AWA: Academic Writing at Auckland

From a Maori stance, their attitudes towards the environment stems from spoken and traditional folklore. The folklores which will be discussed provide traditional Maori values and ideas about the natural environment which surround them, both in the past and present. Most Maori folklore is often the product of a dynamic system of accumulated knowledge and thought expressed in an oral manner, in a form similar to that of an oral database. This essay will discuss folklore material such as Maori’s myth of creation, a discussion of the Maori influence from legends and beliefs which has affected how the Crown made advances to owning/developing Maori property, and how Maori folklore of natural hazards have helped in understanding how Maori people regard the natural environment.

In questioning the validity of Maori folklore, where it is open to factors such as anonymous authoring within its oral realm, it can be oftentimes be considered as raw (Yoon, 1979, p. 162). People who recount and write about historical events can often include bias unintentionally (see King, Goff & Skipper, 2007). However, Bascom (1975) argues that according to the people who they originate and foster from, myths are real and religious accounts of what has been long past; legends are generally historical events which has happened recently; and folktales are regarded as fiction by all people (cited in Yoon, 1986, p.28). Whereas in the Waitangi Tribunal’s ways of investigating the Crown’s actions and how these stack against the Treaty of Waitangi principles, Maori folklore demonstrates key Maori attitudes about how Maori feel about the natural environment. This idea is introduced in how the Waitangi Tribunal used these Maori attitudes as interpreted in Maori folklore, to uphold certain Maori claims for rights of development, and to discern whether the Crown had gone against principles within the Treaty of Waitangi (Gibbs, 2005, p. 1373). It should be noted that the Waitangi Tribunal was established in 1975 by way of the Treaty of Waitangi Act, so they could investigate whether or not that the governing body of the time - the Crown - legitimately complied with the Treaty of Waitangi’s principles (Boast, 1993; Durie & Orr, 1990; Treaty of Waitangi Act, 1975, s5, cited in Gibbs, 2005, p. 1368). Maori folklore is sometimes the way in which Maori that provide the people of the present with moral principles and virtues (Patterson, 1994). This can be related to Maori geomentality discussed within two of the Waitangi Tribunal’s reports, in which their folklore are used in order to protest their rights. The first example to be discussed is in the Petroleum Report, where the government is shown to have wanted to use petroleum resources in a Maori tribe’s region. However, this tribe along with another, claimed their right to develop this petroleum resource instead. The Tribunal upheld the Maori’s claim, as they accepted local legends as evidence for how the Maori tribes already knew of the petroleum resource and its combustible abilities before 1840, but did not wish to use it. Maori attitudes represented here towards the environment perhaps haven’t changed then, even though they had not used petroleum around the 1840’s (WT, 2003; cited in Gibbs, 2005, p. 1373) - but rather, they were more capable in the more recent timescale to use petroleum to their advantage. In a later report by the Waitangi Tribunal, it upheld Maori’s property rights over the foreshore and seabed around New Zealand - rights which the Crown proposed to legislate as their ownership and for all New Zealand people (WT, 2004, cited in Gibbs, 2005, p. 1373-1374). However, and similarly to the Petroleum Report, the Maori’s claim for right to development was upheld due to how Maori used and viewed the resources as taonga, a Maori word for a treasured possession. An English version of a Maori proverb is: ‘Food supplies the blood of man [sic]; his welfare depends on the land’ (Brougham and Reed, p. 63, Firth, 1972, p. 152; cited in Yoon, 1986, p. 19). It can be interpreted that while food is important to the Maori people, their lives were dependent and dictated by the land. This land could also provide the Maori with economic value (Yoon, 1986, p. 19), which is similar to reports generated by the Waitangi Tribunal where Maori wish to have a right to develop petroleum resources and land due to an economic gain and treasuring the land respectively. Patterson (1992) uses the proverb translated from Maori to English ‘Land is permanent, man disappears’ (Riley, 1990, cited in Patterson, 1992, p. 50) in his discussion of how Maori value land as a form of taonga. He interprets this proverb where Maori values the natural environment for its own sake, more than how it can be used for themselves.

