“Stan was on one of his political raves, going on about rare people being just as important as rare birds. Only by rare people it turned that he meant the racial minorities of this country, especially the Maori.”
“I agree with him about the Maori,” she said quietly.
“Do you really,” he said quizzically, “even with the hold-ups?” Then he went on quickly without waiting for an answer. “Well, Kevin, like so many other people, didn’t. I’ve never seen a quiet shy chap get so worked up as he did then. It seemed as if he had some phobia about Maori claims to mountains and rivers under the Treaty of Waitangi. For the rest of the trip, we wished we hadn’t been on an island.”
“So Stan won’t be too happy about Kevin making the discovery.”
“That’s the understatement of the year!”
For some reason Kate couldn’t stop thinking about Stan.
“What’s the news about him and Bill?”
“Apparently they left a note at the Waiwawa Hut saying that they were going out another way. Mangaororongo Station.”
“That’s on the Gisborne side, isn’t it?
“It’s tough but they’ll make it.”
Though she heard John’s reassuring words, she was not entirely convinced. There was something wrong with the chemistry between Stan and Kevin. Stan was like a bomb waiting to explode. You could never quite tell how he would react.
CHAPTER 5
“The god of the night has been appeased. The sacred bird has been returned to the land of the living.”
The distinguished-looking white-haired man leaned on his tokotoko in the ornately carved porch of the meeting house at Te Kaha. As he did so, he looked towards the great ranges which loomed up behind the little eastern Bay of Plenty coastal settlement.
They were the gift of Tane and Papatuanuku, Te Whanau-a-Apanui tribal land which reached from the eastern Bay of Plenty coast to the western watershed of the Raukumara Ranges. It was not owned but held in stewardship to be shared then passed on. Because his people had joined Major Ropata Wahawaha of Ngati Porou to fight with the Government forces against the Hauhau, their land had not been confiscated. The adjoining Whakatohea were not so fortunate.
Generation after generation had loved the deep shadowy clefts of rivers and valleys, the foaming water that roared through the dark rocks, the mysterious up-sweeping forested ridges, the great razor-sharp rocky peaks piercing the summer sky. They were a source of kai: sweet pork in the ferny hollows, eels in the deep pools, plump kereru, fleshy karaka berries. Where the red-barked totara grew strong on the ridges, there was timber for their waka and their houses. Here were to be discovered the rongo-ma-tane, the traditional medicines by which diseases were healed.
But you never knew with the younger generation now. The Pakeha way was different – wanting things for yourself all the time. He feared that they would listen to those who did not understand the wairua, the spirit of the land.
The huia would bring back the wisdom of the elders, the wisdom in which he had been trained from his boyhood. As senior kaumatua of Te Whanau-a-Apanui he had welcomed it as a member of their tribe. It was their special taonga or treasure because it had been found on their land. The mana of the royal bird had added to their mana. They would extend to it their mana-iki, their love and welcome and hospitality.
He had been informed by the Director-General as soon as the huia had been discovered. After he had spoken with his fellow elders, some of them had travelled down to the foothills of the Tararua near Palmerston North where the huia had last been sighted in 1907. When they returned, the iwi had held a ceremony at Te Kaha to welcome back the royal bird. The place of its departure and the place of its return had been noted.
Now it remained to explore the kaitiakitanga, the role of duty and obligation in protecting this taonga. The iwi would have a hui under the kaupapa atawhai to discuss a national recovery plan which the Director-General was going to implement. It had to agree to any proposal to remove the huia from its tribal area. It would also be involved in the upholding of the rahui, the exclusion of hunters and dogs from the sanctuary area which had already been gazetted.
It was strange though, the valley where it had been found. There was already a rahui there. Not only was it probably the most remote and inaccessible valley in the Raukumara, but it had a fearsome reputation. Some years ago a young member of the whanau was believed to have ventured there but on his return had died mysteriously. He had known the family well, especially the boy’s grandmother, and there was much sadness among them.
But that was not all. The knuckles of his hands on the tokotoko stiffened and whitened.
Three years ago he had seen it, the tutumaiao. It was over those same ranges. He remembered the screams from the women and the fear he felt as he and the other elders huddled together in its eerie red glow.
He remembered how the whole settlement was filled with accusations as each family accused the other of a breach of tapu. Who had been careless and built on an urupa or burial ground or disregarded a sacred place, a wahi tapu? He and the other elders had tried to calm the people and had searched a long time for the defilement. But they had found nothing.
Was it just a coincidence that in the last three years there had been two serious rafting accidents on the Motu, both involving fatalities? People said that they had both been caused by the freak midday storms which thundered and flashed among those ominous towering rocky peaks in the heart of the ranges. He saw in his mind’s eye the turbulent swirling flash floods which would afterwards have surged down the dark and gloomy gorges into the Motu.
Then there had been the pig hunters who had never returned, both experienced men, and the fishermen drowned off Pataratara, and the maize and the kumara crops which had failed.
But now all this was to be set aside. The rediscovery of the royal bird was a good omen. The ceremony which they held for it would restore kotahitanga, the unity of all creation, the harmony of the spiritual forces. The huia was the bird of thunder which came from Whaitiri, the god of lightning, and the pet of Whaitiri’s grandson, Tawhaki, who with his companion bird, the kotuku, fetched the basket of knowledge from the upper heaven.
There was trouble now with some of the Maori people, fortunately not with his people. The bird of thunder would intercede with Papa and Tane. It would bring Te Aomarama, the world of light, and the land would be healed.
Kate, who came from a farm at Opotiki, had always taken an interest in Maoritanga. Boarding at a well-known Anglican school in Auckland, she had been surprised that there was no Maori language and customs course. However, at Auckland University she was able to take this course as part of her commerce degree. After her graduation she had spent two years in London at the head office of a large multinational accounting firm. Returning to New Zealand she had obtained a position in the Auckland branch of this firm and was now an audit manager.
A few days after the announcement of the rediscovery she had had a call from the conservator of the Wildlife Service at Auckland with which she was involved as a volunteer. “We’re getting together a programme about the huia to show around schools and other groups. We’ve been flooded with requests. One of the things we want to talk about is the significance to the Maori. I know you’re up with Maoritanga. Would you mind giving us a hand with the advocacy side?”
“I’d like to do it,” she had replied, “but my holidays are taken up with helping you chaps ringing birds on Little Barrier.”
“Don’t worry, we’ve got bags of volunteers for those projects. We thought you could make up a talk with some slides and go around the children’s holiday programmes and there’s lots of community groups like Rotary who have been enquiring.”