Once Were Pacific: Maori Connections to Oceania

4. Māori–Pasifika Collaborations

· 101 ·· CHAPTER 4 · Māori–Pasifika Collaborations This chapter focuses on three specific collaborations in which a single text has been produced by a group made up of Māori and Pasifika people. Before focusing on more recent texts, it is worth considering a slightly earlier creative alliance. A single archived program for the Takapuna Free Kindergarten’s 1943 fund-raiser provides a quite different view of Auckland-based Pacific performance than that presented by the Pasifika Festival (which is treated in the conclusion of part II) fifty years later. A wartime fund-raiser held at His Majesty’s Theatre in December, the event is billed as a “South Sea Festival,” and the first page of the program provides further detail: By various groups of Islanders now in Auckland, including Samoan , Tongans, Niue Islanders and Hawaiians, supervised by Mrs Eric Sharp; also members of the Ao-te-roa [sic] Maori Club and the Rotorua Concert and Entertainment Party.1 The event takes place in a very different New Zealand. In 1943, although there has been a great deal of Indigenous Pacific mobility,2 the lineup of the Pacific does not yet reflect the range of communities who are yet to arrive and to become nationally visible. New Zealand’s explicit colonial ties with Sāmoa and Niue are represented, as is the close connection with Tonga, but the inclusion of Hawai̒i feels inexplicable. Perhaps there are Hawaiian members of the Auckland community by that time, and perhaps, too, we can take into account the huge rhetorical impact of Pearl Harbor and the Pacific War, which deeply affected New Zealand through the departure of localsoldiersandthearrivalof Americanarmedforces.Thelinkbetweenthe “Islanders” and Māori is, although implied by Māori inclusion in a “South Sea Island Festival,” not clearly articulated. Indeed, the language of “Pacific” 102 MA ORI –PASIFIKA COLLABORATIONS or “Polynesia” is completely absent from the program altogether. Instead, the organizing concept is “South Sea Island” and “Islanders”; individual performancesandperformersareassignedtheirmorespecificidentifications. Theshowisintwoparts,andthepositionof theMāoriperformancesdoes not demonstrate the acknowledgment of difference that has been suggested bytheearlierdistinctionbetween“Islanders”andMāoriperformancegroups. The use of the appropriate vernacular, rather than complete translation, to describe the various performances seems significant. Part I opens with a “Samoa Sila Sila (Welcome Song)” and “The Kava Ceremony,” which is “descri[bed] by our Speaker, Mr C L McFarland,” and these are followed by “Fa’a fia fia,” which includes Samoan and Tongan dances as well as a hula. This is followed by “Fifteen Minutes with Members of the Ao-tea-roa Maori Club” and then another song and more hula. After the interval, a similar lineup continues, although it also includes a bracket titled “Moments of Mirth with Alan McElwain” and finishes with the farewell triplicate of the popular Māori, Samoan, and English songs “Haere Ra,” “Tofa Mai Feleni,” and “God Save the King.” Fund-raising is the major reason for the event, and advertisements are included in the program: Takapuna Beauty Salon, Clendon’s Fruit Store, JL Yarnton, Stuart’s Milk Bar, SH Crowe & Co General Store, and Strand Shoe Store. All these businesses are based in Takapuna. BOVO sandwich spread isalsoadvertised,forwhichpatronsaredirectedtotheirlocalgrocer.Finally, alongside these other advertisements is one for a Grey Lynn business: “For Parties, Dances, etc, see Bertie Mann for his Melodious String Band.” Bertie Mann is a performer in the show itself: “Daisy and Bertie Mann” perform a “Pese (Song)” in the first half, and Bertie is a soloist in the group who plays “Guitars,Ukuleles,etc”toaccompanya“Siva”aswell.TwootherMannsalso perform: Nola presents a hula (with Daisy), and Louisa performs a “Siva.” That Bertie Mann (and “his Melodious String Band”) advertises the availability of his group for performances at private functions is an additional layer of “South Sea Island” performance at the time. We can assume that for Mann, as well as for the Takapuna Free Kindergarten, Pacific performance had a strong economic imperative. Exactly thirty years later in the same city, the demographics and culture of Auckland had shifted immensely, and a one-off newspaper calledRongo was published that responded to the political and social position of Māori and Pasifika communities at the time. The newspaper was coproduced in 1973 MA ORI –PASIFIKA COLLABORATIONS 103 by two activist–educational organizations, Nga Tamatoa and the Polynesian Panthers, and the contributors came from a range of Māori and Pasifika backgrounds. Nesian Mystik is a hip-hop group based in Auckland with...