Once Were Pacific: Maori Connections to Oceania

1. Māori People in Pacific Spaces

· 11 ·· CHAPTER 1 · Māori People in Pacific Spaces Aotearoa is clearly apartof thegeographicalregionof thePacific, andMāoriarePolynesianandthereforeculturallyconnectedwithother Polynesiansand,beyondthat,thewholePacific.Butwheredoesconnection takeplace?Whatdoesitlooklike?Howisitarticulated?Whatistherelationshipbetweenindividualandcollectiveconnections ?OnwhatbasisareMāori present in a Pacific space? Taking three specific but disparate instances of MāoripeopleinPacificspacesprovidesanopportunitytoconsidertherange of waysinwhichMāoriconnectwiththePacific.First,thischapterconsiders the singular figure of Te Rangihiroa, a Māori anthropologist whose career took him to Hawai̒i in 1927 to take up a position at the Bishop Museum, the major Pacific research institution that he directed for the last two decades of his life. Te Rangihiroa was a man and scholar of the Pacific, and his mobility was enhanced by his Pacificness when he was in the anthropological or scholarly field but was limited by an external imposition of understandings about his Pacificness when he unsuccessfully applied for U.S. citizenship. Moving closer to the present, but still with a focus on Hawai̒i, the chapter considers the Māori village installation at the Polynesian Cultural Centre (PCC), a Mormon-run Polynesian visitor attraction on O̒ahu. Balancing long-standing ties between Māori and other Polynesian Mormons, on one hand, and texts produced for a predominantly non-Pacific tourist audience, on the other, Māori presence at the PCC sits at the intersection of agency, self-representation, performance, and domination. Finally, the presence of Māori texts in Pacific anthologies gestures toward the place of politics and cultural negotiation in the production of literary products. While literary collections have had a unique role in the production of Pacific writing, the stakes of selection and inclusion have been central to their development. Language is central to the policing of borders, either by compulsory repatriation or unsteady admission in each of these examples. In each of these 12 MA ORI PEOPLE IN PACIFIC PLACES situations,MāoriareneitheruncomplicatedlyPacificnorwhollynotPacific. Each case emphasizes, instead, that Māori articulations of the Pacific are deeply rooted in the specific: inflected by contextual factors of time, place, history, and intention. Te Rangihiroa: A Ma -ori Man in the Pacific Te Rangihiroa, also known as Sir Peter Buck, was a member of the group of Māorischolar–politiciansprominentintheearlytwentiethcentury.1 His parents,Ngarongo-ki-tuaandWilliamHenryBuck,wereNgātiMutungaand Irish, respectively. His grandmother Kapuakore was an important feature of his childhood whose impact resonated throughout his life. Educated at Te Aute, a significant Māori boys school at the time (his 1897 speech about ParihakatotheTeAuteStudents’Associationwashisfirstpublication),2 Te Rangihiroastudiedmedicineinuniversityandthenenjoyedcareersinpublic service, parliamentary politics, and the military (World War I), before he eventuallymovedintothefieldof anthropology.Hespentthelasttwodecades of his life based in Hawai̒i, and although he was engaged in administrative work, heading the Bishop Museum for much of that time, and some teaching at Yale University and the University of Hawai̒i, his long-standing and impressive legacy is his formidable commitment to research (after his 1910 thesis, he published numerous books, chapters, and articles3 ). Despite his impressive career inHawai̒i and beyond, in New Zealand, we tend to focus onhisdomesticexploits.Totakeafairlycrassexample,theWikipediaentry forTeRangihiroadescribesonlyhisNewZealand–basedactivities,andthe description of his career (and life) peters out after his 1920s public service work in the area of public health.4 Therefore, in at least one version of the popular imaginary, the last thirty years of his life, and indeed his last career, with all its Pacific as well as scholarly dimensions, remain obscured.5 At the sametime,his1949book TheComingoftheMaori6 isoftenacknowledgedas a (or even the) foundational text for the discipline of Māori studies. Reflecting on Te Rangihiroa’s connection with the Pacific and, in particular ,hisconnectionwithotherPacificpeopleenablesustoimagineboth him and the region a little differently. We might notice, for example, his activities in the then-colonies of the Cook Islands and Niue while he was basedthereasamedicalofficer.7 Thiscouldinturnforegroundtheoccasion of hisvisitto Sāmoa,duringwhichhewasquicklyidentifiedasthe Tulafale (“talkingchief”)of avisitinggroupof anthropologists.Hisabilitytospeak MA ORI PEOPLE IN PACIFIC PLACES 13 aPolynesianlanguageproducedakindof culturalandsocialfluencyaswell. Indeed,hisPolynesiannessattimestrumpedhisscholarlypositionfromthe perspective of the communities he visited. In Sāmoa, he attended an ‘ava ceremony that was intended to welcome the group of visiting foreigners. AccordingtoCondliffe,however,onrecognizingTeRangihiroanotmerely as a scholar but as a relative, the hosts quickly changed the type of ‘ava they would serve: instead of offering the variety of ‘ava that is used to welcome new visitors, they offered ‘ava uso, which is reserved for reunion between long-lostrelatives.8 Thisact,securelylocatedwithinSamoanepistemologies andhostingpractices,reframedtheentireencounter:TeRangihiroabecame thecentralmemberof thevisitingparty,andothersweremerelyperipheral. Finally, we might notice that Te Rangihiroa’s last public outing in 1951 was to chant at the dedication of a...