Kupu whakaata

Tu Tangata, Issue 20, 1 October 1984, Page 38

Kupu whakaata

He Kuri Ko nga korero na Leon raua ko Fran Hun ia Ko nga whakaahua na Dick Frizzell Nga Manu I Runga I Te Rakau Na Bill Gillies Nga whakaahua na Murray Grimsdale

Both published by the Department of Educaion Both purapura books come from Te Roopu Mahipukapukakura and are written in maori. He Kuri is the more simple of the two with few words per page and large colourful illustrations. The kuri in particular shows all the traits of a mischievious puppy and goes from being a kuri pai to a kuri kakariki. An ideal learning book for the kohanga reo.

Nga Manu is a more advanced book, again with few words and a repeated sentence pattern. From ‘kotahi te manu i runga i te rakau’, to ‘tekau nga manu i runga i te rakau’. And the manu are colourfully illustrated to grab the reader’s attention. Nga Manu makes learning to count a happy experience and Te Roopu Mahipukapukakura are to be congratulated on such fine presentation. No kohanga reo or primary school should be without these excellent pukapuka. Kia ora koutou.

Through the Eye of the Thorn

Author: Robert de Roo Publisher: Tauranga Moana Press Simon and his maori friend. Hone went back to the Star, the place was huming and the bar was packed. “They having a two minute silence for the dead Black Power guy?" Simon asked.... This is a story that is real, a New Zealand ‘warts and all’ slice of life. I

found it a great book, especially as it’s the first of three novels examining the theme of New Zealand culture.

Simon and Hoani, the two central characters. I’ve met many times, but its great to see them in this novel, still firing on all cylinders. Simon, the jaded pakeha thrill-seeker who’s got his overseas experience and finds nowhere to put it back home.

Hoani, the maori academic who’s gone after the success of the european world but finds it rather empty.

Robert de Roo, no doubt writing from self-experience, has placed Simon as a P.E.P. worker on a gang mainly composed of maori.

It’s hard watching a pakeha, who thinks he’s fitted for better things, clearing scrub and marking time with a MoW work gang.

And Simon’s not particularly good at getting along with maori workers he doesn’t understand. He just thinks they’re lazy.

After all he’s working on the great New Zealand novel, full of promise and vision, at least that's how he feels in the good times.

But Hoani, he does present problems. Fresh from university, he returns home to Tauranga, disillusioned with his own progress. He’s making big efforts to pay attention to his maori ancestry, his language, his whakapapa and his people. It’s the latter that give him trouble, no not the phyical kind, but the mental anguish as he watches them destroying themselves with booze, frustration, alienation and violence.

Hoani has plans, battle plans for his people, that start with educating them to what’s happening to them. How if they united in their maoriness, they could rise above the endless gang violence and second class citizenship in their own country.

That’s enough of the scene-setting to give the potential reader an idea of the

theme. It’s ambitious and scary, and credit must go to Robert de Roo for taking us to the edge.

I’ll finish with a parting shot from Simon to Hoani.

The occasion is when Hoani invites Simon to a real maori public bar to see what he feels comfortable with.

“You are more different to them than you are to me,” says Simon.

Feathers and Fibre, a survey of traditional and contemporary maori craft.

Author: Mick Pendergrast Publisher: Penguin Books This book puts on record the Feathers and Fibre Exhibition mounted by the Rotorua Art Gallery last year. Photographs are by John Martin and Alex Wilson.

The exhibition was mounted to bring together developments in a maori art form, that of fibre craft, so that artists could have a reference tool and so that the public could see a maori craft usually overshadowed by mahi whakairo (carving).

The intention was to include a representative slice of fibre craft from many tribal areas, but unfortunately the exhibition was biased towards the Eastern Bay of Plenty East Cape area where the writer had many personal contacts which increased the availability of material. However Mick Pendergrast makes the point that it did not have a significant effect on the exhibition because local variations in style have largely disappeared as population movements and inter-tribal contact have led to a pooling of ideas, and development of fashions on a national scale. The photographs, both colour and black and white, superbly show the majestic artistry, practicality, and maori dimension of everything from the humble kete to the korowai.

Unusual ones (to the reviewer) were a bag for extracting the oil from titoki berries: a rohe kaka a netting bag in which food for a pet kaka was kept, collected in 1899; and a hao maomao a net for catching maomao fish.

A lot of the works have the artist’s name and when it was made or collected. Also the tribe is recorded.

Many traditional designs from the pataka to the poutama are featured. One beautiful design is the koeaea (whitebait) swimming upstream, plaited in the torua whakatakoto, by Waikohai Kauta nee Rogers, (Ngai Tai) Torere, born 1911.

It's this sort of painstaking attention to detail, not only in the photographs, but also in the researched text that makes Feathers and Fibre a must buy for those lovers of maori design.