Adventure Divas

by Holly Morris

  “Do you think your creativity comes from way back?” I ask, wondering how much cultural legacy fuels her art.

  “Yes. Definitely. Because I’ve been brought up with a real love and respect for who I am as a Maori. My father didn’t speak Maori as a child because in Nanny’s generation coming up,” she says, looking at her grandmother, “kids were taught that you needed to get on with life in the world of Pakeha.”

  Nanny chimes in, “It was very difficult because the Maoris were second-class citizens. And it wasn’t until after the Second World War that gradually the Maoris were recognized. The Maori girls went to boarding schools and were taught to be good housemaids, that’s what they were. That was their station in life. But that was in the old days. We weren’t allowed to speak Maori in the playground, we always got the strap. We had to speak English.”

  “Are creativity and power tied together for you, Hine?” I ask.

  “Yes, because of my creativity—my work—I have a high profile and a responsibility to take my language and culture to the world. People look to me to be doing things right for the Maori people. So it’s a powerful position, and of course power can be used in a good way or a bad way,” she says, reiterating the idea that a great responsibility comes with possessing mana.

  “Reflecting our culture to the world makes young Maori feel good about themselves. We are trying to regenerate a whole sense of quality and expression of who we are, and what we have to offer,” she says, then adds with a grin, “It’s cool to be Maori.

  “Oh bugger, we have to go,” she says, glancing at her watch. Hine has arranged for us to go over to the girls’ school where she was educated. She wants to show us her roots, but, more importantly, what the new Maori generation is up to. “Can we take the Valiant?

  “I’m driving, vroom! vroom!” Hine yells as she walks out the screen door; Nanny grabs her floral purse and trots after her. George and Hineraukatauri will drive over in another car and meet us.

  Liza and I unhook the caravan from the Valiant and climb in the car’s backseat. Nanny rides shotgun (the left side).

  “Rock and roll! I feel like a petrolhead!” Hine yells as she guns it around a roundabout.

  “Twin carb!” yells Nanny. Liza is laughing so hard at this septuagenarian’s automotive expletives that she can’t hold the camera steady.

  “Nanny, teach me some Maori,” I say, holding onto the headrest for stability as Hine takes a curve.

  “Ahhh. Pakehas always want to learn Maori words. Well, of course we teach them the swear words first. Like tonanane.”

  “What’s a tonanane?” I ask, warily.

  “A tonanane . . . is a teke,” Nanny says, giggling like a schoolgirl. Hine chuckles under her breath as she guns it down Hastings’s quiet main road.

  Suddenly, Nanny turns around to Liza and me and the rolling camera and bellows, “IT’S A VAGINA!”

  Good god. First the goat shit and now the vaginas; brilliant, divalicious moments to take home to the PBS censors.

  Liza grips the small video camera and gets a close-up of Hine banging the thirty-year-old gear shift into reverse. “Mana wahine” (“powerful woman”), she says to nobody in particular, and I wonder if she’s referring to Nanny, or to Sheila’s uncanny ability to hug any curve.

  Believing in the birds-of-a-feather theory, I ask Nanny and Hine for some leads for other divas to interview. “Hey, who do you think we should go see on the South Island?”

  “Oh. Keri Hulme,” says Nanny. “Keri Hulme would be just the one. She’s a famous author; she’s very down to earth, sort of in your face, a ‘do what I bloody well like’ sort of person.”

  Yes. I know of Keri Hulme. “Is she there now?” I ask, excitedly.

  “No idea. But she doesn’t stand any nonsense or any crap from anybody,” says Nanny.

  “Oh, that’s the bugger,” yells Hine.

  “That’s the bugger. Should have turned left,” agrees Nanny.

  Chugging into the parking lot of the girls’ school, Hine cuts the Valiant’s engine and hops out of the car. Liza and I follow, trying to adjust her mic as we walk. Hine lets out a holler at the sight of one of her old teachers.

  “Hine, you’re a role model now,” I say emphatically, nodding to the girls who are piling into an auditorium to welcome her with a performance. All the girls are buzzing at the sight of such a big star.

