Junctures - The Journal for Thematic Dialogue

Shumaker, Peggy

113
Poem
Shumaker – Polished Table – Junctures, 9, Dec 2007
Peggy Shumaker
Polished Table
When this koa tree stood,
honeycreepers nested among its burls,
hopped and waddled where they wanted 
to go, tightroped along roots
stretched over forest floor.
When this koa tree fell,
mongoose darted nest to nest.
At twilight, stowaway rats
nosed windfall guava,
papaya, passionfruit.
Feral pigs yanked out by the roots
tender fiddleheads, new shoots
of ti, o’hia, maile.
When this koa was milled,
the honeycreeper’s song
echoed – laughter of cousins 
splashing barefoot in ocean,
children long gone now, dressed
in the long sleeves of their lives,
their eyes now and then closing
to let in the song
of winged ones
unnested, gone.
Peggy Shumaker’s newest book of poetry is Blaze, a collaboration with the painter 
Kesler Woodward (Red Hen Press). Her nonfiction book Just Breathe Normally will come 
out in 2007 from the University of Nebraska Press.  She teaches in the MFA Rainier 
Writing Workshop at the Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. 


English

"Polished Table"

Schirato, Tony

To Double Business Bound: Play and the Contemporary Field of Sport

Russell, Khyla

 11
KHYLA RUSSELL
Movements
When asked to consider the writing of this introductory article in relation to the theme
(“movement”) for this issue of Junctures, it seemed that I would have nothing to contribute
from the perspective of a Maori understanding of the theme.
However, as I have pondered this i te ata tu (in the wee small hours of the morning)*, there
has been a ‘movement’ in my thinking. Perhaps there may be something that might make
some small contribution. At this point, I wish to make it quite clear that these thoughts are
mine alone and as the thinker of these thoughts I happen to be ethnically Maori and of Kai
Tahu (southern tribe) whakapapa or genealogical descent (as well as of Polish and Irish
ancestry). Thus, with the understanding by readers of my Maoriness, I should like to roam a
little and take readers along on the roam if they so desire. I add here, that I have a particular
way of expressing myself in the written word that others have since coined a Maori form of
English.  It uses the passive voice as does te reo Maori (Maori language) which is based on
tikaka or Tikanga as our northern iwi (tribes) call it. This is the idea that the importance is
contained in the things being done rather than in the doer of the things.  My world view, it
should be added, is not like that of many people with whom I have either close or distant
relationships or acquaintanceships. It begins with a deliberate movement by me to agree to
conception, and travels and weaves through the lives and deaths of others near and far,
leading ultimately to my own ending which will take place with my full agreement. I do not
mean to suggest that I know the time or the how, only that I am sure that life will require my
agreement to leave as it did to arrive.
A not insignificant part of this life and world view has been attached to tertiary study, which
moved in upon me very late in life if compared to most of those within the world of academia
and within whose working lives, at least, I move. As a consequence of that movement into
study, I took my world view and compared it with what Maori Studies had to offer. I also
brought my world view to Anthropology, Education, Indigenous Studies and History. What I
discovered was that most of those working within these disciplines held fast to their particular
Russell – Movements – Junctures, 4, Jun 2005
* Note to readers: it is the practice of this journal to translate each Maori word – except proper nouns,
e.g. place names, names of tribes, names of people — in the text on its first occurrence; or where
longer explanations are necessary, these will be found in endnotes.
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12 Russell – Movements – Junctures, 4, Jun 2005
world view and jealously guarded their particular theoretical understandings, as well as their
methods and methodologies, epistemologies and pedagogies. And, though they borrowed
terms from outside of their ‘discipline’, the inability for movement across and between these
academic spheres seemed to me to be unnecessarily rigid. When, in my naivety, I stated that
“it was just like so and so”, this was seldom appreciated. It was from this understanding of a
remarkably high number of points of similarity between disciplines as I saw it, that what
stood out for me was Maori Studies, because people there were happy to take something
from another discipline into their own.
I most easily adapted to what these Studies offered along with the multiplicity of theories
espoused within it from across disciplines. In other words, as an academic subject, Maori
Studies seemed more fluid as well as more eclectic in the things it encompassed and
enveloped. I better understood that form of movement than I did the theoretical perspectives
and seeming lack of movement or accommodation of other views within ‘their’ subject matter
as experienced within other disciplines. There seemed within these disciplines a pronounced
preference to holding fast to a more singular approach and a particular way of moving through
the academic journey that students travel along. I often heard the term “holistic” but seldom
saw it in practice.  Of course the term was and continues to be applied to things Maori. Also,
among the experiences I had outside Maori Studies was that there was often criticism of
‘other’ disciplines and ‘their’ lack of ontological correctness.
When I eventually came to the writing of my own doctoral thesis after five years of moving in,
out and through various disciplines as a mature student, I did so from a multi- or cross-
disciplinary perspective. I moved in my research through Geography, History, Anthropology,
Maori Studies, Education and of course Kai Tahu understandings of place and space.
Like our tupuna (or ancestors) I also moved physically and through the written word around
the Pacific. I caught glimpses of our similarities and differences as we of the Pacific have
travelled and settled and return-journeyed and then become who we are today. Today this
form of physical movement is academically named “diaspora”. In all of the discoveries I
encountered about how to move into and through the research journey, the most lasting
impression was of the ‘cultural othering’ of we who are now described as Maori or Polynesian
or Pacific peoples or indigenous peoples; of how we have been researched and reported on
and theorised about and fitted into ‘other’ world views; and of how many of us have been so
moved from our former homeplaces and landscapes and world views that the only way some
of us are now able to recognise our indigenous selves is through the word of a ‘cultural other’
describing who and what they think or thought we are, were, do and did. Such movement has
the ability to move one to tears or to make one marvel at the movement.
I hope your moving through the various contributions within this issue of Junctures creates a
form of movement understanding that is both familiar and new.
No reira ki a koutou ka kaitito o enei tuhika, hei hapai te pukapuka kua tito koutou, he mihi.
Mauri ora ki a tatou katoa.
Khyla Russell is the recently appointed Kaitohutohu at Te Kura Matatini ki Otago
(Senior Manager Maori at Otago Polytechnic) in Dunedin, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Her
PhD is in Anthropology and her thesis focuses on Kai Tahu perceptions of landscape
and its relatedness to identity.
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