THE TROWENNA SEA
WITI IHIMAERA
RAUPO IMPRINT
PENGUIN BOOKS
http://www.penguin.co.nz

“While Te Rauparaha was once our overlord, and Te Atiawa believe they have rights in Heretaunga, it [the land] has always been ours. Our eel weirs are here, our plots for growing early kumara, our bird snares and plantations where we have traditionally picked the berries of the karaka and the kahikatea. The Pakeha thinks the valley has always been empty – but it never was. We are the rightful people with whom they must negotiate.
Te Kaeaea took immediate action. He cut a boundary line across the valley floor at Rotokakahi. To make sure the Government got it, it was a mile in length and forty yards in width.” [TTS,p148] Thus was the land to the north claimed by its rightful owners.

At the heart of Witi Ihimaera’s latest book, launched last week in Tamaki Makaurau, is the debate over land. And the price that tangata whenua have paid when fighting for their rightful land. The narrative tells the tale of those Maori warriors who were punished and deported overseas to the Tasmanian Prison near the Trowenna Sea, home of other displaced indigenous people whose lands were also stolen.

But this is not an isolated narrative. It is deeply symbolic of the misunderstandings and manipulations over land ever since the settlers first arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand, the reason the Confederation of Chiefs sought to protect the whenua in Tai Tokerau and opposed signing Te Tiriti of Waitangi. They saw, already, the results of the land grab and opposed the signing of a Treaty which purported to “protect” the sovereign rights of Maori in the Maori version, which differed in significant ways from the English version.

The quote above summarises superbly the essence of the very different ways of looking at the land. For the NZ Land Company, it was a means of making massive profits from the needs of early settlers. For the British Crown, the treaty was a way they could have a slice of the action, in fact, all the action. For Maori, the land was significant for its history, it ability to nourish and provide for the people, for the berries that fed the birds and the tangata whenua, for the sustaining kumara crops and plantations, and by extension, the foreshore and seabed, for the eels and ika. As Witi Ihimaera points out so powerfully here, pakeha would look at the land and see it as “empty” because it was not developed – by which they meant slashing and burning the trees and producing land for farming or mining the earth for coal or gold. For Maori, the land held the bones of their ancestors. Who could mine or rape Papatuanuku when she held their past stories in her breast?

The heart of this quote lies at the heart of the novel which explores different ways of perceiving land, people, relationships, whanuanatanga, manaakitanga. Yet the author is generous enough to balance the books. He does not see all pakeha or settlers as land grabbers or as selfish. This is where The Trowenna Sea becomes fascinating – when the stories of the warriors who fought for their rightful land intersects with the sometimes innocent settlers, trying to survive in a rough new land. Both are at the whim of the governments and big business – not unlike contemporary times.

The brilliance of The Trowenna Sea is that Witi Ihimaera takes us so deeply into the inner worlds of both the tangata whenua and the settlers and shows so eloquently the deeply complex issues at stake and why people behaved as they did and still do. Sometimes I felt like I was inside a Dicken’s novel or even more relevant to the quality of this text, the sharp wit of Pride and Prejudice. Ihimaera shows an extraordinary ability to get into the minds, hearts, languages and perspectives of entirely different people in different times and we are always, as readers, richly rewarded by the text.

If you imagine from the serious tone of this review that it is a hard historical read, think again. The narrative involves us from the opening in weaving together the very different strands of society that existed at this time and pulls us powerfully into the minds and souls of the protagonists. At the same time, Ihimaera educates his audience, extending the themes in The Rope of Man and the weft woven throughout his books, where we delve into a deeper understanding of the roots of Maori culture and the themes that still have tangata whenua out fighting on the streets for their land and for the foreshore and seabed which once fed and nourished the people.

One need only look at contemporary mainstream media reporting of these events to realise that most people, just like the government then, when Te Kaeaea drew a line in the sand [symbolically] and marked the boundary “to make sure the Government got it”, still do not “get it”, still do not understand our shared histories to the extent that they “get it”.

What Witi Ihimaera achieves in The Trowenna Sea, is an epic historical account of the defining events from the time the first settlers arrived in Aotearoa and before then in Maori korero, that is inclusive, that seeks to understand the deep and complex issues underlying the many strands that now weave the narratives of our modern society. Ihimaera does this in much the same way that Professor Anne Salmond argues, debates and presents historical accounts, such as The Cannibal Dog and in her recent Aphrodite’s Island, as talkstory, bringing to life the narratives and relating them to other cultures, other indigenous peoples of this planet, so that the common themes become transparent through their storytelling.

