Chief Brent
“Hello Mrs. Chief!”, the booming voice of the Maori greeter addressed me as I stood filming the proceedings. We were on the Waitangi Treaty Grounds, the site of the 1840 treaty between the British and the Maori, which is widely considered to be the moment the New Zealand nation was born.
Unlike Australia, where my impression was of an aborigine tribe that has been largely dominated and suppressed by the colonizers, New Zealand feels like its inception was rooted in the interaction of two powerful people in their own rights - the British and the Maori. The relationship between these two peoples has been tried and tested in battle and conflict, but it has also managed to maintain a certain delicate balance that feels in a certain sense like a relationship between equals. The years that followed Waitangi have been filled with injustice and suffering, and taking away of land. However, standing at the wonderfully built out museum and the beautiful grounds, I couldn't help but be filled with a sense of awe for the dignity and warrior spirit that the Maori have managed to preserve, despite everything.
There's the biggest war canoe in the country - Ngātokimatawhaorua, the world's largest. The 35-meter-long canoe needs a minimum of 76 paddlers to handle it safely. It is made from the trunk of a single great kauri tree, whose stump stands nearby. It requires a good number of hours to soak before putting it in the water and weighs 6 tonnes when dry and 12 tonnes when wet. Queen Elizabeth requested to take a ride in the canoe in the 1960's and in the 1980's Princess Diana and Prince Charles were also taken for a ride in in during their New Zealand visit. Our guide, Sully, had a few cousins who rowed the boat that day.
Ngātokimatawhaorua, the world's largest Maori war canoe
Sully is a Maori and is very proud of his warrior heritage. He tells the story about Hone Heke, historically the most famous Maori chief, who was pivotal in convincing a lot of the Maori tribes to sign the treaty. Subsequently, he became disillusioned in the treaty and the British and led a number of rebellions that caused a few decades of turbulence on the islands. The Maori chiefs of that time were quite shrewd and curious. They wanted to develop a written alphabet for their language, similar to what they saw the Europeans had, they travelled to England and met with the King, and were generally way more interested in trading ammunition than believing what the Christian missionaries were trying to preach.
At the mission station in Kerikeri, which we visited on a rainy afternoon, we learned that the Maori chiefs were courting the missionaries and letting them build missions on their lands because in their eyes it gave them access to trading with the British crown. They perceived the missionaries simply as emissaries of the British and tolerated their religious ambitious as a necessary annoyance. Any chief who had British missionaries on his land was perceived by his enemies to have a substantial ammunition and resource advantage, so there seems to have been a bit of a competition who could get closer to the British. Some of the chiefs were disillusioned after they went to England and discovered that the missionaries were not that high on the political totem pole. And after Napoleon was defeated, all the extra muskets from the British army came on the market, with thousands of them ending up bought by the Maori who were in an arms race with each other.
Maori cultural performance
But back to our visit to the Waitangi Treati Grounds. I was very excited since Brent and I signed up for a hangi dinner - a combination of a Maori cultural performance and a dinner feast, made from roasting meat and vegetables in an earth brick pit for a whole day. The description of the hangi sounded very similar to a Hawaiian luau, down to the earth-pit roasted meat and vegetables.
We experienced two cultural performances - one on our day visit to the grounds and one during a bush walk before our hangi dinner in the evening. Brent, to my delight but not to my surprise, ended up being picked to be Chief and represent our "tribe" not once, but TWICE. During both of the performances, he was the representative of the "visitors" who got challenged by the Maori, who got to accept their peace token and who was awarded the honor seat in the performance. He also did the traditional hongi greeting with the Maori chief. It consists of touching foreheads and noses and taking a breath at the same time. Brent was even was asked to lift the lid of the fire pit with Sully, as well as lift the actual hangi tray laden with meats (pork, beef, chicken) and all kinds of vegetables from the earth pit. This is called "the lifting of the hangi" and is supposed to be a great honor.
Brent and Sully lifting the hangi basket from the hangi pit
Apparently as "Mrs Chief", I too, got to enjoy some of the benefits of being royalty. I had a prime seat in the front row during the performances and our table was called to the buffet table first as "the Chief's" table. As a funny coincidence, at our hangi table, we sat next to a family from Argentina, who hailed from the north of the country where Brent had spent a year during school in the 1990's.
If you ask Brent how come he got honored so much during the whole proceedings, he'll probably say that he was "volunteered" by me. But just for the record, I'd like to point out that although I did nudge Brent, a few other people picked him and pointed at him, and he was selected by the Maori among a number of other volunteers. I believe the Maori recognized a kindred soul and a fellow warrior spirit among the crowds :)
