Ngā Pukapuka Books

WORDS: ANNA KNOX

Te Motunui Epa

Rachel Buchanan

$49.99 HB (Bridget Williams Books)

In the early 1800s, as warring tribes from the north descended on Taranaki, five carved tōtara panels were buried by Te Ātiawa hapū in a swamp near Waitara. Here, the ancestors waited, snoozing in their earth home for 150 years.

“The problem was,” writes Rachel Buchanan in her captivating account, “the epa were hōhā. It was boring down there in the dark … So our ancestors stretched their tongues, rolled their eyes and got ready to wake up.”

This extraordinary story of the Motunui epa, from their unearthing in 1971 to their many legal and illegal adventures abroad, to their homecoming in 2014, draws heavily on archival material, including newly released government records, many

of which are beautifully reproduced in the book.

The documents chart how the panels, smuggled out of the country, took centre stage in an international legal saga involving smugglers, art collectors, billionaires, lawyers, prime ministers and – not often enough –iwi, which affected the legal status of indigenous artefacts globally. There are also generous accounts of the work of “mostly Pākehā” civil servants who “busted a gut” for decades to get the epa back.

The best and most distinctive parts of the book invoke the perspectives of the ancestors themselves, trapped in the storage rooms at Sotheby’s, then in the far worse darkness of Port Franc: “Ka taka te pō. A tsunami of total darkness. Eyes shut, mouths shut, cut adrift and comatose, our tūpuna floated far out to sea, plunged deep inside Te Wharepōuri [the house of total darkness],” writes Rachel. Then, finally, back home, “so happy to be surrounded by their mokopuna”. The final chapter, ‘Statement’, is delivered by the epa.

The book was a finalist in the illustrated nonfiction section at this year’s Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, and it’s clear why. The exquisite design – from cover to typeset, to image placement – vibes perfectly with the storytelling; a treasure to hold, as well as to read.

‘A Bloody Difficult Subject’: Ruth Ross, te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Making of History

Bain Attwood

$59.99 HB (Auckland University Press)

The Treaty of Waitangi as an unchanging physical document runs through almost two centuries of New Zealand’s heritage –but the interpretation of that document has been an ever-changing story. Bain Attwood’s rich account of Ruth Ross’s life and work, and of the history of scholarship around te Tiriti, shows how the views of an historian outside of the establishment came to be a pillar of the establishment, and left a lasting national legacy

Ruth was an energetic woman – a mother, historian and caregiver whose anger at what she saw as the myth of the Treaty as a Māori Magna Carta kept her immersed in researching and writing about the document for decades. A 1972 paper in the New Zealand Journal of History presented both her “major argument” (Bain’s term), that the Treaty was “hastily and inexpertly drawn up, ambiguous and contradictory in content, chaotic in its execution”, and her “minor argument” that the Māori text of the Treaty was the authoritative version; arguments ignored in her lifetime that have come to shape ours fundamentally.

Part one of the book outlines Ruth’s life and work, highlighting the personal and professional influences that criss-cross her outputs. These include the years spent with her young family in a predominantly Māori community in the heart of “Treaty country”, as well as the repressive upbringing that underpins her rage against the Protestant missionaries. The crippling self-doubt that lent a defensive edge to her thinking is also evident: “I wonder why the hell I ever try to do anything but grow cabbages,” she writes.

But it’s in parts two and three that Bain’s talents as a communicator and big-picture thinker really come to the fore. His impressively succinct yet detailed survey of the history of thinking, scholarship and public discourse on the Treaty, both in New Zealand and internationally, places Ruth’s contribution in the context of this ever-changing understanding. The cognitive shift that led to a dramatic reframing of the Treaty in the 1980s and ’90s is particularly well explained, and an academic distinction between a legal account of the past and an historical one comes surprisingly alive.

There’s a quote in the book from a letter Ruth wrote to JC Beaglehole: “I know from past experience that once one gets launched on Waitangi stuff, the work involved is never-ending” – a reminder that questioning the status quo of any official history is an ongoing responsibility. Ruth understood this, and so does Bain.

KUPU

epa: carved tōtara panels
hapū: sub-tribe
hōhā: bored, fed up
mokopuna: grandchildren
rangatira: chiefs
tūpuna: ancestors

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