Sunday, May 15, 2005

The Whale Rider

Finally over the weekend I could read an essential book I wanted to read for some time: Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider (1987). Thanks to the fascinating film version of 2002 we all know the story of lovely Paikea and her tribe’s destiny. My children loved the film and unanimously agreed to come to Aotearoa. Looking back after reading the original, the film is extremely faithful and successful in its re-presenting the ambience and plot-line of the original. This is a rare feat. Still the novel is well worth devoting your time even if you have seen the film three times. (Well, I have seen it only once, but I will, again, and again.)

The narrator is Kahu (Paikea)’s uncle. He has a brief but very important period (two year’s work on a plantation run by his white friend whom he met in Australia) spent in Papua New Guinea. Only after leaving his home-island in search of the outside world, he comes to realize what it is to be a Maori. Peregrination imposes coming into consciousness. This PNG episode I think is not touched in the film, but impressive for the novel’s reader.

“However, our journey was possibly more difficult because it had to be undertaken within European terms of acceptability. We were a minority and much of our progress was dependent on European goodwill. And there was no doubt that in New Zealand, just as in Papua New Guinea, our nationalism was also galvanizing the people to become one Maori nation.” (70)

Nationalism is almost always a counter-nationalism against the invading forces, that is, Europe.

The book’s international edition after the success of the film seems to have gone through a little rewriting. According to Matthew, whom I met last week in the class on translation taught by my friend Mike Hanne, the novel now has considerably more Maori words than its initial form. So be it.

One mesmerizing name I learned from the book is that of Antarctica. In Maori it is called “Te Wai Ora o te Ao.” The Well of the World. What did the Polynesian navigators think when they first came across the fleet of icebergs in the extreme-southern sea, under the veil of aurora australis? They immediately knew that all these masses of ice was a way for the planet to reserve the purest water.