Kupu whakaata/Reviews

Tu Tangata, Issue 23, 1 April 1985, Page 33

Kupu whakaata/Reviews

WORKING TOGETHER Author: L.A. Edgeley and W.F. McDonald. Publisher: Government Printer, $9.95. At last a plain spoken book that aims to clear up misunderstandings between races and cultures in the workplace. The book is the development of the work the Vocational Training Council has been doing for some years in this field. Lesley Edgeley and her fellow writer have really laid it on the line for the people the book’s aimed at, managers and supervisors. Commonsense is uppermost in their advice to bosses. “They know English all right but the don’t speak it.” A commonly held stereotype that fails to understand the pressure of learning a new language along with “they speak their own language all the time, if I was in their country I’d speak their language.” This latter remark is heard a lot from English speakers who can’t understand being in a linguistic minority. As Working Together observes, “quite plainly English speakers are very poor at attempting to speak the local language when in another country. How many New Zealand pakehas speak another language?” Obviously the two writers have spent some time in the workplace and are sensitive to minority feelings about communication between staff. Some delightful comments pop up in this book. “One company I was with needed to lay off workers and laid off Samoans

no Raros or Maoris.” (This from a Samoan). And the sobering, “when they see their own people they just go and leave us and talk away in their own lingo.” (This from a Cook Islander). As well as explaining some of the reasons for the stereotyped view cultures and races have about themselves, Working Together offers practical advice in the form of training programmes that employers can institute. From the suggestion that an ethnic ‘anchor person’ be used by employers to make new employees feel welcome to the understanding of what constitutes ‘family’ for bereavement leave, Working Together can be used as a valuable tool. PW.

THE PREHISTORY OF NEW ZEALAND Author: Janet Davidson. Publisher: Longman Paul, $3 9.95 While New Zealand looks for a pacific identity, and Maori struggle to assert their own, some pakeha New Zealanders continue to chronicle the time before the pakeha came to these shores. Such is Janet Davidson’s Prehistory of New Zealand. It brings together a range of topics from subsistence economics through material culture to conflict and communication. She dashes theories that successive migrations caused changes from East Polynesian culture to Maori culture, and that successful adaptation of kumara horticulture triggered the de-

velopment of Classic Maori culture. Davidson is also wary of oral tradition being used with archaeology to establish what happened, except in regional studies where each have their ‘proper frame of reference’. Tribal migrations also don’t have much validity in explaining archaeological data says the author. What Davidson is on about may seem like soulless research, especially to Maori but she makes no bones about the science of prehistory being important in sheding light on the ancestors of the modern Maori. She states that the proper study of the prehistory of New Zealand should not be confined to the concerns of pre-sent-day Maori because that undervalues the early East Polynesian migrants who she claims have been forgotten. Just where she gets this from is not clear, and it’s a pity such a scholarly publication suffers from this and other ommissions in its conclusions. And just what are the conclusions? Well Davidson comes up with some new periods of prehistory. The Settlement period is from first settlement to A.D. 1200, a time in which East Polynesian culture was established in small scattered settlements throughout most of New Zealand. From A.D. 1200 to 1500 was the period of Expansion and Rapid Change. During this time a population explosion occured which triggered pa warfare and internal migration to less populated areas. Here Davidson makes another unsubstantiated claim that the ‘quarrelsome and competitive nature of this Polynesian society’ greatly helped this result. In this period also she says Maori carving was established along with later nineteenth century tribal traditions that explained tribal links. A.D. 1500 to A.D. 1769 was the Traditional period where change was slower and Maori culture, as we now know it, flourished. Most Maori oral traditions came from this time, although the author admits that some extend back beyond A.D. 1500. Davidson admits to gaps in the information but ends on an appealing note, for the Maori people to cooperate more fully with researchers who would want to examine skeletal remains, and look for artefacts, particularly wood carvings. P.W.

Kupu whakaata/Reviews

TAI WHATI, MAORI LAND COURT Publisher: Department of Maori Affairs/Government Printer Tai Whati, Judicial Decisions Affecting Maoris and Maori Land 1958 a comprehensive attempt to demystify the workings and rulings of the Maori Land Court, a body originally set up after the Treaty of Waitangi to facilitate or make more simple the sale of Maori owned land. From such auspicious beginnings, the Maori Land Court has been at the center of bitter wrangles since that time from disenfranchised owners to owners prevented from selling their land. Tai Whati, which takes its name from the pepeha, ‘ka whakarereke te nuku e nga tai whati’, ‘each wave breaking on the shore alters the landscape slightly’, is a continuation of “Important Maori Land Judgements” published in 1879. In 1960, Chief Judge Morison compiled a series of judgements of the Maori Land Court up to 1958 and Tai Whati takes up from that time including decisions of other courts affecting Maori people and Maori land. Increased work for the courts in these areas has also come from the Planning Tribunal in respect of Maori land. Tai Whati is aimed at a specialist group making its business to know about Maori land and as such includes case summaries of decisions only. It’s intended to issue annual supplements.