In addition to the exploration of the ecological and gender issues, there is the post- colonial investigation, a continuing preoccupation for the author as a man strug- gling “with the dilemma of being 0ƗRUL in a postmodern world” (Ihimaera, “Magnificent Accident” 359). From :KƗQJƗUƗ Rawiri travels to Australia. Ihi- maera uses Rawiri to provide a focal point of view for exploring the issues of post-coloniality in Aotearoa-New Zealand and other Pacific countries. Alice Te Punga Somerville provides a comprehensive investigation into this section of the
Chapter 2: Gender and Inheritance inThe Whale Rider
novella. Urban migration for many0ƗRULcauses a fracture from traditional ways. The move to the cities and away from papakainga (home lands) includes di- asporic0ƗRUL who gather in Australian cities such as Sydney due to its relatively close proximity to New Zealand, and its promises of wealth. During his time in Sydney, Rawiri writes of the cousins who are reluctant for their family to see the way they live, “But always, in the early morning, when the sunlight was begin- ning to crack the midnight glamour, the memories would come seeping through. ‘How’s our Nanny? How’s our Koro? If you write to them, don’t tell them that you saw us like this.’ […] they weren’t embarrassed, but hiding the way they lived was one way of maintaining the respect” (51-52). Away from familial obli- gation or the collective vision of the tribe, individual pursuits can take hold. Engaging in activities like prostitution become part of the fabric of big cities like Sydney, though the price “in [their] search for fame, fortune, power and success” comes at a cost that threatens the respect of the ZKƗQDX (52). Sydney thereby becomes a “cloak” under which they can hide the way they live and maintain the respect of theirZKƗQDX
Rawiri settles into city life and moves into a flat with a friend Jeff whom he met playing rugby league. While they are living in Sydney, the racial differ- ence between them is submerged. Their friendship is light-hearted and humorous and they share the same interests in rugby league and surfing. Thus the relation- ship of coloniser and indigene is not highlighted, and Jeff is not racially positioned until the two men move to Papua New Guinea. Although Rawiri’s description of his friend’s background parallels his own in that like him Jeff shoulders the burdensome ambitions of the parents and elders, Rawiri is about to discover the difference between them. This is a difference that views the Pacific
Chapter 2: Gender and Inheritance inThe Whale Rider
on the basis of continued colonial exploitation, on the one hand, and identification with it on the basis of Indigeneity, on the other hand. Jeff’s whiteness is made explicit for the first time when he is summoned home by his parents. His mother says, “Your father’s […] had a run of rotten luck with the workers this year, and you know what the natives are like, always drinking” (54). His mother’s racism collapses all Indigenous people into a singular type (“natives”), and this links the specific situation in Papua New Guinea to colonial racism globally, including New Zealand, of which Rawiri himself is a “native”. Despite Rawiri’s apparent equality with his friend in Australia, over the course of two years in Papua New Guinea Jeff’s family redraws the boundaries of their relationship, aided by the explicit structures of white settler racism such as the Bridge Club (Te Punga Somerville 66).
Rawiri initially identifies with Jeff’s family and their project of domesti- cating the landscape, through the use of the personal pronoun “we”, effectively rendering himself as a collaborator:
I doubt if it can ever be tamed of its temperatures, soaring into sweat zones, or its terrain, so much of a crucible of crusted plateaus and valleys, and its tribalism. Butwe tried, and I thinkwe won some respite from the land, even if only for a short time. (56-57; emphasis added)
However, he also draws on a particularly0ƗRULview of their effect on the “coun- tryside” and in this manner he differentiates himself from the colonial intrusion, “Man may carve his moko on the earth but, once he ceases to be vigilant, Nature will take back what man has once achieved to please his vanity” (57). Because the moko is a form of tattoo that reflects genealogies and histories, labour and the physical structures of the plantation become an expression of identity and history.
Chapter 2: Gender and Inheritance inThe Whale Rider
Rawiri recognizes that the carving of this genealogy and history will be ultimately resisted by the landscape when “Nature…take[s] back what man had once achieved” (57).
