Adventure Divas (28 page)

In any case, some fearless inner calm must have been at work for Hine to use New Zealand’s national passion—rugby—as a forum for declaring the rightful place of Maori cultural heritage in her country.

“What was the fallout from singing the anthem in Maori?” I ask Hine.

“Well, at first it was quite horrific, because the whole country was brought into the debate. We knew that it would create some problems because the rugby fraternity is a very staunch one, and not particularly embracing of things Maori,” she explains.

“Well, they’d sung it in English for a hundred and sixty years. Why couldn’t it be sung in Maori?!” interjects Nanny feistily. “This is our attitude,” Nanny affirms, nodding vigorously. “
This
is our attitude.” She punctuates her conviction with an index finger to the Formica, and thereby confirms my suspicion that there is more than one diva in the kitchen.

“A comparison would be if someone were to sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in Navajo or something, with no English. And probably similar to the response when Jimi Hendrix did a pretty wild guitar version of your national anthem,” Hine says. “But it’s turned around so dramatically since then that last year I was paid by the Ministry of Education to record and perform the national anthem in Maori for schools.”

In fact, shortly after Hinewehi’s brave 1999 performance, the law was changed to make Maori an official language of the anthem, thanks in part to the support of Prime Minister Helen Clark, with whom we have a date in exactly four days. The PM supported Hine’s action amid a sea of other high-profile detractors.

“In the scheme of things, that change was quick,” I note, thinking of Malcolm Gladwell’s description of singular events that tip a balance—events that are like a match to an already existing pool of ideological gas. “Tipping points are a reaffirmation of the potential for change and the power of intelligent action,” he wrote.

“Yes, and now I think everyone expects there to be a Maori and English version,” Hine concludes, matter-of-factly, about a cultural shift ushered in by her creative action.

Sitting around eating pavlova on a blue-speckled Formica table in rural New Zealand, it’s easy to forget that Hine is a mega-star. Her hugely popular band, Oceania, fuses traditional Maori instruments with hip-hop and reggae. Their gold album, with its Maori percussion and Western-style ambient tracks, is credited with reawakening native culture and fostering a new culturally based music renaissance among youth.

Hine’s husband, George, wheels their six-year-old daughter, Hineraukatauri, who has cerebral palsy, into the kitchen. George and Hine beam at Hineraukatauri, whose pleasure at seeing all these people in her grandmother’s kitchen eclipses her inability to control her limbs. Hine credits Hineraukatauri as her muse, though she is not saccharine about her daughter’s disability.

“This sort of challenge is a real blessing to us,” Hine says of Hineraukatauri (named for the guardian of all Maori musical instruments). “She teaches us so much every day. Her needs are very basic—breathing, thinking; all the very basic things in life that we take for granted are a struggle for her. She has such a cool attitude,” she says, brushing her curled finger across her daughter’s cheek, “that you can’t help but be inspired by that strength for life.”

She explains that although each of her songs is different, they all celebrate her daughter’s, and the Maori people’s, survival.

“Do you think your creativity comes from way back?” I ask, wondering how much cultural legacy fuels her art.

“Yes. Definitely. Because I’ve been brought up with a real love and respect for who I am as a Maori. My father didn’t speak Maori as a child because in Nanny’s generation coming up,” she says, looking at her grandmother, “kids were taught that you needed to get on with life in the world of Pakeha.”

Nanny chimes in, “It was very difficult because the Maoris were second-class citizens. And it wasn’t until after the Second World War that gradually the Maoris were recognized. The Maori girls went to boarding schools and were taught to be good housemaids, that’s what they were. That was their station in life. But that was in the old days. We weren’t allowed to speak Maori in the playground, we always got the strap. We had to speak English.”

“Are creativity and power tied together for you, Hine?” I ask.

“Yes, because of my creativity—my work—I have a high profile and a responsibility to take my language and culture to the world. People look to me to be doing things right for the Maori people. So it’s a powerful position, and of course power can be used in a good way or a bad way,” she says, reiterating the idea that a great responsibility comes with possessing mana
.

“Reflecting our culture to the world makes young Maori feel good about themselves. We are trying to regenerate a whole sense of quality and expression of who we are, and what we have to offer,” she says, then adds with a grin, “It’s cool to be Maori.

