A reissued 1938 classic smashes racist notions that Māori were not the first people to settle Aotearoa
I first encountered the writings of Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa) via my senior years at Matapihi Native School and through the encouragement of our wonderful Canadian-born headmaster Mr Ball-Guymer who I think was in love with the whole Polynesian ethos.
The school received its books via the school library service and I made it a duty to spend much of my time getting through every one of the 30-odd books that came with each delivery. One day, when the regular delivery happened, Mr Ball-Guymer summoned me over to look at Vikings of the Sunrise, Sir Peter Buck's classic book first published in 1938. At the time I had just a sketchy knowledge of migratory Māori waka traditions and absolutely no knowledge of the Scandinavian Vikings so he proceeded to fill me in on Erik the Red and his exploits in founding a Norse settlement on Greenland. He then told me how my ancestors were just as bold explorers if not more so. I remember devouring Vikings over a week and feeling inspired.
Well, that was then. It's clearly apparent that we live in a different world in 2023 - and a new reissue of Vikings of the Sunrise comes at a critical time in our country’s race relations.
Why I think that is because the Māori position of being the indigenous people of Aotearoa, New Zealand, is coming under increasing attack from those who seemingly want to bring to a halt the growing infiltration of all things Māori into the mainstream of our communities. Whether that be the adoption of “Kia ora” as a universal greeting, or singing the first verse of the national anthem in te reo or changing the school curriculum to give a greater focus to our shared history. And of course the outraged trumpeting of the “It’s not called Aotearoa it’s New Zealand!” brigade.
On the larger scale there are the calls for a Treaty referendum based on the assumption that the current interpretation and application of the Treaty and its principles gives Māori more “rights” in our democratic society. The basic argument – utterly smashed by this scholarly work - is that Māori are not indigenous and were not the first people to settle this country. All manner of other scenarios are given including an earlier Celtic arrival, evidence of which has apparently been cleverly destroyed by later Māori arrivals. Other proposed earlier arrivals include Chinese and Spanish explorers. I can imagine Sir Peter spinning in the urupa over that one.
Given the wide acceptance that human life evolved out of Africa over 300,000 years ago – all of us are migrants - so indigenous must surely mean first.
In summary the opposing argument is that Māori are not indigenous but migrants like everyone else and therefore not deserving of any “special” status such as that given under the Treaty of Waitangi. We see it in the almost rabid opposition to co-governance, the threats from political parties to roll back the inclusion of Treaty principles in legislation and to hold a referendum on the Treaty itself and its role in the nation’s affairs. In recent times these “voices” are – I hope – largely singing from the political expediency hymn sheet as we go through our tri-annual election cycle. Time will tell.
Against this background static, as I re-read Vikings of the Sunrise, this most seminal work, I was awed once again by two things. First, the scholarly approach to the topic but with a unique Polynesian perspective overlay. As Sir Peter says himself, in thanking those who helped with the editing of the book, he says he appreciated that assistance because while he was writing in English he was thinking in Polynesian.
The other is the extensive field work undertaken to support the academic perspectives advanced in the work. His familiarity with the islands and peoples of the Eastern Pacific in particular, are a highlight as he slips easily from one to the other – intellectual island hopping if you will. But that gives the work an incredible breadth and underpins the interesting weaving of myth, and story-telling legend with hard edged archaeological and physical “evidence”.
The links between Polynesian culture and South America are an example. There is no other logical explanation for the possession by Polynesians of the South American sourced kumara or sweet potato other than some kind of past contact. Sir Peter uses linguistic evidence to support the existence of this link. For example the Kechua dialect of northern Peru records the sweet potato name as kumar which is only a small step to the Polynesian name of kumara.
Of equal interest to the eastern link between Polynesian exploration and plants like the kumara is his explanation – again evidenced by plants - of the links to the Asian mainland. Plants like the coconut, breadfruit, banana, plantain, taro, yam, arrowroot, turmeric, paper mulberry and the hue or gourd all have their botanical roots in the Indo-Malay region. Some of these plants may have spread naturally through the Pacific but the botanical evidence supports a spread via human intervention.
