Pastimes of the Maori, 15.

[28] Refers to the celebrations commemorating the signing of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi between Mäori and Päkehä. The Treaty of Waitangi is recognized as New Zealand's founding document.

[29] Sutton-Smith, ‘The Meeting of Maori and European Cultures’, 319.

[30] Ibid.

[31] In recent years, the term Päkehä has been controversialized by right-wing misinterpretations of the word and its origins as having derogatory meanings such as ‘evil spirit’, ‘pig’ and ‘flea.’ Such misrepresentations aim to distance dominant white New Zealand culture from falling under Mäori definition, and to augment the cultural divide between Mäori and Päkehä. In actuality, the word ‘Päkehä’ stems from pre-colonial words such as ‘pakepakehä’ and ‘päkehakeha’ (and the like) common to certain parts of the Pacific, referring to ‘Imaginary beings resembling men, with fair skins’ (Williams, Dictionary of the Maori Language, 252). From this largely innocuous scopic understanding of the word and its transference onto the white colonists invading New Zealand, the word ‘Päkehä’ has evolved throughout colonization to commonly refer to ‘New Zealander of European descent’ (Moorfield, Te Aka, 108), forming the inverse cultural construction of the word ‘Mäori’ in the binary relationship that has defined New Zealand bi-ethnic relations for 160-plus years.

[32] Sutton-Smith, ‘The Meeting of Maori and European Cultures’, 319.

[33] Miles, Racism, 21.

[34] Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 82.

[35] Kuper, The Invention of Primitive Society.

[36] Thomson, The Story of New Zealand, 81–4.

[37] Loughnan, New Zealand: Notes on Its Geography, Statistics, Land System, Scenery, Sport, and the Maori Race, 106.

[38] Brown, New Zealand and Its Aborigines, cited in Best, Games and Pastimes of the Maori (2nd edn), 181.

[39] Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, 167.

[40] Ibid., 170.

[41] Ibid., 165.

[42] Yate, An Account of New Zealand, 38.

[43] Wade, A Journey in the Northern Island of New Zealand, 157.

[44] Wakefield, Results of the New Zealand Inquiry, cited in Best, Games and Pastimes of the Maori, 120.

[45] Maning, Old New Zealand, 44.

[46] Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, 28–9.

[47] Edgar, ‘Haka’, cited in Best, Games and Pastimes of the Maori (2nd edn), 86.

[48] Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, 86–7.

[49] Earle, A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence, 62.

[50] Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 49.

[51] See Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race, 62–8.

[52] Skinner, ‘Surf-riding by Canoe’, 35–7.

[53] Angas, Savage Life and Scenes, cited in Best, Games and Pastimes of the Maori (2nd edn), 16.

[54] Mills, Discourses of Difference, 89.

[55] McGregor and McMath, ‘Leisure’.

[56] Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, 15–16.

[57] Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, 79.

[58] The Mäori population had radically decreased from pre-colonial estimates of as high as 500,000 to a population of just 56,000 in 1857–8. In 1846, Dr Isaac Featherston, a surgeon who was later to become a member of the House of Representatives, declared that ‘a barbarous and coloured race must inevitably die out by mere contact with the civilized white; our business therefore and all we can do is to smooth the pillow of the dying Maori race’ (Durie, Whaiora, 29–30). Rapid colonization followed the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. By 1874 Mäori had become ‘only fourteen per cent, a minority in their own country’ (Durie, Te Mana, Te Käwanatanga, 53).

[59] Salmond, ‘The Study of Traditional Maori Society’, 310.

[60] Best, Games and Pastimes of the Maori (2nd edn), 35.

[61] Ibid., 36.

[62] Deed, Maori Games, 8.

[63] Armstrong, Games and Dances of the Maori People, 32.

[64] Armstrong, Maori Games and Haka, 31.

[65] Philip Smithells's papers, unpublished MSS, Hocken Library, Dunedin, New Zealand.

[66] For further reading see Hokowhitu, ‘Tackling Mäori Masculinity', and Hokowhitu, ‘Maori Physicality'.

[67] For further reading on the re-authentication of ‘traditional’ Mäori culture in film, see Hokowhitu, ‘Understanding Whangara: Whale Rider as Simulacrum.’