Niki Caro’s Whale Rider: a Testimony of a Maori Girl

Film analysis

Colonization is recognized as having had a destructive effect on indigenous gender relations which reached out across all spheres of indigenous society. Colonial system positioned indigenous women as the property of men with roles which were primarily domestic.

Linda Tuhiwai Smith in her Decolonizing Methodologies, points out that a key issue for indigenous women in any challenge of contemporary indigenous politics is the restoration to women of what are seen as their traditional roles, rights and responsibilities. In Niki Caro’s film Whale Rider, Paikea claims her right to be the chief of the tribe and in the end her determined claims restores her rights and responsibilities. Paikea decolonizes the mind of her grandfather Koro who believes that women are not capable of leading a community.

Colonialism has recorded distorted history of Indigenous peoples. In that history the prominent role played by Indigenous women are silenced. Representation is also about proposing solutions to the real-life dilemmas that indigenous communities confront and trying to capture the complexities of being indigenous. In this context, this paper shows how the film represents back the struggles and lives of the indigenous peoples to the dominant society. Thus, this paper argues that Niki Caro’s Whale Rider is a testimony of a young Maori girl and it also voices the silenced stories in the film.

Storytelling is so much a part of every culture and its literature, but this is especially true of indigenous peoples. Linda Tuhiwai Smith in her book Decolonizing Methodologies says, “Indigenous languages, knowledges and cultures have been silenced or misrepresented, ridiculed or condemned in academic and popular discourses.” Therefore it is in the hands of the indigenous peoples to represent themselves and voice their cultures to the world. This is the reason why indigenous peoples tell their own stories; write their own versions, in their own ways, for their own purposes. It is not simply about giving an oral account or a genealogical naming of the land, but a very powerful need to give testimony to and restore a spirit, to bring back into existence a world fragmented and dying.

The film Whale Rider written and directed by Niki Caro is based on Witi Ihimaera’s novel The Whale Rider which tells the story of the Maori people. This paper takes up three concepts from Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies and applies it to the select work for study. The concepts are testimonies, effect of colonization in indigenous gender relations and contested stories and multiple discourses about the past by different communities.

Testimonio, a Spanish term understood as “witness account”, embodies a narrative research methodology rooted in Latin American history. A testimonio is a first-person account by the person (narrator) who has faced instances of social and political inequality, oppression, or any specific form of marginalization. John Beverley, an expert on testimonial literature, suggests that the best way approach the subaltern is through testimonial literature. Testimonial literatures alter the balance between the centre and the periphery reconfiguring the global cultural differences pushing the margins to the centre. According to Gugelberger, the situation of narration in testimonio has to involve an urgency to communicate, a problem of repression, poverty, subalternity, imprisonment, struggle for survival, and so on.

Testimonies are to simply put telling one’s own stories. Indigenous people’s writing is named as “the empire writes back” and it also becomes a testimony of their lives and cultures. Maori author Witi Ihimaera sees his writing as a valuable opportunity to express his experience of being a Maori. He has assembled a five-volume anthology of Maori literature which he argues represents the “crossroads . . . of a literature of a past and a literature of a present and future”.

Ihimaera is the first Maori author to publish both a book of short stories, Pounamu Pouramu (1972), and a novel Tangi (1973). Among his works The Whale Rider is the novel that the Maori community accepts best. It is a magical, mythical work about a young girl whose relationship with a whale ensures the salvation of her village. It is based on an ancestral story of the Whangara people of the east coast of Aotearoa/New Zealand.

Unlike the novel which is narrated in the first and third person point of view with the girl’s uncle’s narrative voice, Niki Caro’s film Whale Rider begins with Pai’s narrative voice. The first-person narrative makes the film a testimony. The film involves an urgency to communicate and a problem of repression. Through testimonies the voice of the voiceless is registered. Pai says:

In the old days, the land felt a great emptiness. It was waiting: waiting to be filled up; waiting for someone to love it; waiting for a leader. And he came on the back of a whale — a man to lead a new people. Our ancestor, Paikea. But now we were waiting for the firstborn of the new generation, for the descendant of the whale rider, for the boy who would be chief… There was no gladness when I was born. My twin brother died and took our mother with him… Everyone was waiting for the firstborn boy to lead us. But he died. And I didn't.

