Ever the Land: A People, A Place, Their Building (review)

Ever the Land: A People, A Place, Their Building celebrates the Tūhoetribe, the Māori people who live in a heavily forested corner of the North Island of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The Tūhoe filed compensation claims with the Waitangi Commission in 2007 and subsequently decided to allocate nz$15 million for the construction of a large tribal center at the valley entrance of their contested, tragic land. Designed by Ivan Mercep, the center was meant to adhere with the Living Building Challenge, whose stringent standards of sustainability require careful attention to material sourcing and a great deal of compliance documentation. Called Te Uru Tamatua, it was to be the first such building in Aotearoa. In a visually compelling way, Ever the Land tracks the building process by embedding it in the context of the dialogue surrounding it. That dialogue, on which the filmmaker unobtrusively dotes, tells a thought-provoking story.

Through voices and actions, we learn of the contested relationship between Tūhoe green ideology and tribal solidarity. This view is asserted in lovely scenes in which children are put to bed by mothers with stories about ancestor-spirits who hate trash, bricks are handmade for the new building, and, in shots interspersed throughout the narrative, fog rises over thick forests that cover their mountainsides. But some Tūhoe voices complain. It is to the great credit of the young director, Sarah Grohnert, that scenes are included in which men rather forcibly object to money being allocated for a tribal purpose rather than to help buy individuals houses to live in. The Tūhoe are poor, the movie makes clear, and live day to day in subsistence pursuits, sending children to school as best they can. The implication would be that, for dissenters, the tribal center is nothing but a vain extravagance.

Use is also made of voiceovers from the radio announcing the project, the death of the building’s architect, and the pending settlement from the New Zealand government. The latter agreement is indeed signed in 2013 in Parliament. The tribe is compensated and receives more control over the Urewera National Park on its land. The state apologizes for a past of violence, indignities, and land theft.

Brick by brick, board by board, solar panel by solar panel, Tūhoe and Pākehā laborers and managers erect the building. Images of the fog, the forest, trucks dumping cement, rooms stuffed with scaffolding, and so forth appear like a kind of call-and-response chorus throughout the movie. Meanwhile, impromptu meetings of orange-vested men and women in hard hats take place on the job site. Building products imported from Europe are banned, as are red-list chemicals. In more formal settings, Tūhoe discuss the pending settlement with the Crown and are kept in the loop about the roject. Will it be earthquake proof? How will it contribute to a sustainable future for the tribe?

The movie more or less culminates with the opening ceremony for the building. An intense haka (ritual dance) is performed, after which a large throng of onlookers make their way across a parking lot. A couple of children cut a braided ribbon made of leaves and enter the edifice for a first look at its cavernous rooms, display cases for artifacts of tribal history, and recycling bins.

The narrative begins and ends with a scene of the same rural setting, as if to suggest that the new building has not had any demonstrative impact on the relatively remote and basic quality of life of the Tūhoe. At first, we see through a window, perhaps of a car in which the filmmakers arrive, a somewhat distant image of a modest home at the foot of a forested mountainside. A grassy field that is fenced in several ways, perhaps as...