  The auditorium looks like a church, with rows and rows of benches and an elevated platform at the front of the room. Hine now stands on the platform, with Hineraukatauri in her arms, brimming with dignity, facing a hundred Maori girls in their school uniforms: white collared shirts, blue skirts, stockings, and pointy black dress shoes. With a resounding thump of their daintily clad feet, the girls begin to sing, a few guitars mere backup to their powerful voices. Their lithe, brown, young arms move in unison; then they perform the traditional kapahaka dance, a high-impact warrior art of strength and empowerment. Many credit the kapahaka as a first introduction to their own Maori roots.

  “Hey ya kay. Hey ya kah. Hey ya ka, hoomph! Hoomph!” they sing as one. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

  The collective power of these little girls claims all the space in the room, and more.

  One girl leads.

  Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!

  (It is death! It is death! It is life! It is life!)

  Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!

  (It is death! It is death! It is life! It is life!)

  Tenei te tangata puhuru huru (This is the hairy man)

  Nana nei i tiki mai (Who fetched the sun)

  whakawhiti te ra (and caused it to shine again)

  A upa . . . ne! Ka upa . . . ne!

  (One upward step! Another upward step!)

  A upane kaupane whiti te ra!

  (An upward step, another . . . the sun shines!)

  Hi!!!

  White collared shirts and black patent-leather shoes melt into a blur of mana and now what stands before us is a phalanx of young warriors. The schoolgirls are gone—they are an iwi, a people. The room’s instant transformation is eerie and humbling. Hine is crying. I am crying.

  Hine holds Hineraukatauri, a child who has struggled for her own existence, and rocks her almost imperceptibly in front of this roomful of hope; in front of whakapapa—ancestry—which makes hope seem almost plausible. I guess I am so moved because these girls are not fifty, or forty, or thirty; they are thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and they already know where they come from.

  They pound and thud and holler together, playing guitar, their muscle reverberating, spiraling into the world. One hundred fierce girls belting out their past, and claiming their future.

  A upane kaupane whiti te ra!

  It is time to confess: The single most compelling reason I wanted to do a show in New Zealand was to meet the author Keri Hulme, the writer Nanny mentioned in the car. Since the inception of Adventure Divas it was Keri Hulme—novelist, angler, and enigmatic literary icon—who was firmly planted in my brain as the diva template: a creative, independent, “do what I bloody well like” person (as Nanny put it). I have been obsessed with Hulme for fifteen years, ever since my first reading of her Booker Prize–winning novel, The Bone People. The book’s fusion of Pakeha and Maori worlds with dark, poetic storytelling is strangely seductive. And the book’s protagonist, Kerewin (like Keri herself), fishes for whitebait, a bizarre translucent migrating fish about five millimeters long that, for a few special months of every year, becomes a Kiwi obsession.

  Hulme’s quirky talent and creative independence inspire in me a shameless admiration not in keeping with my normal anti-pedestal stance. (Sure, I tried to shove Phoolan Devi up there, but that was an uninformed, must-make-it-so producer’s yearning for a sexy bandit story.) I know about Keri Hulme, and I have been a bloodhound on her scent for years. In the past decade I have, as a fan, editor, fellow angler, and aspiring filmmaker, come up with various excuses for contacting her: “Can I publish your work in a women’s fishing antholo
gy?” Yes. “Can I option The Bone People film rights?” Absolutely not. And now, “Will you appear in this documentary?”

  A few years ago I received a benign “if you’re ever in New Zealand” invitation at the end of the fax that denied me film rights. I’ve had it on my bulletin board ever since. I took her invite at face value and attempted via fax to confirm a meeting with Hulme prior to our departure from Seattle. No luck. Now, halfway through the shoot, and four more unresponded-to faxes later, only Michael is aware of the degree to which meeting Hulme is consuming me. I feign emotional stability to the rest of the crew, yet privately I rant to Michael.

  “For twelve years I’ve been wanting to meet her,” I say. We gave up on camping and I am now kicking ice cubes around like soccer balls in a hotel room one day’s drive north of Wellington. “This is killing me.”

  “If we can’t get her, how about we make the story about the quest?” says Michael. “Your obsession is enough to drive the story,” he adds glibly.

