Potiki

by Patricia Grace

  ‘This land we are on now – Block J136, the attached blocks where the houses are, and J480 to 489 at the back of the houses, is all ancestral land – the ancestral land of the people here. And there are others too who don’t live here now, but this is still home to them. And a lot of them are here today, come home for this meeting.

  ‘Behind us are the hills. That was all once part of it too. Well the hills have gone. A deal went through at a time when people were too poor to hang on. It is something that is regretted.

  ‘But it won’t happen … to the rest … what’s left here. Not even in these days of no work. We’re working the land. We need what we’ve got. We will not sell land, nor will access be given. Apart from that, apart from telling you that none of this land here will go, we have to tell you that none of us wants to see any of the things you have outlined. We’ve talked about it and there’s no one, not one of us here, that would give an okay on it. None of those things would be of any advantage to our people here, in fact we know they would be greatly to our disadvantage …’

  ‘Well now, you’ve said that the developments here would be of no advantage to you. I’d like to remind you of what I’ve already said earlier. It’s all job-creative. It’ll mean work, well-paid work, right on your doorstep, so to speak. And for the area … it’ll bring people … progress …’

  ‘But you see, we already have jobs, we’ve got progress …’

  ‘I understand, perhaps I’m wrong, that you’re mostly unemployed?’

  ‘Everything we need is here. This is where our work is.’

  ‘And progress? Well it’s not … obvious.’

  ‘Not to you. Not in your eyes. But what we’re doing is important. To us. To us that’s progress.’

  ‘Well maybe our ideas are different. Even so you wouldn’t want to stand in the way …’

  ‘If we could. That’s putting it straight. If we could stand in the way we would. But … as we’ve said, the hills have gone, your company, we believe, now being the owner. We can only repeat what we’ve said by letter. If you go ahead, which I suppose we can’t prevent, then it won’t be through the front. Not through here.’

  ‘I’ll explain about that, about access from behind. Access from behind is … not impossible, but almost. Certainly not desirable. We need to get people in, quick …’

  (Dollarman)

  ‘… from all parts of the world. Mostly on arranged tours. Every detail taken care of. And need to be able to get them in, get them accommodated, comfortable …’

  (Minus the dollar)

  ‘… and they … people don’t want to be travelling all those extra miles. Costly for them, costly for us. Then when they leave … of course we want to be able to move them … as conveniently as possible. But apart from all that, and even more important as far as smooth running goes, is services, and workers. This is the main area of concern, why we have to get in and out quickly. It’s costly, for people getting to work, for the trucks and vehicles coming in every day. There’d have to be miles of new road. And apart from costs there’s time. But with good access, with your say-so we could be into it, in part, next season …’

  ‘Well as we’ve said, these ideas are not welcome to us people here. We can’t stop you from setting up … what you’ve outlined, on what is now your land. But, I have to say very strongly, on behalf of us all here – we’ll never let this house be moved. Never. Even if we could allow that, then there is the piece of land behind here where our dead are buried, which you would need also. That is a sacred site, as we’ve said in our letters. Our dead lie there. You will never get anyone to agree to it. No words …’

  ‘I hope I’ve made it clear. There would be no damage. Your hall …’

  ‘Whare tipuna. Ancestral house …’

  ‘… would be put on trucks, transported, no cost to you. Set down exactly as it is now. No damage whatever. Two days from start to finish. And your cemetery. There’s no real worry, let me assure you. Well it’s nothing new, it’s been done often enough before. A new site, somewhere nearby. And we’ve already had a think about this. All laid out, properly lawned, fenced, everything taken care of, everything in place …’

  (Toe bone connected to your jaw bone …)

  ‘… and you’ll be well paid …’

  (And there’s the worry of it all)

  ‘… for your land.’

  ‘Mr Dolman, no amount of money …’

  ‘Well now wait a minute. We have, since our previous communication, had another look at the figures. I’d like to …’

  ‘Mr Dolman, I know we’re hurrying you, but it’s only fair that you should know. There is nothing you can say, no words, no amount of money …’

  ‘But look. I’m not sure that you have fully understood, and this is something I haven’t pointed out previously. Your land here would skyrocket. Your value would go right up …’

  (Dollarman. There’s the worry of it all …)

  ‘You would have work, plus this prime amenity. On your doorstep, so to speak …’

  ‘We already have …’

  ‘Work …’

  ‘On our doorsteps …’

  ‘And a prime amenity which is land …’

  ‘Prime amenities of land and sea and people, as well as …’

  ‘A million dollar view, so to speak, that …’

  ‘Costs nothing.’

  ‘Everything we want and need is here.’

  ‘Well yes, yes of course. It’s a great little spot. But maybe you have not seen its full potential. I’m not talking just about tourists now. I mentioned before the family people. I’m talking about giving families, school children, an opportunity to view our sea life …’

  ‘The dolphins come every second summer …’

  ‘Maybe so, but not for everyone, and not close, where people can see …’

  ‘Close enough to be believed.’

