A Language Older Than Words - Derrick Jensen [82]
I will not be attending the event billed "An Evening to Honor the Heroes Among Us."
"Not everything the Maori have done has been beautiful," Bruce Stewart said, "and I can't let my love for my own people blind me to that. Before the Maori arrived, there were other groups who lived here, called the Maoriori and the Patipiahiti. These groups were extreme pacifists, and very evolved in their thinking. It is said that whenever any scuffle broke out among these people, at the first sign of bloodshed all fighting must cease. The Maori then came, and slaughtered these earlier, more peaceful people. We need to not only cherish and maintain what is best from our Maori culture, but we also need to face the parts we do not find pleasant. And we need to see our way to re-evolve a culture as beautiful and advanced as the one once here."
Jeannette looked at him closely, seemed to study his features. There was a long silence, then she asked, "What would you wish to save?"
Bruce said, "It frightens me that being Maori is becoming a matter of wearing greasepaint and singing action songs for competitions. It hurt me to learn that computers are now used to judge singing contests, and it disturbs me that dances once held in circles are now held in rows, with people facing each other like in combat. I'd like to see the circle come back, and the drum, and I'd like for people to once again dance for their own spiritual well-being, rather than for competition.
"Still, because the culture is hard to annihilate altogether, some good things remain, such as the familyness and the maraes. I'm especially glad that people are starting to get back to the concept of nonownership of the whenua."
As was true for so much of my time speaking with Maoris, I got lost in the vocabulary. I raised my eyebrows.
He saw me, stopped, then said, "The English word would be earth. But English, which is very exacting when it comes to legal deals and dollars, is imprecise when it comes to things like earth. In English, earth can be called soil, which has connotations of being unclean, as in 'The clothes are soiled.' And it can be called dirt, which of course has similar connotations. That could never happen in Maori.
" Whenua also means placenta, and so is associated with female energy. That caused problems when the Christian missionaries came. The Maori recognize two types of energy, the tapu, or male energy, and the noa, or female energy. We view these energies as opposites. When the opposites are in balance harmony is reached, called waiora, the two waters. But the missionaries said the tapu was good and the noa was evil.
"My point is that the Maori still have these concepts; we just need to reclaim them, and to live them more. In this way the young give me great hope. They are searching for truth and wanting to live it. It does wonders for mothers, for example, to take their children down to the gardens and speak Maori while they plant their food."
We were back inside now, and Jeannette looked at the walls of the room where we sat, and to the beautiful wood that made up the textured ceiling.
Bruce noticed her look, and said, "This place arose from the need to be sustainable, and not just on the dollar or food levels. Maraes are our art galleries, our museums, our places of history, our universities, our preschools. They are the places where we are buried. They become our whole life.
"People say they don't have the money to build them, but I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that most people don't have the will. This whole place is assembled from the wastes of the city, and is a statement on the use of materials. In the old days they just flattened old buildings with great big donkey-knockers on cranes. I used to