  “You mean like Sherman’s March or Roger and Me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I want her.”

  “Why is she so important to you?” he asks.

  I tell him the story of how The Bone People got published. How after twelve years of writing, Hulme was turned down by every major publisher in the country; how three women created the Spiral Collective in order to publish it; and how the book then began a viral path to popularity and success that eventually led to the Booker Prize, and to her status as an unlikely literary heroine.

  “What’s the book about?”

  “Well it’s about a mute kid, a bicultural loner artist, and a loving, brutal guy. But in fact it’s really about independence and passion in a crapshoot, culture-clash world.”

  “Uh-huh,” says Michael.

  “I guess it’s not just her, it’s all she represents. She and her book are inextricably wed in my mind. She’s quirky and independent, kind of an allegory for New Zealand itself, and I’m hoping an interview with her can help cinch up our story of this country.”

  This last comment seems to resonate, and Michael nods. And I don’t say this to Michael, but even though Hulme’s driving me nuts, I kind of respect her freaky reclusiveness.

  Except for late-night tête-à-têtes between me and Michael, my obsession with Hulme stays under wraps while we advance the stated premise of the program, to investigate estro-leadership in New Zealand. We are scheduled to be in the country’s capital of Wellington, which is nestled in the southern tip of the North Island. I have to shelve my Keri fixation long enough to meet with Prime Minister Helen Clark.

  Jeannie, bless her well-connected soul, reached back to her Chicago roots and contacted former Illinois senator Carol Moseley Braun (who was then the outgoing U.S. ambassador to New Zealand) and enlisted her to help us set up the meeting with the PM. We made a dozen calls to Clark’s press secretary and promised to fax the questions ahead of time, all for five minutes with a prime minister who, I am told, doesn’t suffer fools.

  Clark grew up in the countryside and became politicized during her time at university in the 1970s. She joined the Labour Party in 1971, and she has been ascending the ranks ever since, focusing on issues ranging from housing to environmental conservation to health. She became prime minister in 1999, when the Labour Party was elected to govern. Time International magazine notes her candor with journalists and says Clark represents “a paradox in the national psyche: tolerance with an authoritarian streak.” Under her leadership, New Zealand has pursued some controversial measures, including legalizing prostitution and enforcing the ban on nuclear warships from the country’s ports. She is currently involved in a battle to defend Maori affirmative action, which has become a central issue in New Zealand politics. Clark, it’s worth noting again, stood in strong defense of Hinewehi Mohi when she sang the national anthem in Maori.

  The Valiant, once again tugging our caravan, pulls up to Helen Clark’s office, next to Parliament, which is a gray stone building with lots of columns. Simon and I dash out of the car, late and underdressed as usual. Since the hotel fire, my wardrobe has been exceedingly limited. I am wearing a (clean) white T-shirt, jeans, and a mint-green leather coat streaked with smoke damage. Entry could be questionable, ambassadorial endorsement or not. Simon, at least, is in a collared shirt.

  “What do I call her?” I ask Simon, puffing, as we take the stairs to save time. “Madame Prime Minister? Her Honor?”

  “She’s known as the Queen Bee around here,” he says, “and here”—he ominously gestures out the window toward the beehive-shaped Parliament building next door, “is known as ‘Helengrad.’ ”

  Doesn’t suffer fools.

  We make small talk with the PM’s young, sandy-haired, navy-blue-blazer-clad press secretary in the lobby as we wait. “Do you know Keri Hulme?” I ask. “Know of her, certainly,” he says. “Sounds like she’s doing more fishing than writing these days,” he says glibly, referring to her long-awaited follow-up book to The Bone People. Hiss! I want to lash out and defend Hulme against this dapper, wet-behind-the-ears flunky who has probably never written more than a dehydrated position paper.

  We are ushered into the prime minister’s office, which is as you would expect. Clean. Dignified. Well lit. I get the impression that none of the real work gets done in this room. The prime minister walks in with a small entourage. She is just as I’d read in articles: formal, direct, tall—and, I might add, somewhat manly. None of the press ever mentions that. As someone who’s been called “manly” from time to time, I take some comfort in our shared characteristic, and relax a bit. We sit down and talk, man to man.