What is important to understand about Maori folklore is the idea that each can be interpreted differently. Patterson (1994) describes Maori folklore as consisting of unfamiliar and different concepts to an outsider to the Maori tradition, so should be looked at within time and space. The Maori’s creation myth first record in English is by Sir George Grey, in a book titled ‘Children of Heaven and Earth’ (Grey, 1855, cited in Yoon, 1986, p. 28). One interpretation of this myth shows that Maori has a conflicted attitude towards the natural environment. Whilst Maori have their own needs from the environment to ensure their own survival; they wish to do as little harm to the environment when taking what they can from it, and give it the positive respect that the Maori feel that the environment deserves. Additionally, Maori have attitudes towards the environment where they perform a karakia to remove the tapu inside the environmental resource they collect. This is relevant in the Maori myth regarding Rata and his canoe, where an exchange system is developed so that Maori people must request permission and take respect on what they take from the environment, which they regard as their own kin. By not removing the tapu, the Maori believe that the resources with tapu would give the person adverse effects (Patterson, 1994, p. 398-402). On the other hand, Yoon (1986) interprets this creation myth, as symbolic of the Maori attitudes of the environment - shown where all the children of Rangi and Papa fight amongst each other in order to gain and achieve their own advantages. The act of the five children excluding Tawhiri-matea who plotted to separate their parents symbolizes a notion of all elements acting selfishly within the environment, which he says can be related to the Darwinian thought, commonly referred to as ‘survival of the fittest’ (Darwin, 1872). Yoon (1986) also interprets other aspects of this Maori myth where man (sic) or Tu, faces the same struggling that the natural environment, or his siblings, has against him.

Maori have long been an accumulative source of environmental knowledge, in the sense that the people themselves are databases of oral knowledge of experiences passed through the generations (Stevenson, 1996, King et al.; cited in King, Goff & Skipper, 2007). Commonly, historic natural hazards and disasters have been recorded throughout Maori’s oral history. Timewise, these are difficult to date. It is also difficult to understand the context of the natural hazard (King et al., 2007), in which the size and human impact can be exaggerated or underestimated. Many Maori stories concerns the existence of taniwha, which would cause large waves (King et al., 2007). Fear was often instilled by older members of Maori communities into the younger members, where if tapu was broken by the younger people, then the taniwha would adversely affect the younger people with large and dangerous waves (Best, 1976, p. 480, cited in King et al., 2007). The fear of these large waves differs to what Yoon (1986) describes, where he narrates that a Maori chieftain weren’t afraid by large waves since he regarded them as his kin. However, Yoon also notes that humanity has always felt threatened by the storm and wind god in the sky, as it is something that he (sic) cannot control. Another Maori legend discusses the Mt Tarawera eruption in 1886, where a phantom canoe gave prior warning to this eruption (Cowan, 1939, cited in King et al.). What can be interpreted from these Maori folklore is that they are often fearful then of what the natural environment produces, that they cannot control.

Concluding, Maori attitudes towards the environment can be interpreted through many folklore mediums. These are discussed in Maori’s creation myth, which identify how Maori respect the land but are also conflicted in how they treat it adversely. It also relates to Darwinian theories of evolution. Some Maori legends are also capable of recounting historical events such as natural disasters, and highlight Maori fears and respectful attitudes towards the environment. Maori folklore can also be a provider of practical advice towards governmental actions.

References

Gibbs, M. (2005). The right to develop and indigenous peoples: Lessons from New Zealand. World Development, 33(8), 1369-1375.

King, D., Goff, J. & Skipper, A. (2007). Maori environmental knowledge and natural hazards in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 37(2), 59-73.

Patterson, &. (1992). Exploring Maori values. Palmerston North: The Dunmore Press Limited.

Patterson, &. (1994). Maori environmental virtues. Environmental Ethics, 16(4), 397-409.

Yoon, H-k. (1979). The value of folklore in the study of man’s (sic) attitudes toward environment. Proceedings, Tenth New Zealand Geography Conference and Forty Ninth ANZAS Congress: Geographical Sciences, pp. 162-163.

Yoon, H-k. (1986). Maori Mind, Maori Land. Berne: Peter Land.