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A real gem

28/12/2018

Guardians of Aotearoa: Protecting New Zealand’s Legacies
Johanna Knox & Jess Charlton

This book is a real gem. Johanna Knox interviews a range of New Zealanders and weaves their own narrative into a compelling story over a few pages; Jess Charlton has provided photographs of the subjects in their own environments or homes.
There are young and old, recent immigrants and tangata whenua, men and women. Some are already well known, but all are essentially community activists, local guardians. They reflect different communities in a geographical sense or are preserving traditions.
Of the preservationists, I was particularly interested in the story of Graham O’Keefe, who runs the ‘print shop’ at MOTAT in Auckland. This involves preserving the older forms of producing print before computers, especially the Heidelberg machines that he was an expert in and uses to teach new enthusiasts. Lloyd and Joan Whittaker have a large collection in their museum of musical instruments on Waiheke Island.
Many of the subjects are environmental activists and a lot appear to live in the Wellington region, as do Knox and Charlton. But there is also Ann Graeme who runs the Kiwi Conservation Club, and appears on the title page with her donkey. Of the younger participants, Bryce McQuillan and Angela Simpson are ecologists who have published photos of invertebrates and a specific guide to New Zealand spiders; and Helene Vivienne Fletcher who writes a blog about autoimmune disease. There is a whole group of Young Birders New Zealand based in the South Island. And an older couple, living in Golden Bay, are actively searching for the South Island Kokako.
In this sort of book there will always be particular favourites. I was particularly interested in Helen Dew from Carterton, which is the home of a ‘green dollar’ scheme, and a perhaps unlikely bastion of alternative currency concepts. But I was particularly captivated by the story of the ‘bat lady’, Catriona Gower. She has emigrated from England in search of bat species, and finds herself forming a new bat group in the Catlins, while keeping in touch with a favourite (Rose) by Skype.
The photography by Jess Charlton complements these stories wonderfully, especially in the chapter on Debbie Stewart, who has a falcon landing on her shoulder. Charlton has also mastered the creative use of lens flare, as seen on the front cover image, and in some of the portraits within the book, where she uses it as a kind of halo effect.
The book has a nicely sympathetic design for the images and a very considered layout of the text. It features progressive and well qualified subjects, but who are community based and active in their very specific fields, without wanting to seek the limelight.

Review by SA Boyce

Title: Guardians of Aotearoa: Protecting New Zealand's Legacies
Author: Johanna Knox; photography: Jess Charlton
Publisher: Bateman
ISBN: 978 -1-86953-902-3
RRP: $59.99
Available: bookshops

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Detailed descriptions of rescues

20/12/2018

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Emergency Response: Life, Death and Helicopters
by Dave Greenberg

This is a wonderful, easy to read non-fiction book describing Dave's progression from a school-hating youngster in New York, USA, to a man showing extreme determination to achieve his dream job, a crew person on Life Flight – the Westpac Rescue Helicopter service in Wellington.
   This same determination shaped the man he was to become – brave beyond words in impossible rescue missions, and a team member one hundred percent, which is so essential in critical situations. He quotes his mother “It's too bad that people have to suffer for you to be happy”, but he reconciled this with the fact that he was helping people in desperate circumstances.
   Emergency Response has a good, but simple quality of writing, with many photographs showing some of the manoeuvres Dave and his colleagues experienced.
   This book should appeal to a wide audience from ages 15+, as we all seem to have a (possibly morbid) curiosity for traumatic occurrences, and a great admiration for the brave and often fearless men and women who put their own lives on the line to rescue others. His descriptions of rescues are detailed, respectful of the parties involved, not overly gruesome, but with enough information to keep the reader's interest.
   Dave is totally honest about the few events where there were problems with potentially disastrous outcomes, how these were averted, and important lessons learned, shaping the service that runs today.
   He is very open about his feelings of hurt, rejection and then anger when his post of Wellington Operations Manager was disestablished during a restructure of the Life Flight Trust organisation. But his attitude to life and the knocks it can give you, is a wonderful example of how to cope with bitter disappointment – keep calm, assess your strengths and use them to move forward. He continued as a crew person for another two years, then accepted that after 25 years in the service it was time to hang up his helmet, proud of his contribution to the growth of Life Flight over the years.
   Obviously, in medical situations, and flying, there are many abbreviations and I found I had to keep referring to previous chapters to remind myself of what they were. Dave does explain what they are the first time he uses them, but I think it would have been beneficial to have a glossary of terms/abbreviations at the beginning, or end, of the book for a faster reference. Also, in his preface, he states he has converted all measurements to the metric system and then, on the first page of the book refers to a “forty-foot yacht”.
   However, this book gives a great insight to the rescue service, and how Dave's life was shaped by his dedication for the job. He describes his family and friends, the love he has for them, and the support they gave him over the years – so we get a picture of Dave the man as well as Dave the rescuer.