  ‘I mean this way the public would have constant access. Our animals could be viewed any time. There would be public performances …’

  ‘Every second summer is public enough …’

  ‘And the seals …’

  ‘One comes now and again, then goes …’

  ‘Killer whales. You’d be denying people …’

  ‘The chance to watch you lay your head between its jaws. For money …’

  ‘Denying people this access, this facility.’

  ‘We’ve never stopped people coming here, never kept anyone out …’

  ‘Denying families, and school children, their pleasures.’

  ‘We’ve never told anyone to get off the beach or to stop catching fish. We’ve never stopped them cooking themselves in the sun, or prevented them from launching their boats. We’ve always allowed people to come here freely and we’ve often helped them out in bad weather. And, you know, these people – the families, the campers, the weekend fishing people – they’d back us up on this. They wouldn’t like to see it all happen. They wouldn’t like it.’

  ‘We’re not getting very far with this are we? I mean you invited me here and … I must say I expected you people to be more accommodating …’

  ‘Not so accommodating as to allow the removal of our wharenui, which is our meeting place, our identity, our security. Not so accommodating as to allow the displacement of the dead and the disruption of a sacred site.’

  ‘I didn’t expect people to be unreasonable …’

  ‘Unreasonable? Perhaps it is yourself that is being unreasonable if you think we would want pollution of the water out there, if you think we would want crowds of people, people that can afford caviare and who import salmon, coming here and using up the fish …’

  ‘And jobs …’

  ‘As we’ve told you, we have work. You want us to clean your toilets and dig your drains or empty your rubbish bins but we’ve got more important …’

  ‘I didn’t say … And I wasn’t … And you’re looking back, looking back, all the time.’

  ‘Wrong. We’re loo
king to the future. If we sold out to you what would we be in the future?’

  ‘You’d be well off. You could develop land, do anything you want.’

  ‘I tell you if we sold to you we would be dust. Blowing in the wind.’

  ‘Well I must say I find it difficult to talk sense …’

  (We notice …)

  ‘One puff of the wind and that’s it. And who is the first to point the finger then, when our people are seen to be broken and without hope? There’s upset all round …’

  ‘Not so, not so. I mean I really believe that you people … have come a long way …’

  ‘Wrong again. We haven’t come a long way at all. All we’ve done, many of us, is helped you, and people like you, get what you want. And we’re all left out of it in the end. We’ve helped build a country, all right. Worked in its factories, helped build its roads, helped educate its kids. We’ve looked after the sick, and we’ve helped the breweries and the motor firms to make their profits. We’ve helped export our crayfish and we’ve sent our songs and dances overseas. We’ve committed our crimes, done our good deeds, sat in Parliament, got educated, sung our hymns, scored our tries, fought in wars, splashed our money about …’

  ‘And you put all the blame …’

  ‘Blaming is a worthless exercise. That would really be looking back. It’s now we’re interested in. Now, and from now on.’

  ‘Well then, that’s what I mean. Why the concern with what’s gone? It’s all done with.’

  ‘What we value doesn’t change just because we look at ourselves and at the future. What we came from doesn’t change. It’s your jumping-off place that tells you where you’ll land. The past is the future. If we ever had to move our tipuna it would be for our own reasons, some danger to the area, some act of God. It would not be for what you call progress, or for money …’

  ‘It’s necessary in today’s terms, money.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with money as long as we remember it’s food not God. You eat it, not worship it …’

  ‘Better too much than not enough, as they say.’

  ‘Either way, too much or too little, you can become a slave.’

  ‘Just as you can become a slave to past things. And to superstition … and all that … hoo-ha.’

  ‘We have prepared a meal in the wharekai. You are welcome to eat before you go.’

  ‘I’ll go then. But I hope you’ll all think about what we’ve discussed here today. There are ways. I’m a man who gets what he wants, and you should think about that. Have a look at the advantages to yourselves, to your children. I mean you’ve got something we require. We could work on a deal that would be satisfactory to all.’

  ‘Something you require, yet you already have land, lots of land …’

  ‘We need this corner or the whole thing could fall through.’

  ‘We give it to you and we fall through. We’re slaves again, when we’ve only just begun to be free.’

  14

  Toko

  I have my own story about when the Dollarman came. Our stories were changing. It is a story of a feeling and a knowing.

  It is not the story of the Dollarman’s first visit. He came back some months after his first visit, and he came back again and again bringing one person and then another, and each person he brought looked like a twin of himself and had a twin story to tell. The talk was always the same, and nothing became different because of their coming.

  All of the people were proud of our Uncle Stan when the Dollarman came with all his money and his words, because he had words to match the Dollarman’s words, and he had treasure enough to match the Dollarman’s money.

  Then one day the man came and said that work was to begin. They had had to minimise their plans, he said, because the access they had was not good access. Because of our lack of co-operation and foresight, he said, his company was being forced to cut down for the present. For the present, he said again. But one way or another, he said, he would persuade us to have sense, to have foresight, one way or another. One way or another, one way or another he kept saying, and that was when I had the feeling of fire. I had felt the strange seeds of it before when I was a child and my mother Roimata had held me close and felt afraid for me. But now I was not what you would call a child.