Whale Rider portrays a young girl Pai’s journey to become the chief of the community. It also depicts the burden of Koro, Pai’s grandfather who is searching for an answer to a question that who will be the next leader to lead the community. The irony is that the leader is beside him but his narrowed vision of tradition and strict rules do not let him see the person who is meant to be the leader. Not that he does not like his granddaughter he loves her, Pai says, “My Koro wished in his heart that I’d never been born. But he changed his mind”. When it comes to leading the community, as a person who stands for his tradition he restricts Pai from attending the sacred school of learning the Maori tradition. One of the reasons for Koro’s mindset could be the impact of colonialism in the history of indigenous peoples.

Koro is in perpetual mourning for a lost tradition, for his diminished community. His students in the Sacred school of learning fail to meet his expectations that a leader will emerge, Koro takes to his bed, bitter and disappointed. Paula Morris in her review of the film says, “To Koro, history is a burden, to be borne and passed on. To Pai, history is alive, calling to her from the ocean”. When Pai asks Koro about the history of their ancestors, Koro tells her to look closely at the rope which is used to operate the motor in the boat and asks her what she sees. Seeing that Pai says, “Lots of little bits of rope all twisted together”.

Kora tells, “That’s right. Weave together the threads of Paikea, so that our line remains strong. Each one of your ancestors, all joined together and strong. All the way back to the whale of yours”. After telling this, Koro uses the rope to start the motor but it tears off. Koro says, “Useless bloody rope. I’ll get another one”. Here the rope can be a metaphor for Pai herself because Koro sees his granddaughter as useless and searches for the chief in other families. While her grandfather is away to get another rope, Pai mends the torn rope and starts the motor. She makes the motor work. Pai’s this particular act foretells and becomes a symbol of mending the torn community back to their ancestors by becoming the chief. Koro is unable to see this gift of Pai.

Pai communicates with the sea, the whales and her ancestors. She also finds the sacred whale’s tooth which Koro threw it in the sea and asked the boys to find it but the boys could not get it. All these events show Pai’s innate potential of becoming a chief. She is not the chosen one according to her grandfather. In her school day speech with tears filled eyes, she says: “I was not the leader my grandfather was expecting”. She says that by being born she broke the line of ancient ones. She also argues that “It wasn’t anybody’s fault. It just happened”.

Her point is that if the knowledge of the community is given to everyone, there will be lots of leaders. She validates her point by saying that if the chosen one becomes tired others can intervene and help the community to be strong again. According to Koro, Pai’s twin brother is the chosen one but he died and she did not. Therefore her speech questions the hierarchy that prevails in learning the knowledge of the community. It tries to widen the narrowed view of the community. It is Pai’s plea to Koro, to give the knowledge to everyone not only to the chosen one and also regardless of one’s gender.

The effect of Colonization on indigenous gender relations is a destructive one. It reached out across all spheres of indigenous society. Colonial system positioned indigenous women as the property of men with roles which were primarily domestic. Smith in her Decolonizing Methodologies, points out that a key issue for indigenous women in any challenge of contemporary indigenous politics is the restoration to women of what are seen as their traditional roles, rights and responsibilities.

Smith also says that Maori women are caught between the written accounts of white male writers and the assertions of the few Maori women who are contesting those early accounts. She gives instances for that, one is Elsdon Best’s view where he says of his research among the Tuhoe tribe, “As in most other barbaric lands, we find that women were looked upon here as being inferior to man”.

The other one is Rangimarie Rose Pere’s view, she herself a descendant of Tuhoe Potiki, says, “As a female, I have been exposed to very positive female role models from both my natural parents’ descent lines. The most senior men and women ... made it quite clear from the legacy they left that men and women, adults and children, work alongside each other and together”.

This is one such example which reveals how the indigenous peoples, especially indigenous women are wrongly portrayed by Western researchers. Indigenous women have to question the misrepresentation. Therefore the uphill task for Maori women seeking to reconstruct traditional roles is that they have to challenge existing knowledge which is primarily ideological or false (Smith 170). In the film Whale Rider we have Pai’s grandmother who is from Muriwai’s line. She says to Pai that she should be proud of her Muriwai blood. Despite Koro’s strict rules, Pai tries her best to learn the tradition of her community. She learns to use ‘taiaha’ from her uncle. She claims her genealogical right to be the chief of the community and in the end her determined claims restores her rights and responsibilities of being a chief of the community.

Koro after Pai’s rescuing of whales tells her: “Wise leader, forgive me. I am just a fledgling new to flight”. One can say that Pai decolonizes the mind of her grandfather Koro who believes that only males are allowed to ascend to chiefdom and women are not capable of leading a community. Like Muriwai, the female hero who participated in the traditional roles of women in the past, Pai reconstructs the traditional roles in the present. Thus the process of decolonization involves a critical engagement with the colonial past.