Review by Fran Hartley

Title:Emergency Response: Life, Death and Helicopters
Author: Dave Greenberg
Publisher: Penguin Random House NZ
ISBN: 978-0-14-377166-1
RRP: $40
Available: Trade Paperback (NZ/Aus), Ebook

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Stunning book excellent and accessible

15/12/2018

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Galleries of Maoriland: Artists, Collectors and the Māori World, 1880-1910
by Roger Blackley

The dates are of particular significance, as this is the period that began with the common assumption by Pākehā that Māori were a dying race, and ends at a time when the evidence of Māori ‘renaissance’ showed that the assumption was wrong. In that thirty year period the term ‘Maoriland’ for Aotearoa/New Zealand was common currency amongst Pākehā as they attempted to establish a unique identity for themselves as white New Zealanders, in part by appropriating, and frequently misinterpreting, certain aspects of Māori culture to this purpose. Much of the art of this period reflects this; but, as the author points out, the process was one in which Māori themselves were closely involved in a number of ways.
The artists Lindauer and Goldie were active during this time, and both are best known for their portraits of Māori individuals. We learn that often the Lindauer portraits were commissioned by the subjects themselves, and that many of these are still in the hands of descendants and are greatly revered. This is just one way in which the author demonstrates that Māori were at times much more than simply the subjects of European artists, but were intimately involved in decisions regarding the way they and their culture were depicted. Thus the subjects of many of the Lindauer portraits have clearly chosen their own ‘modern’ attire, distinctly different from Goldie’s subjects who are mostly dressed in traditional cloaks and holding artefacts that display them as examples of the romanticised, noble but dying race of the European imagination.
The book covers the often devious and culturally insensitive, and at times frankly fraudulent, methods of collecting and using Māori artefacts (termed ‘curios’ in the European world, but often sacred taonga, the use and display of which should have been subject to tikanga). The prime example here was probably Walter Buller, who used his position as a lawyer in the Native Land Court (and his close association with Lindauer) to build a large personal collection of art and artefacts.
We also learn of the casual racism in some of the ‘art’ of the period, and in particular that of the influential illustrator Trevor Lloyd. This section of the book is accompanied by illustrations that must surely, and necessarily, make us cringe. As something of a balance to this we are reminded that in truth Māori artists of the period were producing works that displayed a universal beauty and an intensity of drama that was probably unequalled by anything European artists in New Zealand were producing. Undeniably among the finest examples of art in the book are the panels produced by Tene Waitere for Rauru, the specially commissioned wharenui that was fraudulently spirited out of the country to finally end up in Germany. They are breath-taking, and show that Māori art was not just alive and well, but was adapting and developing in astonishing ways.
Some attention is given to literature and music, but the major emphasis is on the visual arts, and for those for whom this is their major interest the book is a treasure trove. To take just one example with a fascinating history, there is Lindauer’s portrait of Terewai Horomona (given the title ‘The Maori Poi Dancer’) that so enchanted the Prince of Wales when he saw it in 1886 at a London Exhibition that he proclaimed it one of the most beautiful pictures he had ever seen. When Buller (who had arranged for its hanging in the New Zealand Court at the Exhibition) heard of this comment, he immediately despatched it to the Prince as a gift, along with a five thousand pound contribution to the Prince’s Imperial Institute. His reward was to be created a KCMG.
This is a stunning book visually, and the text is also excellent – and accessible. The arguments are sometimes provocative, but always meticulously referenced and scholarly. It takes us along fascinating if sometimes disturbing pathways towards a greater understanding of what it meant to be colonised or coloniser, and reminds us of how fortunate we are that Māori culture plays such a large part today in determining our national cultural identity.

Review by Tony Chapelle

Title: Galleries of Maoriland: Artists, Collectors and the Māori World, 1880-1910
Author: Roger Blackley
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409357
RRP: $75
Available: bookshops

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Involved in historical story

10/12/2018

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Between Two Worlds
by A.N. Arthur

