Deconstructing the Pakeha Gaze: Whale Rider

Hi Tipua,

this is a fascinating article. I think that there's a lot of truth in what you say, but I think that you perhaps miss a part of the picture by avoiding discussing at any length the fact that the author of Whale Rider is of course not Pakeha at all but Ngati Porou-Ngati Konohi. I think that Ihimaera is trying to straddle very diferent audiences with his writing and that all too often he is pushed either into simplifying myths like the one you criticise, or else into an excess of detail.

A couple of years back I saw 'Woman Far Walking', Ihimaera's a play about the life of a Maori woman who was born on the day of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi and who was still alive in 2000.

The play was tremendously strained by the effort of trying to bring a mass of historical experiences into the 'canon' -into the consciousness of Europeans and perhaps some urban Maori unfamiliar with Maori history, and especially the histories of Ngati Porou and the Ringatu movement.

At almost every point in the play, longish explanation was necessary to make the action and imagery in the narrative comprehensible to part of the audience. It was only when the narrative reached the great Maori protest movement of the 70s and 80s that the author could relax - everyone got the references to Bastion Pt etc.

Ihimaera also had to deal with a sizeable contingent of Maori from the East Coast (I think it was the premiere or something). These were not the normal 'literary types' and they had, I believe, very different particular expectations of the play. For them, it had a functional and documentary value. Ihimaera had to try to acquaint these people with the conventions of Pakeha-dominated mainstream New Zealand literary tradition.

Was Ihimaera's play aesthetically successful? In my opinion it was not. But his job is a hell of a lot tougher than that of most Pakeha writers. It seems that in Whale Rider and The Matriach Ihimaera turns to myth to try to 'symbolise' real history and bridge the gap between two cultures. The trouble, as you say, is that real Maori historical experience loses out.

Surely Ihimaera's use of myth can be related to the tendency to market Maori culture in simplistic and frequent 'exotic' ways, in order to satisfy the prejudices of tourists and urban liberal Pakeha?

Travelling up the East Coast a couple of months ago I was struck by the way that tiny depressed towns with no post office let alone bank boasted art galleries. The Te Puia Springs Hotel now has a small art gallery near its entrance, which shows these New Age-ish paintings of archetypal or 'exotic' scenes ('Dawn Over Mt Hikurangi' etc etc) and also boasts taiaha with 'genuine tui feathers' (or at least that's what the old American tourists about to part with $1500 were being told!).

To my mind all this is just a recreation of the cultural imperialism of the original Rotorua School of Arts, which ignored post-contact history and only produced symbolic mythological scenes, and which sold to tourists. The depressing thing is that nowadays it is Maori petty capitalists who are trading on this stuff. Perhaps you need to look at the growth of class divisions within Maori and the dollar-driven adaption of some iwi leaders involved in the tourism business to imperialist stereotypes of Maori life?

Of course I agree with you completely that it is imperialism and NZ capitalism that are responsible for the problems of Maori, even when some of these problems are exacerbated by some Maori. It's the responsibility of ordinary Pakeha to oppose the treatment of Maori by the NZ ruling class and by imperialism, and learning about the reality of Maori history has to be a part of this.

I'm encouraged by the recent decision of two more unions with many Pakeha members - the Service and Food Workers Union and the Manufacturing and Construction Union - to join the National Distribution Union in backing the Maori struggle over the S and F.

it was a very good moviewith a lot of good context.

go whale rider!!