Te Kaharoa (E-Journal)
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That was then, this is now: Māori Performance Research Comes of Age
Get PDFThen. The way I see it, Māori Performance Research as it is coming to be practiced now started in the late 1990s at the University of Canterbury. Te Rita Papesch and I had been thrown together there as its only two female heads of school – she in Māori Studies, I in Theatre and Film Studies. Bonded by gendered necessity in a male-dominated academic environment, our chat ran along the lines of ‘You show me your research, and I’ll show you mine’. She started talking about Kapa Haka, I started talking about Performance Studies, and twenty years on (although we’ve moved on from Canterbury), we’re still talking. After all, not only is the personal political, it is also simultaneously academic and performative. This then is a personal account, my own version of the story of how we have come to be here now in this room discussing a field of study that I will, today, call Māori Performance Research: research focused on Māori performance, performance research from a Māori perspective, performance research by and for Māori academics and artists. These are not the same thing, but an evolving mix of old and new ways both of knowing about performance and of performing that knowledge
Indigeneity and Me
Get PDFThe purpose of this paper is to present my views on the notion of indigeneity, I will undertake this journey utilising the writing technique of self-interview (Dicky, 1984) and reflective writing to philosophically discuss my own definition of indigeneity whereas I will ask myself questions and reflectively respond to these, exploring similarities and differences within relevant literature aligned with the notion of indigeneity and examining my observations in practice regarding the term indigeneity concluding with an exploration of the relevance of my positioning in an Aotearoa New Zealand context and how this classifies my practice as indigenous
Creative Writing 601 Special Edition Preface
Get PDFCreative Writing 601 (soon-to-be-hopefully-renamed) is based in Te Ara Poutama, under the auspices of the Māori Media degree, the only degree of its kind in the world. To fuel, perhaps, an unknown/untapped desire for creative writing, potentially publishing in Te Kaharoa is an opportunity for our year one and two tauira to experience the publication process from conceptualisation and development in the classroom, and sending them out into the world. Excited by the prospect of this, we invited a number of our past tauira to submit work to Te Kaharoa as a means of seeing publication through, and potentially setting a pathway for future tauira to follow. Welcome to this experiment
The Retrieval
Get PDFIt was supposed to be a simple retrieval job. In and out. I was supposed to recover a necklace from the house of some rich dude who, to be honest, probably wouldn’t even have noticed that it’d been taken. Fucking rich people. I knew the house would be empty tonight because it was the night of the big gala. Every local and national newspaper hadn’t shut up about it for the past two weeks. Everybody who was anybody in New Zealand would be there. A “celebration of the spirit of generosity” the New Zealand Gazette had dubbed it. Philanthropist and all round rich guy, Edward Monay was donating millions of dollars to the poor and underprivaleged of New Zealand. Whoopty fuckin’ doo. Why do rich people always have to tell the world they’re gonna donate money? Why not just do it and then feel good about it in private? I don’t make a song and dance every time I give a dollar to a homeless person who shakes their cup at me on the street. I laughed. A dollar compared to Monay’s millions. Monay. Geez, even his fucking name sounded wealthy. “Fuckin’ rich people,” I said, lightly shaking my head and chuckling as I crept along the outside wall of Mr Monay’s estate
The Tradition of Recycling Identity in Native Culture: The Re-Traditioning of Tradition
Get PDFOur tribe is Yaqui, or Yoeme, or Hiaki Yoeme. Our traditional language is known as Yoemem; it is connected to the Uto-Aztecan language families that encompasses, among others, the O’odham, Tarahumara, Pima, Mayo and Huichol peoples of the Sonoran Desert regions of North and Central America. There are songs and dances that are shared between some of these language families that frequently contain images of the natural world, such as moths, flowers, deer, or mountains – elements that evoke connection in order to encourage the restoration of wellness and healing through telling stories of cycles of life. For our tribe, these are the songs and dances that one hears most often at ceremony. Repeating and rhythmic, growing up from the landscape, these songs and dances are the ones that call us home
The spectacle of the queer “Other”: Māori gay(zing) at the 41st Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras 2019
Get PDFThis article will explore some of my observations of the 41st Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras 2019. I travelled to Sydney on Thursday 28 February. Rather appropriately, I selected the 2018 biographical film, Bohemian Rhapsody, as inflight entertainment, all the while contemplating what sequin-encrusted experiences I might encounter during my stay in Sydney. I had booked accommodation at the Pullman Sydney Hyde Park Hotel months in advance. Like every other surface in and around Oxford Street, the hotel had been queered-up with rainbows and a life-sized bejewelled unicorn in the foyer. While eating breakfast on Friday morning, the shimmering disco balls and background dance music seemed to be inviting me to shimmy my way to the egg station. Staff and guests alike, including entire families, were buzzing about the upcoming climax to a month-long festival of all things gay featuring over 190 floats, 12,500 participants, and thousands upon thousands of spectators from Australia and around the world (Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Limited, 2019a)
A Bicultural Dream in Aotearoa New Zealand: (De)Colonising Shakespeare?
