RADIO WILL TELL THE STORY

Radio Record, 25 March 1938, Page 13

RADIO WILL TELL

THE STORY

BY

JACK

DAW

HONESTLY believe that radio is going to make at least one unique contribution to New Zealand's Centennial of 1940, Curiously, this particular contribution I have in mind is going to be made by the conimercial broadcasting service. And, for fear that thin-skinned people should take this as a veiled sneer at the commercial service, I had better make plain here and now that the fact is curious merely because the commercial stations are admittedly established more for commercial reasons than cultural ones, , Still more curiously, this particular contribution is not going to be made by ourselves-New Zealand's white lords. It is going to be made by the race that the lords of New Zealand outnumbered and overpowered. It will be made by the race who owned the land before we bought it-if one can dignify ten shillings an acre, or a blanket, or a few coloured beads with the name of purchase money. The Maori, through radio, is going to tell his history of New Zealand.

IN itself, this is amazingly interesting. The history of New Zea‘land, up till now, has been told by the white men. They have been honest as far as they could see. But, naturally, they haven’t been able to see as far as into the mind of the Maori. The mind of the Maori, often living uneasily in the present and still hedged areund with the thoughts of his past when he was free to roam the bush and fields and bays unhampered by white men’s laws, has been a secret to white historians. It is, in fact, the one thing that the Maori has been able to keep inviolate and entirely his own, For New Zealaud’s Centennial, the Maori is going to reveal his view of the history of a country that is more his than our own ITN a series of radio playlets-built up on similar , lines to the well-known series "Coronets of Mng-land"-Oriwa Haddon, Maori announcer to 2ZB, will

tell the story of his race from the days of the Polynesian migration in 1340 to 1350, through the days of Tasman and Cook and the first European sett!ement, and the days of the Maori wars, right up to the close of the nineteenth century, That sounds very much history-book style. What writers of other years would have called the "gentle reader" will now be tempted to give a sigh, and go on to some more spicy article in the "Record." The whole thing will now have transported him back to the drearv classroom of his childhood. , Just here is where I take up the challenge. At this point I am going to ask the reader to listen to Oriwa’s history, to the small slice of it that he told me last week, and which I put down here as well as I am able. OU are to imagine us, Oriwa and myself, a "Itecord" . reporter, sitting in an underground room before a desk In the building of the headquarters of the Commercial!

Broadcasting Service, in Wellington. Upstaiis girls are hammering at typewriters that make a ferorious clatter; station officials are thinking up smart ideas to get twentieth century revenue; men and womeu of the general public are staring through the piateglass window that is called the "goldfish bowl" behind which an announcer is talking perhaps of swing music or hats, or something that is good for tired, city-worn nerves. On the yellow varnished desk at which Oriwa sits talking to me there is a blotter, a wire letter ba«ket, and an untidy heap of papers. Somebody’s cap is in a pigeonhole alongside. From outside comes the noise of the city trams. (Cont. on next page )

RADIO WILL TELL THE STORY

BUT all this doesn’t exist for me at the moment,, and it doesn’t exist for Oriwa either. It’s long past our lunch-time, but that doesn’t matter at all. There’s no such thing as time at the moment. We-or rather Oriwa himself-has outwitted Time for the moment. He has slipped back through the best part of a century and he has taken me with him-most willingly. We are in tle world of ghosts, the ghosts of Oriwa's-an-cestors and my grandfathers, and this world is desperately real to him, more real-I imagine-than the present. : At times, Oriwa jumps from his chair aud takes a stride or tivo in the confined space of this cellar room. ‘The fist of one hand crashes down into the palm of the other, His eyes are larger than usual and his bottom lip thrusts itself out. He ig illustrating something. He is illustrating ‘the blow of a mere on a human skull. And this is what he tells me.. Native Guile "W7OU wonder where the Maori got his powder from in ~ his wars against the white man’? So did I, until I heard the old meu talking and laughing about it in the pa. The Maori was very clever. It makes me laugh, too. "Out from the gates of a pa that the white soldiers are attacking comes a Maori, running as hard as he can, while all the other Maoris chase him. He reaches the soldiers. who don’t fire because he is being chased by their enemies. "He lies panting for breath and then begins to speak against these vther Maoris. He tells the white soldiers about them. He becomes very friendly with them. They don’t know that he has arranged with these other Maoris to fire over his head when they were chasing him. "This Maori joins the white soldiers. He is a great fighter. They see him go into battle with them and they see him kill the other Maoris. , . "He knows very well which ones to kill. What does a slave matter more or less? "TINHE white soldiers are impressed. They say he is a ferocious fighter against the Maoris. Later on he takes his turn as sentry for them. "At night the pakehas bivouac. They go to sleep, first ‘stacking their rifles, butts on the ground, barrels together, and under each lot of rifles they put a barrel of gunpowder. "The Maori is on sentry-go. He marches up and down the line of the rifles with his musket on his shoulder. He hears a weka cry, and he answers it softly. "As he marches past a barrel of gunpowder he gives it a push with his foot and it goes rolling down the hill. "Ags he marches past a second barrel he gives this a push with his foot, and it slides down the hill. ' "But the third barrel makes a great noise as it rolls down the hill, and the soldiers stir, so the Maori, thinking like lightning, fires his musket in the air to drown the noise of the barrel, and as he fires he cries out, ‘Who coma dere? "Tt is very funny. There is an old Maori chant that you can hear in some places to-day, and it’s got those words in them-Who coma dere?-English words in a Maori song." : ‘ They made a Maori song about it, and they sang it in the pas. This is the sort of thing that Oriwa’s Centennial history will tell listeners. It is the story from the Maori’s point of view. There . are men whom Oriwa has known who remembered incidents Jike these. They would talk over them among themselves, laughing about them, and recalling them. . "THE Maori was a grand soldier, but he was not only fear‘Tess in battle, he was crafty, too. You have to be crafty in war. _ When the white men have crafty leaders and. sol-. _ diers on their side, like Lawrence of: Arabia, they .be- — come heroes-in our history. When they are on the other side they just become plain villains. It’s just the odd way we have of looking at things from _ our point of view. That is the quaint thing about history. So much depends ou which side is telling it.

