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WAI PASIFIKA INDIGENOUS WAYS IN A CHANGING CLIMATE
Published by Otago University Press, 2021 ISBN 9781990048074 |
Distinctions of the nature of water are under discussion in David Young’s latest book. His focus is on indigenous voices in the Pacific, his lens fresh-water.
Throughout, the study of Polynesian place especially, ideas are juxtaposed with personal experience at the interface of water-nature. Separate pathways of ancient knowledge are explored, which appear to accord, not just with each other, but, as it turns out with modern scientific understanding. Polynesians, like those of and by Oceania generally, were in a state of heightened awareness of nature’s moods and inter-relationships, but in ways that took account of both their profundity and subtlety. Their’s was a whole-view of the world and their place in it. For Māori, the workings of god Tāne Pukohurangi, ‘the god of mist, ice, spring and snow’ are fundamental to the waters of life. |
Author David Young
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New Zealand Blue Duck (Whio) Photo Richard Sidey . |
David also expresses personal experiences of his relationship to water:
‘I have a number of memories of pure joy, of water singing in the veins. Once, I felt this on the Manganui-a-te-Ao, a pitching, cleaving, heaving thread of life, one of those rivers that bind the snows of Ruapehu maunga (mountain) to the upper Whanganui River … a sanctuary for the whio (blue duck) and a bio-indicator of river health. … I stood in stillness above the valley, its river snaking away beyond me and through my ears came the river’s song – a persistent susurration, pulsing through my skull. All that was joy, contentment and a sense of moment.’ |
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The book opens with the author sensing water under a sequoia tree, a giant redwood reliant on fog’s moisture blowing in from the Pacific Ocean. It moves to the Polynesian connections to different water aspects such as mist, recited whakapapa and origins, chanted by Maori and Hawaiians. Explanations of fog and water uptake from old orally-transmitted knowledge; the capture of fog in the Atacama desert and the scientific research by Professor Alan Mark of snow tussock, New Zealand.
Responses by the oldest continuous culture in the world to water’s absences and presence hard at the western edge of the Pacific – that of Australian Aboriginals, inhabiting the Red Continent demonstrates the elegance and sophistication of their customary ways. David’s understanding and exploration on freshwater, within a cultural, historical and ecological context started with the Whanganui River. The river stands across time as genius loci for the many strands of this book, although certainly not without references to other tribes, waterways and practices in Aotearoa.
The discussion of Hawai`i–Aotearoa connections is viewed through the cultures and freshwater on two somewhat different archipelago, whilst two other Polynesian societies, in Samoa and Rapanui (Easter Island), are explored through big themes around water and life. Right now, the most urgent discussion is undoubtedly Micronesian, with Kiribati’s low-lying atolls at the frontline of climate change.
There are confronting and unexpected parallels drawn between Oregon State, USA and New Zealand on ‘the other side’ of the Pacific. Oregon’s freshwater life is explored, with an emphasis on the ecological. Salmon rivers figure strongly in a context of broken habitat and rapidly exiting wild salmon. Wai Pasifika offers a way into indigenous approaches, an appreciation of nature, of a need for a change in consciousness and respect for life and Earth’s life-giving systems.
The tide comes in and the tide goes out Kiribati's low-lying atolls are at the front line of climate change.
Photo Richard Sidey
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