The idea of contested stories and multiple discourses about the past, by different communities, is closely linked to the politics of everyday contemporary indigenous life. It is very much a part of the fabric of communities that value oral ways of knowing. These contested accounts are stored within genealogies, within the landscape, within weavings and carvings, even within the personal names that many people carried.

The means by which these histories were stored was through their systems of knowledge. Many of these systems have since been reclassified as oral traditions rather than histories. In the film, there is only a slight mention of Muriwai the female hero of the Moari community but Paikea the male hero is mentioned in a full-fledged manner and Paikea’s image of riding a whale is shown in a carving. Muriwai’s story is sidelined in the film. This shows that how within the Maori community the politics of representation exists.

Niki Caro is a non-Maori New Zealander. When it comes to rendering unfamiliar communities, Niki Caro says that by being on the ground with the people she could experience the truth and beauty of a culture. Regarding the rendering of Maori in Whale Rider Niki Caro says, “I am absolutely in service of the truth of the story”. Though Niki Caro seems to be faithful to the original story, she fails to highlight the story of Muriwai.

For instance, Paikea’s story is told in the very beginning of the movie but not the story of Muriwai. The Myth of Muriwai – “Act-like-a-male”- Muriwai was the greatest chief of Pai’s grandmother Nanny Flowers’ Tribe. Mihi Kotukutuku who is known as a model of female non-conformity is a descendant of Muriwai. Thus both in the myth and history, one can see the active role of women but it is not taken into account by the male-dominated indigenous society.

In the film, Pai challenges tradition and embraces the forgotten past in order to find the strength to lead her people forward. The film ends with Pai’s hopeful narrative voice: “My name is Paikea Apirana and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the whale rider. I’m not a prophet, but I know that our people will keep going forward all together, with all of our strength”. Upasana Tayal says, “Unlike other films featuring Maoris, Whale Rider ends on a surprisingly positive note” (Review). Pai narrates her own story. She becomes the representative of the female hero Muriwai.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Niki Caro though an outsider, she tries to be part of the community and represents the genesis, function, and implications of Maori ritual beliefs and the role of women to the world and also to the indigenous community in the increasingly Westernized New Zealand. The film unveils the operation of patriarchy in the so-called matriarchal indigenous communities. Thus, this paper shows how the film represents back the struggles, complexities and lives of the indigenous peoples to the dominant society through the testimony of a young Maori girl. It also reads the silences in the film which in turn tells the silenced stories within the indigenous communities. The film is not only a testimony of a Maori girl but it is also a testimony of an indigenous culture that is dying slowly.

Works Cited

1. Beverly, John. “The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio.” Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 35, no. 1, 1989, pp. 11-28. Project Muse, doi:10.1353/mfs.0.0923. Accessed 10 Feb. 2018.
2. Dodd, Kevin V. 'Whale Rider: The Re-enactment of Myth and the Empowerment of Women.' Journal of Religion & Film, vol.16, no. 2, 2012, digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol16/iss2/9/. Accessed 10 Feb. 2018.
3. Gugelberger, Georg and Michael Kearney. “Voice for the Voiceless: Testimonial Literature in Latin America.” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 18, no. 3, 1991, pp. 03-14. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2633736. Accessed 10 Feb. 2018.
4. Ihimaera, Witi. The Whale Rider. Heinemann Educational Publishers, 1987.
5. Meklin, Margaret and Andrew Meklin. “This Magnificent Accident: An Interview with Witi Ihimaera.” The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 16, no. 2, 2004, pp. 358-366. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23721789. Accessed 08 Feb. 2018.
6. Morris, Paula. “Film Review: Whale Rider by John Barnett and Niki Caro,” Cinéaste, vol. 29, no. 1, 2003, pp. 18-19. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41689666. Accessed 08 Feb. 2018.
7. Nayar, Pramod K. Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction. Pearson, 2008.
8. O’Sullivan, Michael. “Niki Caro: lifting the lid on the Whale Rider ‘backlash’.” Stuff, 31 Mar. 2017, www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/film/91055631/niki-caro-lifting-the-lid-on-the-whale-rider-backlash. Accessed 07 Feb. 2018.
9. Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Methodologies. Zed Books, 1999.
10. Tayal, Upasana. “Film Review: Whale Rider,” British Medical Journal, vol. 327, no. 7412, Aug. 23, 2003, p. 455. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25455353. Accessed 08 Feb. 2018.
11. Whale Rider. Directed by Niki Caro. Performance by Keisha Castle-Hughes, South Pacific Pictures, 2002.