  The fire began deep inside me and the redness of it went through me and leapt and scattered against the walls. The wood fathers and the wood mothers coloured and writhed, and their eyes were pinkish and flickering. There it was, and then it was gone. I was torched with the meaning of it all.

  There was in the house a drawing in of breath, and a sighing. There were sharp shouted words too, from my sister Tangimoana, though most of the people thought that this was not a right thing for her to do in the house of Rongo.

  My father said that he was not sorry that the plans had been minimised, and wished that the man would leave the land for the people to enjoy as it was. ‘It is an amenity as it is now, and always has been,’ Hemi said.

  Our Uncle Stan spoke about foresight. ‘We have our eyes,’ he said. ‘We have our eyes, and after years of trying to please others we’re going on our own, and we can see. There’s no lack of foresight, as you put it. It’s because we have foresight that we will not ever, not ever, let the land go. Take away the heart, the soul, and the body crumbles.’

  But the man thought it was only words – words without thinking or meaning, words not chosen with care. ‘We’ll see,’ the man said. ‘We’ll see about it.’

  After that we had to send letters giving all our objections to the plans. These plans were not to do with the annexing of our land because our land could not be annexed. But they were to do with the excursions and watersports, the underwater zoo and the animal circus, the clapping seals, the man putting his head in the mouth of a whale, and all the things that had been planned. And when a letter came telling us how we could be involved, and how we could dress up and dance and sing twice a day and cook food in the ground, we wrote angrily in reply. Our singing and dancing was not for sale, we said, nor was our food cooked on stones. ‘Let them put themselves out on the stones to cook,’ I heard my uncle say. ‘There will always be the cooled and sound-proofed rooms for them to return to, from where they can look out over the water, silly as fantails and talking loud, but from where they do not hear the boat motors screaming. They won’t hear the screaming,’ he said. ‘They’ve got no ears for the screaming.’

  He said those things because he was angry and because he knew that the land and sea were an amenity already.

  As we were ‘objectors’ there were other meetings to attend. We all went to where the meetings were held, all of us, to make the place full. We were not the only objectors because there were fishermen and weekend boat people, and environmentalists. Tangimoana brought some of her friends from university. They made a lot of noise too, which some of the family were not pleased about. So the chambers were full of people and noise, and the suit men were fanning themselves with envelopes and papers.

  It was easy to understand why the suit men were in favour of the development because it would mean large numbers of summer visitors to the area, and that meant ‘moving forward’ if you could think of it that way. And even when it was not summer there would be good bargains for families and schools going to see the man’s head in the mouth of a whale, and porpoises leaping two by two through burning circles and having smiling faces like high-wire-walking people and magic men. Smiling, smiling, but nothing to be known from their eyes.

  And there would be profits for businesses, high rents, new transport companies, new eating places, golf and squash and saunas, and everything to interest the golden people.

  But there were two different parts. There was one part where we were objectors because we were anxious about the land and sea. The hills and sea did not belong to us but we wished to see them kept clean and free. We could only be objectors along with others who liked to swim and camp and fish, and who did not want the sea or land changed. We, lik
e them, did not want the company to make zoos and circuses in the sea, or to put noise and pollution there, or to line the shore with palaces and castles, and souvenir shops, or to have restaurants rotating above the sea, lit up at night like star crafts landing their invaders on the shore.

  Because soon there would be no fish, only pet ones that you went in lit underground tunnels to see at shark-feeding time, or any time you wanted. If you paid.

  Well we wanted the fish to be in the sea like ordinary fish, the stingrays to roam in the evenings as they always do. We wanted our eyes to know the place where they would meet the tide whether it was low or high.

  My father Hemi said that the land and sea was our whole life, the means by which we survived and stayed together. ‘Our whanau is the land and sea. Destroy the land and sea, we destroy ourselves. We might as well crack open our heads, take the seed, and throw it on the flame.’

  Then next there was our own land with our own carved house built by the people long before, and carved by a man who had given life and breath. This house of his, of ours, carried forward the stories of the people of long ago, but told about our lives today as well. There were crayfish, eels, moki and codfish all made into patterns in our house. There were karaka trees, pohutukawa, ngaio, nikau and kakaho, and patterns made from sea waves, rocks and hills, and sun, rain and stars. There were patterns made out of crying and knowledge and love and quarrelling. There was a pattern, or a person, for every piece of our lives. The house was polished and loved by my first mother Mary every day.

  And behind the house is where the dead are buried. These were the places wanted by the money men, that they would pay thousands of dollars to have. These were the places that the council people tried to assist the money men to get from us. My mother Roimata said that they think differently in their heads and have different importances.

  But we would not let them take our land, or move our house or our dead, no matter how often the gold man came with his anger and his different way of thinking in his head. My brother Manu was afraid of him and called out in sleep. My brother James was not afraid, and listened carefully so that he would know. My sister Tangi was not afraid of the man but she did have fear. I, like my sister, was not afraid of the man but did have fear because of a special knowing. I did not call out in sleep as my brother did, and I did not call out in anger as my sister did, but I had a special knowing that gave me fear.