“Between Two Worlds” is an historical novel set in New Zealand in the early period of the past century heading into the uncertain world around the time of the Great War.
Here I must confess I enjoy reading historical novels as the authors usually do a lot of researching of conditions of the time and weave a story about the central characters that is totally believable. The situations may not have occurred to just one person but are taken from a set of family stories with more than a grain of truth in them.
This novel is about two young men, Samuel and Jimmy, growing up and making their way in a world fraught with poverty. We are drawn into their lives and romances then, as war is declared, the story involves not only their decisions but the feeling of their families and friends when the call to arms is made.
Some found it a big adventure, others struggled with the feelings of the conscientious objectors. Those men knew it was wrong to kill another fellow human being and by refusing they were branded cowards and treated appallingly by their fellow citizens and the Army alike. In “Between Two Worlds” we get glimpses of the treatment of these men by their fellow soldiers, and it was not a pretty sight.
We see men crazed with shell-shock who suicide in utter despair and others who somehow manage to survive as the horrors of war encompass them; and then their return home to family, physically broken in body mind and spirit.
We also get glimpses of the treatment of the Germans who lived in New Zealand at the time, and the prejudice against the Chinese. Many of these were naturalized Kiwis but were immediately branded as “enemy” and treated as such.
“Between Two Worlds” is the second book of what will be a trilogy. The first, "Orphanage Boys", is about Samuel and Jimmy when they were younger, and this book is a follow-on from their orphanage life to manhood.
I read this book in under a week as I got very involved in the story and the lives of the men and their families.
In the author’s note at the end of the book, A.N. Arthur summed it up beautifully as she states that war is not glorious or honorable. The overpowering feature of war doesn’t happen on the battlefields. It happens in our families and homes, in our communities after peace is declared and it taints each generation beyond itself.
How true is that.

Editor’s note: Orphanage Boys was reviewed by FlaxFlower in June 2017

Review by Merilyn Mary

Title: Between Two Worlds
Author: A.N Arthur
Publisher: Rangitawa Publishing
ISBN: 9780995104617
RRP: $38
Available: Hard copy and Kindle, can be ordered from the publisher, any bookstore or on Amazon

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Brim full of information

5/12/2018

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Te Kōparapara: An Introduction to the Māori
Edited by Michael Reilly, Suzanne Duncan, Gianna Leoni, Lachy Paterson, Lyn Carter, Matiu Rātima, Poia Rewi

I found this thick paperback volume of immense interest and thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in an overview of Māori in Aotearoa from pre-European times through near annihilation to regeneration and positive potential futures.
The volume was initially intended as a cogent and comprehensive introductory resource for university students at the University of Otago and it is this indeed, but the wide-ranging contents are brim full of information and personal anecdotes that will appeal to the so-called ‘average reader’. Although academically generated, the book is easy to read and comprehensively referenced, with a quite massive bibliography, copious tables, a plethora of illustrations and an abundant glossary.
I also want to point out that the book also contains valuable insights and information for the professional scholar o te ao Māori [of the Māori world]. I found myself going off to research further the fascinating story of Thomas Chaseland, an Aboriginal Australia sealer in Bass Strait in the late 1700s, as just one example.
The volume is divided into three separate yet interrelated sections, which feed into and back from one another: a reflection of the interconnected Weltanshauung of Māori. These sections are –
Part One – He Tumu – Foundations
Part Two – Tāhuhu Kōrero – Histories
Part Three – Tākiri te Ata - Futures
The tone is well balanced and sensible throughout and never emotive, given there is every reason to be if one is Māori, after the cauldrons of colonisation ransacked the race and their after-effects continue today. Think Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The facts of the matter are always presented calmly and are backed up by the extensive notes pertaining: any fingerpointing of blame is muted, but the calm statements of truth speak for themselves.
For example, the conclusion to the chapter delineating 1840 to 1863 states soberly –
New Zealand’s governors made little effort to engage Māori chiefs within the workings of the nascent state from the start of colonisation...The government’s primary relationship with Māori concerned acquiring land for Pākehā settlement...Despite the humanitarian ideals with which the Treaty had been formulated, the underlying dynamic of colonisation, as imagined by nineteenth-century Pākehā, meant that conflict, if not inevitable, was not surprising (p.208).
Another interesting aspect of the tome is that the overall approach is Ngāi Tahu in orientation and thus geographical locations, historical events, important personages and especially dialect are primarily Te Waipounamu in focus. Thus the title – he kopara is Ngāi Tahu for a bellbird, rather than he koromiko or he komako. It is refreshing and significant that this iwi is to the fore throughout and that this especial ambience in no way diminishes the content; rather it strengthens it, for all the contributors are in the same waka. I did find it odd, however, that the publisher is University of Auckland Press.
In summary, given that, “there is no single Māori reality...Māori identity is a complex issue” (p. 392-3), this book firmly reinforces the point that Māori of whatever iwi are and always have been and always will be, resilient, adaptable, innovative. They are staunch to their kaupapa, willing to stand up for their rights, culturally and therefore epistemologically distinct, and complex yet holistic in cosmology and ontological foundation. I always knew this, of course, yet this book further reinforces the point. The only issue I have is that there is not a te reo version, eh.
Ko te pai rawa atu tēnei pukapuka.

Review by Vaughan Rapatahana

Title: Te Kōparapara: An Introduction to the Māori World
Editors: Michael Reilly, Suzanne Duncan, Gianna Leoni, Lachy Paterson, Lyn Carter, Matiu Rātima, Poia Rewi
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 978 186940 867 1
RRP: $69.99
Available: bookshop

Comments

A real gem

Detailed descriptions of rescues

Stunning book excellent and accessible

Involved in historical story

Brim full of information

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