Still are Warriors - Roberta Staley

Still Are Warriors
TRADITIONAL MAORI TATTOOS CHANGE THE FACE OF POWER
BY ROBERTA STALEY
Human skulls with
empty-socket glares
and scored bones,
red wood masks
with chiselled leers,
cobwebbed windows—they
all seem better suited
to a medieval apothecary shop
than a tattoo studio. The few nods
to modernity include a tray of
needles, a box of medical gloves,
and a long, cracked black padded
table for clients to lie on or lean
over, depending upon where the
moko—Maori for tattoo—will be
inked into the body.
At the tail end of my 10-day
excursion to New Zealand, Gordon
Toi Hatfield of Auckland has conceived
a traditional but unique
moko design for me that represents
my family, genealogy being
at the heart of Maori culture and
tattooing. The centre of the design
is a stylized hammerhead shark—
mango pare—powerful and superior
in its watery element. It signifies
someone of great importance to
me: my six-year-old son, Alexander.
(The hammerhead shark also
symbolizes Tumatauenga, the god
of war.) Two fern fronds—koru—
symbolizing my parents, sit like
sentinels on either side of the
mango pare. Although both are
dead, their influence, according to
Maori belief, is undiminished.
They protect both Alex and me.
(When I peer at my moko in the
Air New Zealand bathroom mirror
a few hours later while jetting
home, I will feel no surprise, just
elation, helped, no doubt, by the
pain-stimulated opiate body rush.
It is as if the tattoo has always
been there, like a shoot under soil,
waiting for sunlight to coax it out.)
Hatfield, 40, is an imposing,
curly haired, broad-shouldered
moko artist, wood carver, and actor
with a whirling scoop of muscle
missing from his left calf, the result
of a bullet. He answers cellphone
calls from Maori friends with a
booming “Heh, niggah!” His moko
skills are world-renowned; his
clientele includes American musician
Ben Harper, whose elaborate
back moko is pictured in Hatfield’s
magnificent publication Dedicated
by Blood: Renaissance of Ta Moko,
which is coedited by Patricia Steur.
“Moko allows you to express
who you are, as well as being a
dedication to your ancestors,” says
Hatfield, whose home is steeped in
the black, red, and white colour
scheme of the Maori sovereignty
flag. “It is like a contract that you
have with yourself, and your family
is around as witnesses. If you
fall, your family is there to remind
you of your purpose and give you
the strength to get up.”
A new generation, full of angry
Maori pride, has embraced traditional
moko as a way to help them
define and assert their place in
modern New Zealand. It is part of a
movement sweeping the globe that
includes First Nations like British
Columbia’s Nisga’a and Haida vindicating
themselves politically and
culturally following a century of
colonial oppression. As the visual
expression of political activism and
cultural reawakening, moko is
energizing a Maori renaissance,
Hatfield says. “Maori are expressing
themselves not only with their
mouths but through their skins.”
The Maori still are warriors.
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MAORI WERE ONCE great seafarers
who crossed the Pacific Ocean
from Polynesia in wooden doublehulled
canoes called waka taua,
arriving in New Zealand—
Aotearoa—around AD 650. They
were fearless combatants who
cannibalized their enemies. Tattoos
were the visible expression of
Maori culture; the symbols,
enshrined in genealogy and with
a godly origin, were repeated in
other art forms like woodcarving,
architecture, and weaving. Moko
also narrated tribal affiliations
and social standing.
Warriors went into battle with
spears and clubs, their only armour
full-leg and -buttock moko and
fiercely intimidating facial moko.
Women wore moko on the chin
once they had reached childbearing
age and were given speaking
rights within the tribe. Only highly
skilled ta moko priests, using
sharp-pronged chisels—smaller
versions of wood-carving implements,
made of bird bones or
whalebone, tusk or shell—turned
flesh into façade.
Capt. James Cook claimed New
Zealand for Great Britain in 1769.
Eventually, like the societies of
other First Nations colonized by
pakeha—white-skinned Europeans—Maori
traditions, oral history,
family structure, and
language began to crumble in the
19th and 20th centuries as alcoholism,
drug abuse, tuberculosis,
smallpox, and sexually transmitted
diseases rent the social fabric. The
1994 movie, Once Were Warriors, a
brutal and brutally honest look at
domestic violence, alcoholism, and
child abuse among Maori, was a
severe reality check. It spurred the
necessary dialogue and action to
begin addressing the immense
social problems, Hatfield says.
Moko also took on new meaning
and significance. Frowned upon by
missionaries and colonial governments,
moko, among other practices,
had been outlawed under the
1907 Tohunga Suppression Act and
was illegal into the 1960s. Only
prostitutes, bikers, and gang members
wore moko. But with no skilled
practitioners, the designs were amateurish
and poorly wrought.
That was yesterday.
Today, a narrow door, squeezed
between shops on a busy retail
street in an Auckland suburb,
opens onto a flight of stairs leading
to the Mana Moko ta moko
studio. (Ta moko refers to the practice
of tattooing.) Hatfield moves
feature
Turumakina Duleyz demonstrates the fearsome combination of moko (tattoos)
and facial expressions used by Maori warriors. Dina Goldstein photos.
3545 West 4th Avenue
behind the high counter to greet
the three young owners with the
traditional Maori hongi salutation:
“Kia ora,” clasped handshake, and
noses pressed together, signifying
sharing the breath of life.
Turumakina “Tu” Duleyz, 32,
dreadlocks streaming from a fistsized
circle at the back of his otherwise
shaven head, has a facial
moko, lines and spirals along
cheeks and skull, the beginning of
a story that grows as the wearer
ages and accomplishes more
things. It is striking and, Duleyz
says with a grin, “Women love it.”
