Interview with Witi Ihimaera

Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM4tV4i-vSo

"I’ve always been the same, but it’s the world that’s changed."

Speaker

Witi Ihimaera

How have you changed since you were the first Māori novelist published in the 1970s?

Witi Ihimaera: I’ve always been the same, but it’s the world that’s changed. In the time that I was growing up, the Pākehā in New Zealand didn’t want to know about the Treaty, and didn’t want to know anything about the Māori-Pākehā relationships, except what they could see, and what they wished to see, which was a people who are getting on well together.

So I was trapped in that kind of timewarp where even publishers would not publish work by Māori unless it was shown to be amenable, and unless it was shown to be co-operative. So the third publisher who looked at my first book, Pounamu Pounamu, for instance said, “Well, who will read your book?” And I said that Māori would. And he said, “Well, Māori don’t read books.” So when it came to the publisher who then published my work, what they were more concerned about was that my work translated to a Pākehā audience.

How did you negotiate a Māori-Pākehā world?

Witi Ihimaera:
What was happening was that I was living in two worlds; one world was a world which I really wanted to succeed in, which was the Pākehā world. And at the same time, I would then go home to Waituhi, which was my home village and be aware that actually the people that I came from had a long history of resistance to Pākehā. And they were what we call Ngā Morehu, or the people who were left over from the Ringatū flight, through the country when they were being pursued by Pākehā soldiers, and by the constabulary.

So there I was at Auckland University, and I married Jane, and I was living this life within New Zealand, but always aware that whenever I went home, the old people were still always talking about the Treaty. So the Treaty has always been with me, and the ways in which Māori have attempted to establish for themselves their own rights under the Treaty, often in cases of great desperation, and often in instances of forcible removal from the land; all of that has always been with me.

Like where we are, for instance, here in Tamaki. I’m always conscious whenever I come here that just across the road is Ngāti Whātua, where they were forcibly removed from their homes. They were resettled, and that Auckland owes these people for the generosity of giving them Auckland.

What do you think are the main issues in the two texts, Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Treaty of Waitangi?

Witi Ihimaera: I don’t think that Māori will ever be quiet. I think that from the very, very beginning when the Treaty was in fact was first signed, it began a process of constant negotiation, and re-negotiation over kupu or word. And what every word in the Treaty meant, and what Hobson meant when he came from England.

He was on a trip for four months to get here; he was sick when he arrived. And he didn’t even have a Treaty at the time; he had just a few examples of other treaties that the British had signed. He was faced with a situation where the Roman Catholic Bishop Pompallier on one side, where Williams was on the other side, where even Māori were bickering between themselves about what they wanted to get out of the Treaty.

And very quickly Bishop Williams was the one who actually translated it into Māori within a day. So he made the decision not use what the British called sovereignty, or rangatiratanga. He said no. He would turn it into kawanatanga, governorship, because he knew that the Māori would question the document, and say, “Well, we’ve already got the rangatiratanga of this country, why should we give away our rangatiratanga, our sovereignty too the British?”

How did the Treaty come about?

Witi Ihimaera: Because British law would not recognise Victoria’s rule in New Zealand unless the Confederation of Tribes consented to it. I think that they had interesting interests in mind. The trouble was that Māori at that time had already sold land to settlers, and it all then had to be renegotiated once Victoria and the Crown decided that they would give kawanatanga, but they would allow Māori tikanga the right to rule themselves, and also to acknowledge their taonga. So there’s really interesting questions of law taking place there.

There’s really interesting questions about what the English meant, and what Māori meant. And that particular debate is still going on. But I like what Kawiti said about the Treaty. He said he had a dream, and in that dream he saw pale men coming from across the sea, and they were carrying a parchment, and Māori were going to be putting their mark on it. And then the parchment burst into flames; it was consumed by flames. And the ashes wherever those ashes fell on the land, then that land was also consumed.

So for us a people, I guess that what we need to do is to try to find a new prophecy for the future; a new one that maybe when we do have people who are coming from Alpha Centauri — who want to come to investigate what has happened in New Zealand — discover that even though those ashes have fallen onto the ground, that in fact people today are attempting to make that earth blossom again, and begin to flower.

What do you think is the future of the Treaty?

Witi Ihimaera: It always amazes me that they were all very young. All of those people who were involved in the signing of the Treaty, they were all young. And it always also amazes me that when you think about New Zealand, in fact it was a very courageous document.

The Australians don’t have one, the Canadians don’t have one. So in many ways, we should be thankful that we did have a document that then could become a discourse on the future of New Zealand, for the future of New Zealand, and continue to be discussed and brought into law as it is being done, and has been done. If it hadn’t been for a Treaty, we wouldn’t be able to have a conversation.

