2. HONOURING PARAITI
It is from this childhood survival story that I wrote White Lies, which was originally published as Medicine Woman in my 2007 collection, Ask the Posts of the House. In fact I had toyed with calling that collection ‘Medicine Woman’, but, at the last moment, chose the other title because it appeared to have more potency and gravitas.
Now comes the film directed by Mexican director Dana Rotberg. It will be the third feature film to be made from my work after Whale Rider in 2002 and Nights in the Gardens of Spain in 2010. (Known as Kawa for its American release in 2011, the latter film won a prestigious National Geographic indigenous award and was released in Germany with subtitles in 2012.) In both the novella of Medicine Woman and film of White Lies the name of Paraiti has been kept for the main character.
And, of course, there is a sequence in the film in which a young boy has manuka honey trickled down his throat so that he can breathe.
I have tried to recreate Paraiti’s late nineteenth- and early to mid-twentieth-century world in the first half of the narrative, which follows her travels with horse, mule and dog throughout the wilderness tribal lands of my childhood. Most New Zealanders will know the historical context that I refer to, involving the prophet Te Kooti Arikirangi and his followers — the Ringatu. Surely the settler country feared Te Kooti. During the early days of the Land Wars between the two races, they had wrongly imprisoned him, in 1866, on the Chatham Islands, seven days’ sail from New Zealand. He was incarcerated for two long years, but during his time there the spirit of God visited him and inspired him to create a religion, the Ringatu, and to lead the Maori people out of bondage, just as Moses had done when he defied Pharaoh and led the Israelites out of Egypt. Te Kooti and his fledgling followers escaped from the Chathams by boat, and when they landed back in Aotearoa the Pakeha militia pursued them relentlessly. In retaliation, in November 1868, Te Kooti led an attack on the military garrison at Matawhero. It was an act of war and from then on the prophet and his followers were marked; a ransom was placed on Te Kooti’s head. For ten years he evaded capture, moving swiftly from one kainga to another, always supported by his followers.
White Lies begins during these years. In it I have tried to document the world of the itinerant Maori healer, piecing it together from my own childhood experiences, local Ringatu and other informants and the scarce mentions in historic documents and other sources. My thanks to my dear mentor Maaka Jones — herself a Ringatu tohunga and versed in Maori medicine — and family and local Waituhi informants for oral stories about Paraiti and medicine women of her kind. My father, Te Haa o Ruhia, was the one who told me about traditional Maori massage and how his shoulder was set right simply by massaging the bones together; the account of Paraiti massaging her father with her loving hands at his death also comes from him. Thanks to the authors of the following books: Judith Binney’s Redemption Songs: A Life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki (Auckland University Press, 1995); Murdoch Riley and Brian Enting’s indispensable Maori Healing and Herbal Medicines (Viking Sevenseas, 1994); and Roger Neich’s Painted Histories: Early Maori Figurative Painting (Auckland University Press, 1993). Any errors of fact are mine. I am not an expert on the Ringatu or, particularly, on traditional healing and medicine, and I apologise for any inaccuracies. Thanks also to the Manukau Institute of Technology, the Arts Foundation of New Zealand and Creative New Zealand for research and funding assistance during the period I wrote the novella printed in this edition.