Because I have been reviewing Ihimaera’s novel at the same time as Salmond’s Aphrodite’s Island, I am struck with the fascinating similarities in their work. Both are university professors. One is a world renowned and respected historian, the other a world renowned and respected novelist. Both bring alive historical narratives by examining both oral and written stories from the past, deepening our understanding by presenting us with multiple perspectives on history, bringing the past into the present and in so doing, weaving together an entirely new kete from that which was previously known to one side or the other alone. In this, both achieve what few other Pacific authors have done in making history come alive with the vivid reconstruction of oral and written accounts so we feel we are really present with the characters. Their dilemmas are ours, their shared histories are ours, their pain and anguish and victories are ours and we feel, after reading these books, we might never quite be the same or think the same again. As Ihimaera states in The Trowenna Sea: “The river is eternal but times are changing.” [96]

The boundaries between history and fiction merge as each writer employs the tools of the other to re-present past histories in the voices of their actors. We come to realise that all histories are written from the perspectives of the writers telling the stories, the narrators have control. Yet what Professors Ihimaera and Salmond have above many of their contemporaries is a deep knowledge of the multiple perspectives that inform our oral and written histories. Ihimaera may invent new characters to symbolise the past histories, but Salmond also uses dramatic effect to enliven her historical characters. We, as peoples of the Pacific and the wider world, are richer for their research and their writing, their abilities to make histories spring from the past into the present with evocative energy and passion.

In The Trowenna Sea, as we move between tales of the first pilgrims and the tangata whenua, we see differences and similarities in the world perspectives of Ismay, a wonderfully feminist figure from the past and Hohepa Te Umuroa, one of those who fought for their lands and were deported and imprisoned by the NZ Government for their efforts. In Gower McKissock’s story, we also see the similarities between the stealing of indigenous land in Aotearoa and Rhodesia. In Kui’s narrative, which shapes the Epilogue, we trace the journey of Hohepa Te Umuroa back home as his bones are so gracefully and beautifully returned to the Whanganui River. This epilogue marks one of the most beautiful narratives in the book which will bring many readers to tears as we welcome home this warrior, who fought for the land, for the tangata whenua, for the future:

“Welcome home, e koro, tama a te awa, child of the river.
Ancestor, you are home now
Moe mai ra, e koro
Be at peace.” [521]

The silent question behind this finale resounds through our souls. How can we be at peace until these wrongs have been righted? How can we co-exist until full reparation of the land, foreshore and seabed is resolved? So long as Hohepa Te Umuroa can still be seen in the narrator’s imagination as a young man “diving from the bluff into the water” or “swimming like a taniwha under the river” [521], then his spirit is alive and so is the symbol of his rebellion, the fight to retain legally the land that was once that of his people. Maori are “tangata whenua”, people of the land. You cannot divorce the land from the people. They go together. Land is not just a commodity as it once was for the NZ Land Company and modern entrepreneurs. It is what nourishes and feeds the hearts, souls, minds and bodies of the people. Manawa, Wairua, Tinana, Hinengaro. Seldom has this been so eloquently, powerfully and richly portrayed as in Witi Ihimaera’s The Trowenna Sea.

The handing over of the sacred tokotoko from Delphina, who rescued it from an auction house, back to the tangata whenua, lays a token of peace with the past. The wind whisks under the tokotoko around the edges of the woven flax mat, on a totally windless day, which moves the witnesses as do the angel wings above, the night herons or spirit birds, who bless the journey home, the returning of the ancestral bones. Within this, lies symbolically, the hope and inspiration for the returning of the land, te whenua, to the people of the land, tangata whenua. The birds are like “a blessing from the past. A blessing for the future.”[520]

While debate, like blood shed over the land, rages through the pages of The Trowenna Sea, so does aroha, love and also forgiveness. The path of the future is laid down by the path of the past. It is clear that peace can reign and resolutions can be reached. As ever, with Witi Ihimaera’s work, there is hope for the future, inspiration that we can carve a stronger path together once justice has been served. Amor omnia vincit. Love conquers all. Whanuaatanga. Manaakitanga. This is the message behind the rebellion and the return of the ancestor, Hohepa Te Umuroa to his river home. Resolution is possible. Love overcomes all.

The Trowenna Sea is perhaps Witi Ihimaera’s most stunning novel yet. It pulls together the weft and warp of many earlier themes in his novels and tells the narrative history of Aotearoa with convincing characters and consummate skill. I predict it will become a world wide best-seller because it is so beautifully written and the themes are relevant globally. It appears, like a rainbow through the clouds, illuminating our pasts and the promise of our futures:
Ko Uenuku tawhana i te rangi: Uenuku, like a bow in the sky.
Let’s hope the Rainbow God gives his blessing for our shared futures, as the hope of The Trowenna Sea inspires in us, marking the way forward like a tokotoko raised up by the wind on a windless day.

[c]  Dr. Cath Koa Dunsford, 2009.

Dr. Cathie Koa Dunsford [Nga Puhi Maori/Hawai’ian & Pakeha ancestry] is author of 22 books in print and translation in USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Germany and Turkey, including the Cowrie eco-novel series featuring strong indigenous wahine toa from the Pacific region http://www.spinifexpress.com.au  She is director of Dunsford Publishing Consultants, which has brought 192 new and award winning Pacific authors into print internationally: http://www.dunsfordpublishing.com Cath Koa Dunsford is recipient of two literary grants from Creative New Zealand Arts Council and was International Woman of the Year in Publishing in 1997. She has taught writing and publishing courses at Auckland University since 1975.  She tours the world performing from the books with traditional Maori waiata and taonga puoro. Contact: (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Please feel free to share this review in any format or forum so long as the author and review source and publication is acknowledged: http://www.apwn.net, http://www.dunsfordpublishing.com