Whenua. 07/07/96 ( Part 1 of 2 )

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Year
1996
Reference
52308
Media type
Audio
Item unavailable online
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Rights Information
Year
1996
Reference
52308
Media type
Audio
Item unavailable online
Duration
00:53:40
Taonga Māori Collection
Yes
Credits
RNZ Collection
te Ua, Henare, 1933-2007
Hakaraia, Libby, 1968-
Belich, James, 1956-
Rodger, Kenny
Brown, Amy, 1940-1996

WHENUA! 07/07/96 (PART 1 OF 2)

Presented by Hēnare te Ua and Libby Hakaraia from the Radio New Zealand Studios, Auckland, on National Radio.

GREETINGS / PROMO WRAP

Music: The Children of Northland, 1990, and the Band of The Royal New Zealand Navy.

TAPE INTERVIEW: JAMES BELICH
A book which could re-shape our understanding of this country's history was published during the week. "Making Peoples", a history of the New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the end of the Nineteenth Century is an epic work by historian James Belich.
One magazine feature writer says James Belich; by common consent is the leading historian of his generation.
Apt words for the author of two previous myth breaking books, "THE NEW ZEALAND WARS" and " TITOKOWARU I SHALL NOT DIE".
Reading ' Making Peoples' gives me the impression his word processor never stands still. Words race out and spill out, urgently descriptive.
His words pictures are brilliant. Here's a part of the final paragraph of MAKING PEOPLES: - ' Camps, towns and stations sprouting like crazy mushrooms, bloating and bursting, desiccating, hanging on and taking off. Whores, housemaids, ladies and yeoman levering old world against new to prise out some space for themselves. Publicans, gentry, carpenters, aspiring, conspiring, expiring, making good and at least making better. Thousand-year-old trees mown like grass, hundred-year-old whales carved into giant lumps of lard and melted in the pot into lamp-oil for London streets and drunken Cossacks.'
You'll have to read the rest of it yourself.

Music: Robbie Ratana - Maku e Mihi (Here are my greetings to you.)

INTERNATIONAL MāORI: KENNY RODGER:
Rodger talks about his international photographic experiences.

POROPOROAKI: AMY BROWN.
At this time in Whenua! we pause to remember with affection and aroha, AMY BROWN, journalist, broadcaster, writer, Press Council Member and fabric artist. Amy's tribal affiliations were with Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Koroki and Ngāti Maniapoto. In the early 1960s, Amy worked with the former NZBC, New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation. One of the tasks she did was to transfer old Māori recordings from the original acetate discs, on to reel-to-reel tape. In addition, many of those tapes are now part of our Māori audio tapes Archive, Nga Taonga Kōrero which is cared for and administered by us here at Te Reo O Aotearoa in Auckland.
Amy's best known book, MANA WAHINE; WOMEN WHO SHOW THE WAY was a series of interviews with contemporary Māori Women. Just over a fortnight ago, Amy was here at our Auckland studios, excited about returning to her Raukawa heartland after living for some time near Dargaville and in Otahuhu. The main reason for her visit was to discuss aspects of her companion volume to MANA WAHINE, MANA TANE due for publication later this year. I'd helped her to select the twenty five or so men, interviews with whom will make up the book. Amy had also asked me to write the 2000 word introduction, something which I will honour. She wrote short stories. One of her latest, " It's me again, Melanie" was recently produced by Fergus Dick of our Wellington Drama team and it's been scheduled to be broadcast at 8:06 on Wednesday night, the 31st of this month.
"It's me again, Melanie" has the unlikely setting of the post office box-lobby in Otahuhu.
Two years ago, Bridget Williams Books published "KAUPAPA NEW ZEALAND - VISION AOTEAROA, twenty New Zealanders in conversation with Rosalie Capper and Amy Brown and edited by Witi Ihimaera.
Part of Amy's introduction reads: "Perhaps what unites most indigenous people is what they have lost from the past, weeping for a lost innocence, a time when we did not know what we had lost"
Will future writers and historians look back with nostalgia to the late twentieth century in New Zealand and wish that they had known such a time of innocence? "Those people never knew what they had", they might say. While my tinana (or body) will not be present in a hundred years, my wairua or spirit will linger, just as the people I come from, linger with me now. In addition, to add extra poignancy to Amy's story, one of Amy's sisters died a matter of hours after Amy died. The funeral ceremonies were held on Raukawa marae in Otaki three days ago. No reira, takoto mai ra korua I roto o nga ringaringa a Te Atua. Haere atu ra korua ki Hawaiki nui, haere atu ra, haere atu ra.

Music: Tauira

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