And this is one reason why these radio playlets are going to he so fascinating. We are going to see the writing on the other pages of our history that so far have not yet been read. BEFORE the white men came, Oriwa told me, the wars of the Maori had two sources. They:summed it up themselves in the words, "wahine mete whenua," "the women and the land." Then the white men came to take the land for Britain under Captain Cook. Oriwa will tell that episode in his playlets. Ship In The East HE paints a word-picture of the ship-coming down from the east in the early morning, dipping and swaying on the ocean, with sail full bellied. The ship moves slowly forward. The scene shoots to the top of the foremast, where Young Nick, the first to see New Zealand ‘from the ship, is watching for land. It shows the sailors watching the flotsam and jetsam over the rails. . There ig the cry of "Land-ho!" and Cook is pictured looking at the land through the glass and discussing the Maoris he can see on the hill. A canoe puts off from the shore and, keeping its distance, circles the ship and then withdraws. NHI ship moves forward, and a boat manned by white sailors brings Cook to shore. He comes up the beach, making friendly advances, but the Maoris go back to the bush again. . Some sailors are left to guard the boat as Cook goes inland. , One of the Maoris-"he is a big man," says Oriwa, "he ig what you call the aggressive type, and I have his name, it is remembered in an old Maori chant"’-runs down ‘to the boat to club the sailors on guard. A shot rings out and he falls. (Continued on page 39.)

Radio Tells Story. —

ao ™~ ‘ (Continued from page 14). Other Maoris run in to pick up the body of the warrior. They lift the body to carry it away. They see a curious little round hole. in the body and warm blood drops on their hands. They look at the blood .and are terrified. Dropping the body of the warrior they make off, ‘ Civilisation has arrived-and its guns! ine _ A¥TER the coming. of the white man, _ the Maori found just one source of war, instead of two. The number of the white men’s ships that called inereased. The Maori found that it was not-the flax and the timber that the white man wanted; it was not what the land produced, but the land itself. And when in fear he saw the steady encroachment of the white man and the absorption of the land, the Maori began to take a new ery for battle. It was "whenua," the land, with him now. ° The wahines had been forgotten. This was the real cause of the Maori wars, said Oriwa; this lay behind what is called the Maori rebellion in Taranaki; this was the deep-rooted thought that lay behind the semi-mystic, semiconjuror’s doctrine of the Hau-hau creed that spurred the warriors on to battle in Taranaki. EN did not count. The land was more valuable now to the Maori than life. He felt he had been robbed of his birthright. Better the loss of life than the loss of the land. The warriors made a new battleery: "Ko te whenua mo mua te tangata mo muri." The land comes first, the men last. ; It was a fight doomed to failure from the first, but it was heroic while it lasted. And here again the Maori used all his craft and guile. RIWA is sceptical, I think, that the leaders of the Hau-hau rebellion ‘really imagined they had a charm against gunshot, but they told their followers no rifle could kill them. So when they led their followers into action and the first volley of the pakehas was fired over their heads in warning, they were quick to make the most of it. "You see," they said, turning swiftly to the warriors behind them, "we are unharmed. The white men’s bullets eannot touch us." And turned again to lead their charges to death followed by warriors who thought the gods were now fighting on their side. [tf has not been easy, trying to give a thumbnail sketch of this dramatic vision of Oriwa and his Maoris. With the Maori, the tone of the voice itself is almost half the drama, and I haven’t been. able to give the sound of Oriwa’s voice as it rose and fell, and stopped short and became subtle, and played such tricks on my mind that the 20th century office furniture and paraphernalia gaye place: to tangled undergrowth and rata trees, and instead of a noise of a tram you heard

a twig snap under the bare foot of a Maori warrior, Listeners will get that for themselves when they hear the story told over the air, UT there is just one other point that must be told. Oriwa has an idea. He is going to try to get the descendants, both Maori and pakeha, of the actual chief characters in these episodes, to take part in these plays, as far as he can. And that, it seems to me, is an idea that no white man and only a Maori, would have thought of. Because the Maori remembers his ancestors always. Already the old Maoris are interested in this project. Tonga Awi-

kau, chief of the Ngatimanui tribe, a man of ripe years whose voice is perhaps the oldest native yoice ever to be heard over the air, has already. begun training his people to assist in the work, and others among the Maoris:are following suit.