  “Thanks for taking the time to see us. I, um, well, what we’re trying to do with this program is understand the character of your country . . . through its people . . . so, um, can you offer a bit about the character of a New Zealander?” I ask, sensing that launching softly is the tack to take with this formal leader. I feel awkward, but she saves me.

  “New Zealanders are very practical people,” she says. “They are do-it-yourselfers. They’re the weekend mechanic. You’ve got the strong farming industry background where people did it themselves, fixed it themselves, made it themselves . . . so all that’s deeply ingrained in the culture,” she responds, incredibly matter-of-factly.

  I’ve always admired Kiwi literature and film’s curious strain of independence, twisted black humor, and deft politics, so I ask, “What’s your philosophy toward funding the arts? New Zealand produces brilliant filmmakers and writers.” I’m thinking of filmmaker Jane Campion’s Sweetie, Lee Tamahori’s Once Were Warriors, Gaylene Preston’s War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us, writer Janet Frame’s Faces in the Water, and, of course, Keri Hulme’s The Bone People.

  “I’ve given a lot of priority to the arts because I think that through the arts and culture you express the soul and heart of your nation,” she responds.

  I stop myself from asking her about Hulme, because this interview is all about the show’s nutgrab. If the Queen Bee can’t explain the country’s estro-power, who can?

  “Could you talk a little bit about women’s contributions to social and historical developments in New Zealand? I understand that Maori women were at the head of the renaissance in Maori culture, and I know women got the right to vote quite early—twenty-five years earlier than in the United States. What happened here as opposed to other places?” I ask.

  “Well, I think it’s partly due to New Zealand’s being a pioneer society in the nineteenth century, when women worked pretty hard. Not having your right as a citizen to get your vote recognized is tough in those circumstances. Obviously women got out and led the campaign for the right to vote; I don’t recall too many men. The women were on the front line demanding it, and they had a little government at the time which was prepared to go along with it.

  “But unfortunately it took many decades for women to actually come into power. They were really represented
in very small numbers until the late 1980s and 1990s,” explains the prime minister.

  Okay, we’re getting there. You’re out there digging fence holes right along with the blokes, so you should have the right to vote. But run the country?

  “Right now there are lots of women in top power positions, and I’m wondering if you feel this power is really institutionalized. And what’s brought it about?” I ask, pressing the thesis.

  “It’s partly a function of the new voting system we adopted. Prior to the system, we’d reached a level of twenty percent women in Parliament, which by U.S. standards is quite high, but it’s really not high by northern European standards. We’re now up to over thirty percent. And it still needs to go somewhere yet. Is it institutionalized? Yes it is, because for political parties now to do well electorally, they have to appeal to women; you can’t just shut off half of the population. And there are parties who do very well by, for, and with women, and there are parties who don’t,” she says.

  “Why do you think the States is not doing as well?” I ask.

  “It’s partly a function of the electoral system. In New Zealand, when you had the single-member constituency, it was often easier for parties to portray the males as the character who would be the local representative. That’s the way it always was. But when you move to a proportional system, parties have to attract proportions of votes for a party, then they have to pay a lot more attention to being representative, and that’s when women do get a lock-in,” says the prime minister.

  Huh? How totally unsexy. I wanted mana, and virile rogue strains of Amazonian DNA, or secret cults or, or, or, annual summits of powerful women in the country’s equivalent of Sun Valley; but she’s telling me—I think—that it boils down to a revised electoral system. I could barely follow what she was saying, it was so mundane. But essentially, it seems to go like this: After Marilyn Waring dissented over the nuke question, and the Labour Party won the election of 1984, Labour appointed a nonpartisan commission to investigate the long-held claim that New Zealand’s electoral system did not properly represent the politics of the people. As a result of the commission’s findings, a mixed member proportional (or MMP) electoral system was developed in the mid-1990s in which voters cast two ballots, one for a local member of Parliament and one for a party. While conventional (white male) candidates tend to fill the slots for MP, the parties often try to balance their tickets by running women and minorities on the second ballot. Across the board, countries that use proportional systems like this have more women and minorities in public office than countries that use a “majoritarian,” winner-take-all system, like the United States.