Powerpoint presentation

Learning Module

Pacific Peoples, Oceans and Water

Associate Professor Evan Poata-Smith

Overview Learning Module 2

Learning Module Overview This module focuses on:

“Pacific Peoples”, “Pasifika”; “Tangata o Moana Nui a Kiwa”

It is important to understand, however, that this conceptual scheme is not a useful ‘cultural’ or linguistic map.

Learning Module

Key theme

Overview

• This case study is part of a broader focus on how sky, land and sea scapes generate meaning and impact on how we think and make sense of everyday life.
• In part this is because “…landscape is constituted as an enduring record of - and testimony to - the lives and works of past generations who have dwelt within it, and in so doing, have left there something of themselves”

• Ingold, T. (1993). “The Temporality of the Landscape”. World Archaeology 25 (2), p. 152..

Learning Module Overview 5

At the end of this module, you should be able to:

1. Identify how the ocean environment has influenced the cognitive and affective models that indigenous people use to make sense of the world in these particular contexts.
2. Explain what the shared narratives of Māui and Tangaroa, and the metaphors, tropes and sayings about the ocean, suggest about indigenous knowledge systems in the Pacific.

The Pacific, the world’s largest ocean. Larger than all of the Earth's land area combined.

Learning Module Overview Key Themes

The ancestors of the first peoples of the Oceania were probably the world’s first truly maritime people:

§ They are associated with the world’s first blue water sailing

technology (the development of sophisticated ocean-going vessels capable of sailing thousands of kilometres and reliable navigational systems).

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The processes of reasoning and making sense of the world become “cultural” in at least three critical ways:

Internally represented in shared beliefs, ideologies, narratives, metaphors and tropes.

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Externally represented in societal

institutions that, as Douglas (1986) puts it, "think for us".

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Knowledge is embedded in social interactions.

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Shared beliefs, narratives and metaphors

This cultural relationship with water and the ocean is

reflected in narratives and story telling traditions that transcend the Pacific.

In some oral histories, the oceans’ depths are considered to be the origin and source of all life.

In other accounts, the islands themselves are believed to be fish, pulled up from the sea, and humans are thought to have evolved ultimately from aquatic beginnings.

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Learning Module

Story-telling and Oral Traditions

§ Water is often represented in oral traditions of the Pacific as a

life force or energy, with many moods, characteristics and forms.

§ It is sometimes depicted as being a calm and life-giving energy,

and at other times, as a dangerous and destructive one.

§ This energy is called ‘Tangaroa’ – or what anthropologists have

popularised as the ‘god of the sea’.

§ This common translation, ‘god of the sea’, does not adequately

convey the depth of its meaning.

Tangaroa

§ Probably the most widely known “energy” in Polynesia:

§ In Mangaia (the most southerly of the Cook Islands), Tangaroa

is the son of Vatea (Skyfather) and Papa (Earthmother) and a ‘god’ of agriculture, food, trees and fish.

§ In the Tuamotu Islands, Takaroa is a son of Te Tumu and Te

Papa.

§ In Hawai’ian oral traditions—Kanaloa is a deity of fish life and

the underworld.

§ Tagaloa features more directly with creation stories in Samoa

and Tonga.

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Learning Module

Tangaroa

§ It is thought that these Pacific-wide, Tangaroa traditions date from

early Austronesian ancestors—and are probably more than 6,000 years old.

§ In some accounts, Tangaroa is a son of Ranginui (Sky father) and Papatūānuku (Earth mother)—he is the progenitor of sea life, canoes and carving.

§ Ranginui and Papatūānuku are separated from a primeval

embrace, a state characterised by perpetual darkness, from which a world of light subsequently evolves.

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Story-telling and Oral Traditions

§ In other versions, however, Tangaroa is the husband of

Papatūānuku and a competitor of Ranginui.

§ Ranginui and Papatūānuku have a child called Tānenui-a-rangi.

§ The adulterous lovers are separated by their child and the earth returns to her place beneath the water and what is left above is the whenua–(a word meaning both land and placenta).

§ For example, the Māori term island is moutere – ‘floating land’.

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Learning Module

§ Like fire, water is a crucial life-giving element.

§ Water has been used to guide and predict human behaviour; for

ritual purposes that include for its cleansing properties that are said to reach beyond the physical plane of human existence.

§ There is a mystery about the Māori word ‘wairua’ or ‘te taha

wairua’ which is often translated as ‘spirituality’ and ‘the spiritual plane (of existence)’ respectively.

§ “Te taha wairua” can literally be translated as ‘the dimension of

two waters’, a conception that likens spirituality to water.

Revision

Some scholars argue that the actual words our language provides us, impacts on the way we are able to think (see week 5 lecture on culture).

§ e.g. subtle verbal distinctions; language helps us distinguish

among many different types of what outsiders may regard as ‘the same object’.

Learning Module

Revision

Perception, language and thought

The Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis, commonly known as the Sapir Whorf hypothesis.

In its mildest form, it is the idea that language can affect how we think; in its strongest form it is the idea that we can’t think about things our language doesn’t let us talk about.

Sapir-Whorf thesis

Whorf saw speech patterns as “interpretations of experience”.

Whorf, B.L. (1956), Language, Thought, and Reality, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Water & Oceans Learning Module

§ “Wai” (water) is described in a number of ways. § Some of these categories include:

§ Waikino – dangerous water, such as stormy seas or swollen rivers.

Waitapu—is sacred water used in ceremonies.

§ Waimāori – pure water, water rich in mauri (life-giving energy), used

for cleansing and for ceremonial purposes § Waitai – sea water, saline water § Waimanawa-whenua – water from under the land § Waikarakia – water for ritual purposes § Waiwhakaika, waikotikoti – water to assist in the cutting of hair.