Moko and Maori culture is becoming
cooler, with an increasing
number of young Maori, including
high-school students, obtaining
facial mokos. Human-rights legisla-
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THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT •JANUARY 20—27, 2005 • 31

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32 •JANUARY 20—27, 2005 • THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT
Maori tattoo tools made from bird
bones (above) are capable of highly
detailed designs, such as the
traditional moko on Yvanca Toi.
Still Are Warriors
FROM PREVIOUS PAGE
tion has helped make it more
acceptable. Now Maori cannot be
fired from a job, overlooked for
promotion, or kicked out of school
for facial moko, Duleyz says.
Arapeta Kaiwai, 31, dressed in
black T-shirt, also has the beginnings
of a facial moko. His arms
and legs are covered in tattoos and
a blue, fang-shaped stone dangles
from his left ear. Sixty percent of
the studio’s mainly 18- to 30-yearold
clientele are Maori, Kaiwai
says. Half opt for a traditional
design, the other half for a modern
moko that incorporates tradition
and contemporary styles, including
three-dimensional shading.
Upholding tradition, the Mana
Moko artisans have bird-bone tattoo
instruments modelled upon
the ancient sharp-pronged designs
and flat-edged knives. One in five
Mana Moko clients opts for this
method, which reportedly hurts
less than a modern tattoo needle.
Kaiwai’s skill at ta moko, he says,
stems from four years spent carving
wood. Hatfield also started out as a
wood carver; his house and backyard
are full of elaborate totems
and masks. Traditional wood carving
is taught in the northern New
Zealand city of Rotorua. The New
Zealand Maori Arts and Crafts Institute
is “the Jedi school for Maori
artists”, Hatfield says.
Kaiwai will eventually have
the full facial moko, when he
has accomplished “a lot of the
things I want to achieve”. Foremost,
he says, is “helping make
Maori culture grow”.
This necessitates a continued
shakedown of Eurocentric institutions
of church, state, and schools.
“We were taught that Capt. James
Cook discovered New Zealand. We
were taught to be scared of our
ancestors. No wonder we don’t do
well in school!” Duleyz exclaims.
Adding to this historical alienation
is a not-so-subtle racism, Du-
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designer, and the teacher told
me I wouldn’t make it and told me
to get a job at the meat works
down the road. The teacher would
have told a white kid to go for it,”
says Duleyz, who just finished a
bachelor degree in Maori business
development from Auckland University
of Technology. Still: “Am I
angry? Oh, hell, yes.”
At the heart of relations between
Maori and pakeha is the Treaty of
Waitangi, which was drawn up by
the British. Signed in 1840, it is
commemorated as a national holiday
known as Waitangi Day. On
February 6, 165 years ago, hundreds
of Maori chiefs signed the document
with their unique moko signature.
A key tenet gave Maori,
individually and collectively, “exclusive
and undisturbed possession of
their lands and estates, forest, fisheries
and other properties”. However,
the treaty wasn’t honoured. A
few years later, Maori began warring
with the British, who had begun
confiscating traditional lands. Maori
resistance against colonial rule raged
from 1845 to 1872 in what is referred
to as the New Zealand Wars.
TODAY, RELATIONS between pakeha
and Maori are referred to among
some whites as “an uneasy truce
between equals”. Maori is one of
the two official languages of New
Zealand, which has a population
of four million. About 600,000, or
15 percent, are Maori. The first
Maori immersion school was created
25 years ago; some universities
offer Maori studies. Ancient Maori
artifacts and human remains are
being gathered from private collectors
for identification and preservation
at New Zealand’s famous Te
Papa Tongarewa museum in the
capital city of Wellington. A Maori
political party was formed last July.
“With our culture intact, we are
becoming a powerful entity,” Hatfield
says. And despite an unemployment
rate of up to 80 percent
in some Maori communities,
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“Maoris will be the businesspeople
of New Zealand,” Hatfield predicts.
Like aboriginals around the
world, Maori realize that real equality
is achieved through economic
empowerment, which includes land
ownership and control over natural
resources. (There are no reserves
or reservations in New Zealand.)
To this end, Maori are drawing
inspiration not only from ancestors
but Canadian First Nations
like the Nisga’a, which negotiated
a treaty in British Columbia that
reclaimed traditional lands and
gave them self-governance. B.C.’s
Haida Nation is also fighting for
claims that include the territorial
seas around the islands they call
Haida Gwaii. Awhina Tamarapa,
the curator of Maori artifacts at Te
Papa Tongarewa, says: “We are
looking at talking to other indigenous
cultures to help us reclaim
the Maori world viewpoint.”
It is an assertive viewpoint.
Last year, 10,000 Maori marched
through Wellington to protest
the Labour government’s Seabed
and Foreshore Bill, putting New
Zealand’s coastal areas claimed
by Maori as traditional lands
into state ownership. Maori say
this contravened guarantees in
the Treaty of Waitangi. The bill,
passed last November, confirmed
Crown ownership and protected
public access to the coastline.
Maori complained to the United
Nations Committee on the Elimination
of Racial Discrimination
and expect a ruling as early as
next month.
Moko is tied to genealogy;
genealogy is tied to the land and
the sea. The Maori call this whakapapa:
whaka meaning “to link”,
and “papa”, earth. The Maori are
gathering strength from their
ancestors, embracing education
and learning to work within pakeha
society to effect change that
recognizes their unique place in
New Zealand society. It is modern
warfare, with moko still the Maori
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