ACL 1001
Reading Contemporary Fiction
Semester 1 2010

Lecture 7
Witi Ihimaera and The Uncle's Story

This lecture will discuss the twin narratives in Witi Ihimaera's The Uncle's Story: the coming-out narrative and the narrative of Maori cultural identity. It will provide a postcolonial reading of Witi Ihimaera's novel. Essential Reading :

  • Margaret Meklin and Andrew Meklin, �This Magnificent Accident: An Interview with Witi Ihimaera', The Contemporary Pacific, 16, 2 (Fall 2004): 358-366.

  • Sandra Tawake, �Cultural rhetoric in coming-out narratives: Witi Ihimaera's The Uncle's Story ', World Englishes 25, ¾ (2006): 373-380.

History

  • Aotearoa � settled by Polynesians around 950-1130 AD
    Legend of Maui     -- points to a great tradition of self-generation in Maori storytelling

  • 1769 � James Cook arrived in Aotearoa/New Zealand; process of European colonization began

  • 6 February, 1840 � Treaty of Waitangi signed

  • Maori Wars

  • Aotearoa/New Zealand granted Independence in 1911

Current Situation for Maori Culture

  • Maori population: estimated at 652,900 in 2009

  • 2.6 births per Maori woman � population is growing faster than European population

  • 42% of Maori have Maori language speaking skills

  • Those who speak Maori well tend to be in the over 55 age bracket

  • (www.stats.gov.nz/)

  • Maori language closest to languages spoken in the Cook Islands and Tahiti.

  • Currently spoken by approx. 160, 000 people; 4% of NZ's population

  • Maori language suffered in competition with English

  • �Maori must count as an endangered language, since a very large part of intergenerational transmission has ceased' (Harlow, 2007, p. 2)

Oral Tradition

  • Maori culture was oral. Pre-colonial contact � �rich orally transmitted and performed �literature�' (Harlow, p. 6)

  • British missionaries wrote Maori language in English. Maori grammar was published in 1840 and used to convert Maori to Christianity.

  • Maori language; Maori art; Maori community life; religion; and land

  • Genealogy � very important to the preservation of Maori culture

Maori written tradition

  • Used the written word to preserve the oral tradition e.g Whakapapa books. Preservation and recovery are vital aspects of Maori cultural activism.

  • Newspapers for Maori readership have been published since 1850s

  • Department of Maori Affairs produced a journal, titled Te Ao Hou/The New World . Marketed as a marae (Maori meeting house) on paper
    • �Marae refers to all the buildings and open spaces in a Maori community facility. Typically, a contemporary marae contains a carved meeting house (whare whakairo) that represents and embodies the community's principal ancestor, an open courtyard in front of the house (marae tea), and a dining hall (whare kai)' (Allen, 2001)

Witi Ihimaera

  • Born in Gisborne NZ on 7 February 1944

  • Married a Pakeha woman

  • subsequently came out as a Gay man

  • Academic and dimplomat

  • Doesn't live in his community

Ihimaera is probably the pre-eminent Maori writer. He was the first one to have a novel and a collection of stories published.

  • Pounamu, Pounamu (1972)

  • Tangi (1973

  • Patricia Grace's first collection in 1975.

Ihimaera's stories are typically about Maori men bridging two cultures -- with some degeree of individual success. While having a rural setting the collection introduces the idea of the city.

His work develops the idea that it is important for Maori to learn the Pakeha ways and then turn that knowledge into a cultural advantage or even weapon for Maori.

It also develops the idea that Maori identity is something that needs to be reclaimed.

The Uncle's Story

Recovery is a major aspect of The Uncle's Story, a novel that looks at two identities and how they mesh/clash

  • Maori

  • Gay

Maori

  • Use of Language: we are hit with a gentle barrage of Maori words and phrases.
    �Self-expression is a prerequisite of self-respect' (Wendt cited by Keown, 2007)

  • Maori Mythology: Hei-Tiki

  • Genealogy: whakapapa

  • Importance of Land

  • Gender relations in Maori culture

  • Masculinity: war; stallions; prostitutes; mateship

  • Criticism and Celebration of Maori culture

  • Contemporary issues affecting Indigenous people

Trope of the Warrior Maori � reputation as a fierce warrior culture

  • �land wars' � 1860s and 1870s � inflicted heavy casualities on European forces

  • Involvement in wars, such as Vietnam � pride in warrior culture; fighting alongside the Pakeha

  • Maori Battalion

Maori writers drawing on trope:

  • Patricia Grace � Tu (2004);

  • Hone Tuwhare � anti-Vietnam poetry (1972);

  • Alan Duff � Once Were Warriors

  • The Uncle's Story � reveals a history of Maori involement in NZ armed forces but it is also is critical of war. The hypocrisy of the generals who use the Maori troops but see them as savages; the constant overstatement of the importance and justness of the war in the face of contradictory facts. (p 56, 226)

Exploring homosexual identity in The Uncle's Story

  • The Uncle's Story is also a coming out narrative. Three characters are forced by circumstances to reveal their homosexuality either to themselves or others during the course of the novel.

    • Michael is urged to come out by his boyfriend, Jason (p22). Jason is an interesting character because (as Rob Scott argues) he is so melodramatically drawn. I wonder whether he is just a tool for Ihimaera because he triggers a serious set of questions for Michael that go beyond single-dimensional gay questions and take us into the fraught world of Maori homosexuality.

    • Sam comes out much to his peril in a time and place that has so few havens for gay men. Indeed his death is very much an indirect result of his coming out.

    • Cliff is forced to come out at least to himself but he does promise Michael to reveal all to his family in due course.

    • Patty?

  • Maori attitudes to masculinity and homosexuality. (p.155)

    • �The mana of a man, his value in Maori culture, was in his fighting power and his warrior tradition. It was all symbolised in a man's cock. It, as much as his fighting club, personified all that a man was�' (p. 155)

  • Importance of Family: rather than allowing the ruling notion of family to proscribe against homosexuality, Ihimaera attempts to describe a new way of being both Gay and Maori,

    • a new kind of family or tribe of �two spirit people� (p 296)

  • generational attitudes to homosexuality: Sam's story, Michael's story. If Michael's family is angry about his sexuality, Sam's family were outraged beyong the edge of reason. When Sam is flogged by his father the writing is some of the most visceral I have read.

When narratives collide

The twin narratives of this novel do not sit in harmony. The main tension of the novel is generated by the contrast between gay and Maori life. Michael leaves the Maori rural life for the gay city life and he is unable to reconcile his two identities (p 27)

�What matters most to you, Michael? Being Maori, or being Gay?' (p. 28)

And it's not simply a matter of being both because Maori and gay Pakeha identities might be incompatible. As Michael's friend Roimata says:

I only wish, Michael, dear, that you would see that you've been colonised twice over. First, by the Pakeha. Second, by the gay Pakeha�(p.131)

1. The war section is a bit gung-ho. There's not a lot of direct reflection on the morality of war for example -- though there is some reflection on its beauty (112-113)

2. The role of horses

Plagiarism response