White people writing brown

All the white dudes carry the news. A new biography of photographer Ans Westra, who documented Māori  life in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, poses a challenge, a confrontation, about the ways Pākehā  see and record Māori; and, even more tone-deaf in old age (literally deaf! I can’t leave the house without hearing aids) than I was in youth, I have gone about responding to the book this week by publishing three pieces by whitey. On  Monday, an extract by the book’s author, Paul Moon. On Tuesday, a critical review of Moon’s book by Scott Hamilton. And now here I am with my own hardly even two-cents worth, because you just can’t have enough Pākehā perspectives….Talia Marshall (Ngāti Kuia, Ngāti Rārua, Rangitāne ō Wairau, Ngāti Takihiku) writes about the book – and the issues it raises about that quaint old concept you never hear much about anymore, biculturalism – in ReadingRoom tomorrow.  At least, and at last, one Māori perspective, although not the Māori  perspective, there being no such homologous thing.

Anyway. What do we see when we look at Westra’s famous photos taken in Ruatoria and the streets of Wellington? Do we see Māori as they are, or do we see them as manipulated and cast in ideological roles by Westra? Ooh here’s another question: speaking of myself, as a certain kind of New Zealander (64 tomorrow, my hair as white as the snow that fell in my father’s mountains homelands of Austria) what the hell would I know about it, and, in a larger sense, where does that leave other Pākehā writers (and photographers, and whatever other kind of documentary makers) as they go about wanting to describe New Zealand, in full, in 2024? The answers to these latter two questions are a) I know nothing, b) other Pākehā writers often make themselves kind of…absent.

Paul Moon blandly asserts Westra as a great artist, creating “an entrancing amalgam of scenes that reflected the essence of the nation’s intricately-marbled identity”. Beware whitey claiming to know a nation’s “essence”. I have claimed it over many years in my journalism and books, and essentially it’s based on a sentimental, affectionate regard for the kinds of people that I identify with as the son of an Austrian housepainter (no, not that Austrian housepainter) – the white lower middle-class, who are usually good at something. I recently celebrated a plumber in Dunedin and a stamp collector in Picton. I interviewed them for a story about the King’s Birthday Honours List. I celebrated the honours list, too: “It honours the approved and official version of the New Zealand way of life as lived by people simply going about their business.” There were plenty of Māori in the Honours List. I didn’t interview them. There are thriving, fascinating versions of the New Zealand way of life (as lived by people of colour, and by people somewhere on the LGBTIQA+ spectrum) that I know nothing about. I don’t tend to write about these diversities. I feel as though I’d get it wrong, fail to understand context.

Scott Hamilton regarded the Westra biography as “flawed”; he suggested that Moon, a much-published historian, shared the same narrow focus and “agenda” about Māori as Westra. He writes, “It’s tempting to see a parallel between the careers of historian and the photographer: both are Pākehā who have worked often with Māori material, and both have been accused of misusing this material.” Later in his thorough, and thoroughly brilliant review, he notes that it’s “not the mere fact that they [Moon and Westra] have touched Māori material”, it’s the morally dubious ways they go about it. He states that artists and scholars such as Marti Friedlander, Vincent Ward, Anne Salmond, Judith Binney, and Michael King “have worked with Māori  subject matter without attracting similar responses”.

Well – that’s not maybe entirely right. It’s well-known that King was told to get the hell off the marae by some Māori critics of his work; they were sick of him telling their stories, and King responded by saying okay, adios. He absented himself. He turned his interests to literary biography, with books on Janet Frame and Frank Sargeson, those pioneers of the white literary experience in these islands. He also wrote a memoir with the regrettable title Being Pakeha Now. Feeling expelled from brown really made him rediscover his white.

I haven’t attempted a survey – yes, that might have been useful – but sometimes I wonder whether very many European New Zealand writers, novelists in particular, have followed King’s example and avoided working “with Māori subject matter”. What I mean is that you don’t tend to see an awful lot of Māori characters in novels by European New Zealand authors. As in very commonly kind of like close to none. Number of Māori characters in Lioness by Emily Perkins, winner of the Acorn fiction prize at this year’s Ockhams: one. Number of Māori characters in Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, shortlisted for the Acorn prize and the biggest-selling New Zealand novel of 2023 by a long stretch: none.

Catton was aware of that. It was a conscious decision. It was a matter, as she said in an interview in Bookman, of cultural sensitivity: “She deliberately omitted a Māori perspective because she wanted to satirise the relationship people have with the land, the arbitrariness of who owns it, and it didn’t feel appropriate to satirise that of an indigenous person.”

White people writing brown enters the arena of culture wars. If they do it, it opens itself up to cultural appropriation; if they don’t, it can look like they’re erasing Māori. But it’s not like there should be some kind of quota for Māori characters in European New Zealand fiction. As for Māori fiction, novelists as wide-ranging as Becky Manawatu, Witi Ihimaera, Stacy Gregg, Alan Duff, Patricia Grace, Airana Ngarewa, Paula Morris, Monty Soutar, and, in her debut novel published soon, Shilo Kino, all write Māori characters. This doesn’t resolve the issue but it does speak to the idea that stories about Māori are better told by Māori.

I wrote a chapter about Rotorua in my 2013 book Civilisation: 20 Places on the Edge of the World. I wandered around Ohinemutu and Whakarewarewa, and interviewed people who I came across, which is to say that everyone I came across was Māori. One person I spoke to, and remember fondly, was a striking and tragic woman called Ata. She was proud, deeply impressive in many ways; she was also an alcoholic, and lived in poverty, in a caravan. She spoke about her life very honestly and openly. She was happy to talk; it was something to do to pass the time between drinking all day. It was a good interview. But I don’t know if I’d just bowl into Ohinemutu and Whakarewarewa in 2024, and approach complete strangers for an interview. I think I’d stay away. I don’t think I’d feel comfortable telling their stories.

Ans Westra: A Life in Photography by Paul Moon (Massey University Press, $49.99) is available in bookstores and through BookHub,  the fast and easy way to buy NZ books. ReadingRoom is devoting all week to the biography of a controversial photographer who documented Māori in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. Monday: the love story, such as it was, of Westra and Barry Crump, as extracted from Moon’s book. Tuesday: a damning review by Scott Hamilton.  Tomorrow: a response to the book from Talia Marshall.