What do you think the next generation should know about the Treaty?

Witi Ihimaera: It’s really important that they are aware that the Treaty will always be subject to the judgement of history. So they are the ones who will determine how far that the Treaty will take them and their children. It’s really exciting to know that previously there had been this huge disgruntled attitude towards Māori getting their land back, and yet when you see what Māori have done with their land, in the South Island, you see the renegotiations that are taking place at a very local level, with joint ventures with Pākehā .

You can see Māori getting into hotel management. You can see Māori and Pākehā working on fisheries ventures, on financial ventures, on all kinds of different cooperative economic ways of pushing our country forward. You see all of that and you think, well, if that can happen now then what will happen in the future?

What does the Treaty mean for all New Zealanders, not just Māori and Pākehā?

Witi Ihimaera: Because I actually think of Waitangi as being a bigger thing. It’s almost like a treatise for good justice, and good representative, consensual government. So I can actually see the wonderful things that it says operating in New Zealand also with the way in which we’re treating Pacific Island peoples, treating people from other places, the way in which we’re looking at refugees. That kind of sympathy that is embedded in — and that kind of wish, that kind of dream that is the Treaty, is embedded within what New Zealanders are doing.

We’ve got these two people who came on different types of ships. One came on wonderful waka from Raiatea, another came on these sailing ships from England and Ireland and Wales and Scotland, and then we have the others who are now coming to New Zealand. So all of that is also Waitangi.

What is your final message to young people carrying the Treaty forward today?

Witi Ihimaera: We define ourselves by the stories we tell about ourselves, and that’s my business. It was the business of my elders, my grandmother to tell me those stories, and so it’s my business to tell those stories to my grandchildren, and it will be their business to tell those stories to their grandchildren. And really when you think about it, all of those stories actually were initiated by the debate at Waitangi in 1840, on February 6th.

Dinner with the Cannibal

Witi Ihimaera:
Of course I should have realised, at dinner
That he would be a man of special tastes
His mordant wit and intellect proclaimed him bon vivant
I suppose I was bedazzled by it all
The chandeliers, the red roses like stigmata
Too flattered by the invitation
To notice that the table was laid only for hors d'oeuvres.
It was understood of course that I was privileged to be there
In dinner jacket and black bow tie
The fact that he drank claret should have made me realize
That he liked his meat rare yet, even so
I was taken aback when, all of a sudden
he reached across the table to snap off both my legs
As if I was a crisp brown Māori-bread man
Saying, "You won't need these, will you?"
The snap and wrench of bone from socket
Sounded louder than I expected, but, the agony was slight
(I've always had a high pain threshold)
What alarmed me more was that my silk trousers were forever ruined
"After all," he said, "a landless man may just as well be limbless"
"And just in case," he added, breaking both my arms,
"This will prevent any further throwing of wet black T-shirts
At Her Majesty."
What could I do? I watched him
Suck the marrow of my bones and tear the meat
That once had made me mobile
I was pleased his manners were impeccable
Not one sweet morsel of me dropped ...

Witi Ihimaera: ...This was my stomach, heart and ribs
Not exactly in that order, for I could not see
What he ate first as he leant forward
With silver knife and fork
To slice the cavity of my breast open
Like a crisp golden chicken
My thoughts were entertained in fact by the memory
Of Noel Coward's witticism about Salote
At the Queen's Coronation in 1953
Mister Coward was wise never to visit Tonga
"Ah, there it is," he said, impaling my heart with his fork
And lifting it from its protective cage
I wept to see its pulsing beauty
But thought, this is only to be expected really
From people who eat and drink the body and blood
Of Christ every Sunday
"Best to rid yourself of this, old chap," he added
"Your Māori yearnings are excessive, you agree?"
I wondered if he was right, after all why yearn
For language and culture already taken, why fight it?
Where does Māoritanga fit in this world of X-Box, Captain America and the Avengers?Yet did I protest and fight as he cut through the middle
Of my heart? And, seeing that rich blood flow red as a river
Wondered if there was time to escape this dinner
"Oh no, you don't" he said, as he began dessert
Dishing the sweetmeats of my body onto a crystal plate
My liver, kidneys and tongue
and last of all, my eyes
Smothering them with strawberries and rich cream
by then, without eyes, I could no longer see
The relish of his enjoyment
Cruelly, he left my brain intact to wonder
Why I had ever accepted his invitation to dine
those many years ago.

Listen to 'Dinner with a Cannibal' (4:11 mins)

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