“Oh bugger, we have to go,” she says, glancing at her watch. Hine has arranged for us to go over to the girls’ school where she was educated. She wants to show us her roots, but, more importantly, what the new Maori generation is up to. “Can we take the Valiant?

“I’m driving, vroom! vroom!” Hine yells as she walks out the screen door; Nanny grabs her floral purse and trots after her. George and Hineraukatauri will drive over in another car and meet us.

Liza and I unhook the caravan from the Valiant and climb in the car’s backseat. Nanny rides shotgun (the left side).

“Rock and roll! I feel like a petrolhead!” Hine yells as she guns it around a roundabout.

“Twin carb!” yells Nanny. Liza is laughing so hard at this septuagenarian’s automotive expletives that she can’t hold the camera steady.

“Nanny, teach me some Maori,” I say, holding onto the headrest for stability as Hine takes a curve.

“Ahhh. Pakehas always want to learn Maori words. Well, of course we teach them the swear words first. Like
tonanane.
”

“What’s a
tonanane
?” I ask, warily.

“A
tonanane . . .
is a
teke,
” Nanny says, giggling like a schoolgirl. Hine chuckles under her breath as she guns it down Hastings’s quiet main road.

Suddenly, Nanny turns around to Liza and me and the rolling camera and bellows, “IT’S A VAGINA!”

Good god. First the goat shit and now the vaginas; brilliant, divalicious moments to take home to the PBS censors.

Liza grips the small video camera and gets a close-up of Hine banging the thirty-year-old gear shift into reverse.
“Mana wahine”
(“powerful woman”), she says to nobody in particular, and I wonder if she’s referring to Nanny, or to Sheila’s uncanny ability to hug any curve.

Believing in the birds-of-a-feather theory, I ask Nanny and Hine for some leads for other divas to interview. “Hey, who do you think we should go see on the South Island?”

“Oh. Keri Hulme,” says Nanny. “Keri Hulme would be just the one. She’s a famous author; she’s very down to earth, sort of in your face, a ‘do what I bloody well like’ sort of person.”

Yes.
I know of Keri Hulme. “Is she there now?” I ask, excitedly.

“No idea. But she doesn’t stand any nonsense or any crap from anybody,” says Nanny.

“Oh, that’s the bugger,” yells Hine.

“That’s the bugger. Should have turned left,” agrees Nanny.

Chugging into the parking lot of the girls’ school, Hine cuts the Valiant’s engine and hops out of the car. Liza and I follow, trying to adjust her mic as we walk. Hine lets out a holler at the sight of one of her old teachers.

“Hine, you’re a role model now,” I say emphatically, nodding to the girls who are piling into an auditorium to welcome her with a performance. All the girls are buzzing at the sight of such a big star.

The auditorium looks like a church, with rows and rows of benches and an elevated platform at the front of the room. Hine now stands on the platform, with Hineraukatauri in her arms, brimming with dignity, facing a hundred Maori girls in their school uniforms: white collared shirts, blue skirts, stockings, and pointy black dress shoes. With a resounding
thump
of their daintily clad feet, the girls begin to sing, a few guitars mere backup to their powerful voices. Their lithe, brown, young arms move in unison; then they perform the traditional
kapahaka
dance, a high-impact warrior art of strength and empowerment. Many credit the
kapahaka
as a first introduction to their own Maori roots.

“Hey ya kay. Hey ya kah. Hey ya ka, hoomph! Hoomph!”
they sing as one.
Stomp. Stomp. Stomp.

The collective power of these little girls claims all the space in the room, and more.

One girl leads.

Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!
(It is death! It is death! It is life! It is life!)

Ka mate! Ka mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!
(It is death! It is death! It is life! It is life!)

Tenei te tangata puhuru huru
(This is the hairy man)

Nana nei i tiki mai
(Who fetched the sun)

whakawhiti te ra
(and caused it to shine again)

A upa . . . ne! Ka upa . . . ne!
(One upward step! Another upward step!)

A upane kaupane whiti te ra!
(An upward step, another . . . the sun shines!)

Hi!!!