At first he describes his observations of Papua New Guinea politics as an outsider, marvelling at “the attempts by the Government to transplant national identity and customs onto the colonial face of the land” (56). He then proceeds to outline the barriers to the transplantation, turning to0ƗRULterminology. The first barrier is that there was no pan-Papua-New-Guinean national identity, no concept of a homogenous nation, but rather that of a nation possessed of an innate diversi- ty, arising from the impressive array of “iwi” groups who followed their own specific protocols and spoke their own language based on their tribal groups. Secondly, there were many outside influences on their inheritance, and the new technology demanded that the people had to live “one thousand years in one lifetime”, from loincloth to the three-piece suit and computer knowledge in a simple step (57). In a parallel discourse to Rawiri’s, Porourangi also questions 0ƗRULability to cope with the new challenges and technology in the new century, which echoes the claims about “steps” taken by Indigenous people in Papua New Guinea. The juxtaposition of these two conversations about technology and pre- paredness for certain futures suggests a parallel between the situation of Indigenous peoples in Papua New Guinea and Aotearoa.
Rawiri’s test of where he belongs in the colonial-Indigenous divide comes when the car driven by Jeff, in which he is one of the occupants, strikes Bernard, a “native” of Papua New Guinea. Not only is Bernard a friend of Rawiri, but a young man full of promise, educated in the Western system. Rawiri’s position is no longer among the “we’ who “tame” the countryside, but rather he is cast in a
Chapter 2: Gender and Inheritance inThe Whale Rider
limbo status as the car crunches into Bernard, throwing the latter into the air before he smashes into the ground. Te Punga Somerville tells us that Rawiri is forced to confront the impossibility of occupying a middle space within the sharp- ly binarised hierarchy of Papua New Guinea’s colonial context – he must stay in the blood-splattered car, or he must get out (Te Punga Sommerville 168). Rawiri’s response is unequivocal:
‘Let me out,’ I hissed. ‘Let me out. That’s no native out there. That’s Bernard.’ A cous is a cous. (60-61)
Rawiri’s decision to leave the vehicle speaks to the realisation of the impossibility of occupying this middle space between native and white, while Jeff’s action of driving away from the fatally wounded Bernard is an articulation of his ac- ceptance of the racist and violent colonial project in Papua New Guinea. The colonial system in Papua New Guinea operates to protect the hierarchies in place, as the decision of the inquest suggests:
It was an accident, of course. A native walking carelessly on the side of the road. A cloud covering the moon for a moment. The native shouldn’t have been there anyway. (61)
This decision lays the blame for Bernard’s death squarely at this own feet, merely referring to him as a “native walking carelessly” on the road. Having made the connection -- that Rawiri is himself interchangeable with any other “native”, he heads home. This event is one of the three events connected to Rawiri that pre- cipitates his return home. The second is the birth of Porourangi’s second daughter, which Rawiri recognises as another obstacle to leadership and succes- sion in Koro Apirana’s eyes. The third sign is the portent of a giant whale with a gleaming moko on his head seen in a strange cloud formation (61-62). This last
Chapter 2: Gender and Inheritance inThe Whale Rider
omen supports Rawiri’s messenger-like status as one who recognizes the signs throughout the novel.
Though Rawiri is not a native of Papua New Guinea, or white, but one occupying the in-between space belonging to neither group, his stint there serves as a comment on the postcolonial position in New Zealand. Ihimaera is highlight- ing that 1980s Papua New Guinea has its own unique challenges, where the Indigenous people have been confronted with advancing from primitive practices to modernity in the space of one lifetime. The incident in which Bernard is run down by Jeff unintentionally, but left to die quite deliberately on the side of the road, is testament to the value a native holds in his own country according to the coloniser. Thus Rawiri’s foray in to Papua New Guinea provides him with an example of a country where the coloniser and Indigene are binarised with power sharply in favor of the coloniser. Within New Zealand the power structures are still defined by3ƗNHKƗbut the value of the comparison between the two countries is in the consideration of the advancement of technology. While Papua New Guinea has had to adjust from the loincloth to the three piece suit in one lifetime, 0ƗRULhave had four to five generations to respond to the technology of the3ƗNe- KƗand the colonial agenda. It appears the inference to be drawn from Ihimaera’s comparison between the two countries is that the value of Indigenous lives is given to us through the lens of the coloniser. Assimilate to the3ƗNHKƗand modern ways, and inevitably the position of the “native”, as Bernard’s case clearly shows, will always be as a lesser copy of the master race.
Chapter 2: Gender and Inheritance inThe Whale Rider