Heyerdahl advanced the theory that Polynesians derived their knowledge from a race of “white gods”...Even a cursory reading of Vikings quickly exposes the fallacy of that racist theory
All this work of course runs counter to later anthropologists like the Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl explorer who in 1947 sailed a balsa log raft from the Peruvian coast to the reefs of the Tuamotu Archipelago. But rather than claiming this showed a link between the Peruvians and Polynesia, he proposed that demonstrated - supported by the monumental moai works on Rapanui / Easter Island – that Polynesians derived their knowledge from a race of “white gods” miners and engineers with pale skins and blond or red-hair. These gods had apparently taught the Inca peoples of Peru (and by association the Aztec people of Central America) the art of monumental building. They then took those teachings westward on balsa log rafts to Polynesia before finally disappearing into the wastes of the Pacific. His theory would probably find huge support among the Celtic claimants of today if they bothered to do the research.
But even a cursory reading of Vikings quickly exposes the fallacy of that racist theory.
I was interested to be reminded of the social drivers leading to the migration and peopling of the Pacific. According to Sir Peter the first Polynesian explorers/settlers were likely to be those on the bottom of the social ladder being driven into leaving their home islands by reason of there being insufficient food to support the population. Those higher on the social ladder with secure food resources did not have to leave.
I also like the way Sir Peter interpolates his personal life with the book's content. The best example I think is his telling of the story of Maui and how the demi-god captured the sun and slowed it’s advance across the sky so that humans could have the benefit of increased daylight hours.
He then links that explanatory story of the Māori world to his time as MP for Northern Māori and his participation in a “filibuster” – a deliberate time delaying ploy engaged in by politicians - to slow or even prevent the passage of a bill through the Parliamentary process. In this case it was the very first bill advocating Daylight Saving. A nervous Sir Peter – this was only his second speech in Parliament - had the brainwave to talk about how Maui had initiated Daylight Saving through his legendary exploits. The humorous reaction to his speech apparently enlivened a very dry debate and Sir Peter, to his chagrin, records that incident as being probably his most telling contribution of his Parliamentary career of six years.
For me, the most moving passage in Vikings of the Sunrise was in Sir Peter’s visit to Rai’atea, the spiritual homeland of all Polynesians. He visited Opua and Taputapu-atea. There he found the site of an old temple overgrown with weeds, but the altar (ahu) 141 feet long by 25 feet wide, bore witness to past grandeur.
He writes, "The stone platform was walled with huge slabs of coral limestone embedded in the earth, and the enclosure was filled in with loose rock through which, formerly, skulls were scattered or piled in recesses until the people had to conceal them elsewhere from the acquisitive fingers of foreign vandals.
"Some of the slabs rose twelve feet above the ground; some had fallen, revealing an inner row of lower wall slabs which showed that a larger platform had been built around and above a small structure. Close to the beach was another marae on which the human sacrifices brought by canoe were laid to await their turn in the temple ritual of Taputapu-atea.
"We took pictures of speechless stone and inanimate rock. I had made my pilgrimage to Taputapu-atea, but the dead could not speak to me. It was sad to the verge of tears. I felt a profound regret, a regret for—I know not what. Was it for the beating of the temple drums or the shouting of the populace as the king was raised on high? Was it for the human sacrifices of olden times? It was for none of these individually but for something at the back of them all, some living spirit and divine courage that existed in ancient times and of which Taputapu-atea was a mute symbol. It was something that we Polynesians have lost and cannot find, something that we yearn for and cannot recreate. The background in which that spirit was engendered has changed beyond recovery. The bleak wind of oblivion had swept over Opoa. Foreign weeds grew over the untended courtyard, and stones had fallen from the sacred altar of Taputapu-atea. The gods had long ago departed. To keep down the rising tide of feeling, I said brusquely in the American vernacular, ‘Let's go.’"
I’m pleased to see this book being made available for a new audience. Although the language it's written in comes from another era, the strength and interest of the underlying narrative carries the day – again, and forever.
E kore au e ngaro, he kākano i ruia mai i Rangiātea: I will never be lost, for I am a seed sown in Rangiātea.
Vikings of the Sunrise by Te Rangi Hīroa (Sir Peter Buck) with new foreword by Paora Tapsell (Oratia Books, $49.99) is available in bookstores nationwide.