§ Linguistic influences—“ko wai koe?” [translated today as “who are

you?”] literally means, “ from which waters do you come?”.

Water, Culture and Spirituality

§ In many creation narratives, the sea is often considered to be the

source and foundation of all life.

§ Islands are often depicted as fish drawn up from the water, and in

some stories, people evolved from amphibious beginnings.

§ Traditional Māori knowledge, for example, includes genealogies of

fish and other creatures that live under the sea.

§ Numerous oral histories and stories are dramas of underwater life.

Water & Oceans Learning Module 21

Tinirau and Kae

§ The story of Tinirau and Kae is very old, and numerous versions

exist in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.

§ Tinirau, an ancestor of all the fish, lives at Te Motutapu-o-Tinirau

(Tinirau’s Sacred Isle), which in some traditions is located under the sea.

§ Kae’s people are called Te Aitanga-a-Te Poporokewa (the

descendants of Poporokewa – a type of whale).

§ The story begins with the difficult birth of Tūhuruhuru, the son of

Tinirau and his wife Hineteiwaiwa.

Tinirau and Kae

§ Following the birth, Tinirau needs to find a priest to perform the

birth rituals.

§ He travels to Te Tihi-o-Manono, where he secures the services of a

priest named Kae.

§ Tinirau pays Kae and offers him a waka (canoe) to travel home in,

but Kae asks if he can ride home instead on Tutunui, Tinirau’s whale.

§ Tinirau reluctantly agrees, giving explicit instructions that when

they neared the shore and the whale shook himself, Kae must disembark.

Water & Oceans Learning Module 23

Tutunui’s death

§ Despite these instructions, Kae drove Tutunui towards the shore

and beached him.

§ The whale was cut up and cooked in the village ovens, and the

aroma of the flesh was brought by the winds to Tinirau’s home. § Learning of the creature’s fate, Hineteiwaiwa convened a group of

women, including Raukatauri, goddess of flute music, to travel to Kae’s home and capture him.

§ While he sleeps, the women take Kae to Tinirau’s island and into a

house identical to his own. When Kae finally awakes, he wonders why Tinirau is sitting in his house. Tinirau kills Kae and avenges Tutunui’s slaughter.

The origin of kapa haka (Māori traditional performing arts) is often traced back to the troupe of women sent by Tinirau, to identify and capture Kae, who had killed his pet whale, Tutunui. Picture: Members of Te Kapa Haka o Te Whanau-a- Apanui from Opotiki perform during the Te Matatini National Kapa Haka Festival 2015 at Hagley Park in Christchurch.

Maui

§ Many other narratives about “cultural heroes”—relate to the sea.

§ They are based on real figures whose histories have been

transmuted over time in great mythological cycles.

§ The best example of this is the “Māui” traditions, which span the

breadth of the Pacific ocean.

§ They the most widely and oldest stories of the Pacific and can

found in East Polynesia, North West Polynesia (Samoa and Tokelau) and Micronesia and Melanesia.

Māui

§ Māui is the great trickster hero of

Polynesian mythology.

§ Much pre-European Polynesian history is

related to this inventive character.

§ Many of the stories are legendary – the theft of fire, the capture of the sun, the pursuit of immortality, the descent into the underworld in search of his father.

§ The hero of Polynesian mythology Māui is shown here holding the jawbone of his ancestor Murirangawhenua.

§ He used it to overpower Tamanui-te-rā

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(the sun), forcing him to travel slowly Legends Chris Slane Of & The Robert Outcast. Sullivan, A graphic Maui: Novel, across the sky.

Auckland: Godwit Publishing, 1997

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79DijItQXMM

View “You're Welcome” (From "Moana”, Disney) | 2016 |

Maui

§ Mo-tik-e-tik: Yap—Caroline Islands (far eastern end of Micronesia).

§ Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga: Mangareva

(French Polynesia).

§ Māui-atalanga: Tonga

§ Maui-ki’iki’i: Hawai’I

§ Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga, Māui

mohio, Māui-atamai and Māui nukurau-tangata: Aotearoa.

§ Māui-tikitiki ("Māui the top-knot") § Māui-tikitiki-a-Taranga ("Māui the top-knot of Taranga") § Māui-pōtiki ("Māui the last born”).

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Story-telling and Oral Traditions: Children’s books

Water & Oceans

Water & Oceans Learning Module

Chris Slane & Robert Sullivan, Maui: Legends Of The Outcast. A graphic Novel, Auckland: Godwit Publishing, 1997

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View “How Māui found his mother” | Peter Gossage | 2007 |

A Māui Te Tupua, book by Peter Gossage, Rumpus Production, Māori Television, 2007.

Water & Oceans Maui narratives Learning Module

§ The most common theme in the Māui narratives is that he fished

up land:

§ Yap (Micronesia) § Tongan archipelago § Tumoutu islands (including the legendary land of Havaiki) § The North Island of New Zealand (Te Ika a Māui—literally “the

fish of Māui”)—the South Island is sometimes referred to as Te Waka a Māui—“the canoe of Māui”

View “Tales from the mythologies of Creation, Māui and Aoraki” | ARL | 2011 |

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“We should not be defined by the smallness of our islands, but by the greatness of our Oceans.

We are the sea, we are the ocean.

Oceania is us.

We must wake up to this ancient truth and together use it to overturn all hegemonic views that aim ultimately to confine us again, physically and psychologically.

It is time to create things for ourselves, to create established standards or excellence that matches those of our ancestors.”

’Epeli Hau’ofa, (2008), We Are the Ocean: Selected Works, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, p. 39.

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