White collared shirts and black patent-leather shoes melt into a blur of mana and now what stands before us is a phalanx of young warriors. The schoolgirls are gone—they are an
iwi,
a people. The room’s instant transformation is eerie and humbling. Hine is crying. I am crying.

Hine holds Hineraukatauri, a child who has struggled for her own existence, and rocks her almost imperceptibly in front of this roomful of hope; in front of
whakapapa—
ancestry—which makes hope seem almost plausible. I guess I am so moved because these girls are not fifty, or forty, or thirty; they are thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and they already know where they come from.

They pound and thud and holler together, playing guitar, their muscle reverberating, spiraling into the world. One hundred fierce girls belting out their past, and claiming their future.

A upane kaupane whiti te ra!

It is time to confess:
The single most compelling reason I wanted to do a show in New Zealand was to meet the author Keri Hulme, the writer Nanny mentioned in the car. Since the inception of Adventure Divas it was Keri Hulme—novelist, angler, and enigmatic literary icon—who was firmly planted in my brain as
the
diva template: a creative, independent, “do what I bloody well like” person (as Nanny put it). I have been obsessed with Hulme for fifteen years, ever since my first reading of her Booker Prize–winning novel,
The Bone People.
The book’s fusion of Pakeha and Maori worlds with dark, poetic storytelling is strangely seductive. And the book’s protagonist, Kerewin (like Keri herself), fishes for whitebait, a bizarre translucent migrating fish about five millimeters long that, for a few special months of every year, becomes a Kiwi obsession.

Hulme’s quirky talent and creative independence inspire in me a shameless admiration not in keeping with my normal anti-pedestal stance. (Sure, I tried to shove Phoolan Devi up there, but that was an uninformed, must-make-it-so producer’s yearning for a sexy bandit story.) I know about Keri Hulme, and I have been a bloodhound on her scent for years. In the past decade I have, as a fan, editor, fellow angler, and aspiring filmmaker, come up with various excuses for contacting her: “Can I publish your work in a women’s fishing anthology?”
Yes.
“Can I option
The Bone People
film rights?”
Absolutely not.
And now, “Will you appear in this documentary?”

A few years ago I received a benign “if you’re ever in New Zealand” invitation at the end of the fax that denied me film rights. I’ve had it on my bulletin board ever since. I took her invite at face value and attempted via fax to confirm a meeting with Hulme prior to our departure from Seattle. No luck. Now, halfway through the shoot, and four more unresponded-to faxes later, only Michael is aware of the degree to which meeting Hulme is consuming me. I feign emotional stability to the rest of the crew, yet privately I rant to Michael.

“For twelve years I’ve been wanting to meet her,” I say. We gave up on camping and I am now kicking ice cubes around like soccer balls in a hotel room one day’s drive north of Wellington. “This is killing me.”

“If we can’t get her, how about we make the story about the quest?” says Michael. “Your obsession is enough to drive the story,” he adds glibly.

“You mean like
Sherman’s March
or
Roger and Me
?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I want
her.
”

“Why is she so important to you?” he asks.

I tell him the story of how
The Bone People
got published. How after twelve years of writing, Hulme was turned down by every major publisher in the country; how three women created the Spiral Collective in order to publish it; and how the book then began a viral path to popularity and success that eventually led to the Booker Prize, and to her status as an unlikely literary heroine.

“What’s the book about?”

“Well it’s about a mute kid, a bicultural loner artist, and a loving, brutal guy. But in fact it’s really about independence and passion in a crapshoot, culture-clash world.”

“Uh-huh,” says Michael.

“I guess it’s not just her, it’s all she represents. She and her book are inextricably wed in my mind. She’s quirky and independent, kind of an allegory for New Zealand itself, and I’m hoping an interview with her can help cinch up our story of this country.”

This last comment seems to resonate, and Michael nods. And I don’t say this to Michael, but even though Hulme’s driving me
nuts,
I kind of respect her freaky reclusiveness.

Except for late-night tête-à-têtes between me and Michael, my obsession with Hulme stays under wraps while we advance the stated premise of the program, to investigate estro-leadership in New Zealand. We are scheduled to be in the country’s capital of Wellington, which is nestled in the southern tip of the North Island. I have to shelve my Keri fixation long enough to meet with Prime Minister Helen Clark.