Get PDFThis essay came into being as a way of ‘thinking out loud’ about the stirring of traditions – Shakespearean and Māori – into an idealised spectacle of reconciliation that belies its own theatrical, historical and social foundations.[1] When I was coming up as a theatre director in the USA, the production of Shakespearean theatre was aspirational, requiring rigorous training in textual analysis as well as physical and vocal grace, as was evident in the shows I still remember from school and other trips to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the 1970s and 1980s. Whether on professional stages, in schools and universities, or in community theatres, Shakespeare’s plays were produced, often explicitly, to uplift us – whoever ‘we’ were – from our otherwise more mundane theatrical and social circumstances and preoccupations. The Pop-up Globe Theatre in Auckland, New Zealand, is a product of such aspirations. It promises an encounter with erudition made accessible through low jokes and entertaining shenanigans.[2] And it certainly delivers.
Shakespeare’s plays are great because of their universalism, so we continue to be told. But in fact they were first and foremost products of their place and time, playing on and revealing the strata of class, race and gender in ways that were affirmational to their audiences, acts of reification rather than radicalisation. So too the Pop-up Globe’s bicultural production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2017/2018).[3] In finding common ground with the groundlings, it also necessarily plays into rather than against stereotypes, and toward rather than against affirmation of the status quo. The Pop-up Globe’s success is that it mixes entertainment with education. Its appeal is to teachers, students and their parents – a spoonful of sugar approach to an otherwise starchy run-in with high culture. But what is it they’re teaching
Art and the Voices Within: Exploring Kānaka Women’s Storytelling in the Visual Medium Through Portraiture and Kānaka ‘Ōiwi Methodologies
No full textThis research study examines Kānaka women’s storytelling in contemporary Hawai ̒ i through the visual medium. This research was conducted solely by Renuka Mahari de Silva, including its data collection and analysis. The second author, Cheryl Ann Hunter supported this work by editing the written work. In doing this work, the researcher immersed herself in discussing artwork with Kānaka ‘Ōiwi (Native) and Kānaka Maoli (Indigenous) women of Hawai ‘i in artmaking. Using a narrative approach, combined with portraiture methodology, this body of work draws broader parallels through the lens of kānaka ‘ōiwi methodology, to understand the implications of colonial marginalization. Furthermore, this work looks at how these women’s voices and emotions are drawn through the arts to redefine positionality of the kānaka women of Hawai ̒ i toward their cultural and land sovereignty. Findings indicate that despite forced cultural and political changes over time, kānaka women’s innate beliefs and their interconnectedness to land and spirituality has begun to reshape in multidimensional ways both culturally and ecologically. These women not only feel directly tied to a generational spiritual base that nurtures them, but they also feel that “dimensions of traditional knowledge are not local knowledge, but knowledge of the universal as expressed in the local” (Meyer, 2001, p. 4)
Reclaiming Identity
Get PDF have been on an ongoing journey of self-discovery. I grew up knowing my maternal grandfather's indigenous Cook Island Māori heritage, however I knew little of my Māori whakapapa or biological father’s Cook Island Māori heritage. As a result, I undertook this journey to find out 'who I am' and how I belong in the world. This article I will describe key experiences and people that have impacted my life, and explain how these experiences have influenced my interest in my identity. Having experienced this journey to reclaim my identity, I now realize my mana. Therefore, I acknowledge and celebrate my identity. My identity is taonga, and as a Māori and Cook Island Māori man I believe I am privileged with my birth right. My indigenous practice is the promotion of Māori and indigenous identity for the positive development of Māori and indigenous youth. In this essay, I will argue that having a strong sense of identity strengthens an individual's mana and the mana of the individual's family.  
A reflection on Priscilla Queen of the Desert
Get PDFIn 1994 I watched the film, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert with my best friend in Murupara, a small, predominantly Māori town in the Bay of Plenty. The movie was intense. It was colourful. It was inspiring. This movie was my first experience seeing anything to do with gay, transgender, or drag. Murupara was a town filled with rough talking, hardworking people, with hearts of gold. It was a tight-knit community