Bookshelf – In Print

Vaka Moana: Voyages of the Ancestors. The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific.

Edited by K.R. Howe. Auckland: David Bateman/Auckland Museum, 2006.
ISBN: 9781869536251. 360pp. Plates, maps, index. $90.00.
Reviewed by Barrie Macdonald

Few who have lived, worked or travelled in the Pacific Islands can fail to ponder on questions posed by Captain James Cook 250 years ago concerning the origins of the Polynesians. How did the Polynesian peoples, with their similar languages and cultures reach their remote and scattered islands, and where did they come from?

For me, these questions were first posed in the late 1960s, before I even went to the islands. At the Australian National University, I had the office next to that of Dr David Lewis who gathered and preserved ancient navigational knowledge that was remembered but not written, and helped to encourage a renaissance of canoe building and inter-island voyaging.

A few months later, as I was engaged on research in the islands of Kiribati, located where the equator intersects with the international dateline, I sat as an audience of one as Lewis gently interrogated a renowned navigator. He led his informant through intricate matters of navigation and land-finding. The old man explained how, when sailing between the island we were on and its neighbour, he could always identify his position by interpreting waves, swells and currents even when cloud prevented his use of sun, moon or stars.

With regard to land-finding, the navigator spoke of bird flight paths and the interpretation of cloud patterns. At one stage it was clear, even to me (for I had witnessed it from the trading vessel on which I had travelled to the islands) that Lewis wanted comment on the colours reflected on the underside of clouds (especially the milky green that indicated an atoll lagoon). The navigator spoke in great detail about the building of clouds and the subtle interpretation of their shapes and movement, but made no mention of colour. Making no progress, Lewis finally asked a direct question and after a short silence, was given a gentle explanation. Lewis’s reputation had come before him from the Micronesian islands to the north; he was himself a navigator and had proved this by turning up in his small, battered ketch. The cloud effect he referred to was so obvious that anyone could see it; for a real navigator, it was merely confirmation that land already identified from a much greater distance was now close at hand.

The next revelation came a few weeks later when, on a larger island to the south – in reality, several scattered islets along a reef and enclosed by a large lagoon – I needed to travel between two villages almost at opposite ends of the lagoon. Too impatient to wait for the government ship that was not due for several days (or might take weeks), I decided to hire the Island Council’s canoe which came complete with boatman and a prisoner as crew.

As an aside, under British colonial regulations, our crewman was an ‘Extramural Prisoner’, my first introduction to extramural anything. Extramural means ‘outside the walls’ after all and, in this case, it meant living at home, providing your own meals, and working on public works for no pay. For small remote islands, extramural imprisonment, despite its contradictions, made sense. The main offences were drunkenness (from fermented sap of the coconut tree) and fighting with (very sharp) knives, usually in combination. Until I came to Massey, I assumed the words extramural and prisoner to be inextricably bound, which is, perhaps, why I have always preferred “distance education” to “extramural studies”.

The canoe was about eight metres long, pointed at both ends, with the hull standing 1.2 metres high but less than half a metre across the top at its widest point. The timber may have been imported, but the construction was all traditional. Thin, narrow planks, most no more than a metre or two long, were tied and caulked with string and wadding made from coconut husk fibre. All was tied; no nails, screws or glue were used. A lattice of poles about three metres wide provided a deck from which was suspended an outrigger float shaped from a single log. There was a triangular sail suspended from a central mast.

We had a journey of two halves – the first laboriously tacking across the lagoon making, it seemed, little progress towards our destination. Laborious because every tack meant that the boatman and prisoner had to change ends – the former carrying his steering oar, and the latter having to transfer the downward point of our triangular sail from one end of the canoe to the other so that the outrigger would always stay on the windward side.

The second half was altogether different. After a final tack, we turned towards our destination, now too far away to be seen, and began an exhilarating downwind run of some 35 km. As the passenger hung on grimly, the prisoner tried to maintain his balance as he moved in and out on the outrigger to the shouted instructions of the boatman so that we obtained the maximum speed with the outrigger float staying largely clear of the water and just skimming the top of every fourth or fifth wave. For his part, the boatman seemed to have no difficulty in managing the steering oar by tucking it under one arm while rolling a smoke (using pandanus leaf rather than paper), and singing ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’, the only discernible evidence of his mission education at the hands of Irish nuns.

Decades later, the fascination and questions remain, which is why I picked up Vaka Moana with keen interest, and I was not disappointed. At the heart of Vaka Moana is that same question posed by Captain Cook – of where the Polynesians came from and how they reached their widely scattered islands with cultures and languages that were clearly related. And what was the stepping-off point – Asia, specifically Southeast Asia as commonly assumed (even by Cook on the basis of his observations of material culture) or South America, India, or the remoter reaches of the Nile, or were they one of the lost tribes of Israel? All have been the subject of speculation across the past 250 years.

To make the puzzles even more intriguing, the movement of Polynesians to colonise the south and eastern Pacific – the last region on earth to be settled by humans – was the first migration to cross significant stretches of water. In other words, after the end of the ice age and the consequent expansion of the oceans, Polynesians reached the remote islands of the Pacific with boat-building, navigation and land-finding skills thousands of years in advance of any other population of the time. Whereas most of the rest of the world was settled by people who walked to their destinations, crossing short stretches of water using primitive craft and a measure of hope, the Polynesians sailed. Even if they did not know what lay ahead, they knew where they had come from and where they were, and were confident upon the ocean. The DNA evidence suggests a ‘founding’ female population for New Zealand of between 70 and 190, which means that the canoes reaching New Zealand were bent on exploration or settlement and not warfare or fishing, both of which were male preoccupations.

It is, perhaps, the romantic heroism that was constructed around this great undertaking that has perpetuated the myths promoted by the likes of Thor Heyerdahl (South American origins) and Percy S. Smith (the settlement of New Zealand by a great canoe fleet) long after they had been discredited, and has kept scholarly interest in the subject alive over recent decades despite the resolution of most of the unanswered questions, using new scientific techniques.

In its own origins, Vaka Moana is the book of an exhibition of the same name that opened in December in the Auckland Museum. The exhibition is a huge undertaking – demonstrating not only the ‘family tree’ of Polynesian settlement (where DNA sequencing is finally resolving arguments carried on by generations of archaeologists, linguists and plant biologists), but the means of migration and the evolving material culture and social organisation of the newly settled societies. As well as the expected canoes, carvings and stories of the founding gods and goddesses of Polynesian mythology, there is a chance to see original works from Cook’s voyages by Webber and Hodges, and to explore islands and oceans for oneself through artefacts and multimedia displays; a real highlight is a night sky as it was seen, and used, by Micronesian navigators. Vaka Moana is the book of the exhibition, and a valuable complement to it, but it is also much more.

Vaka Moana has more maps, reproductions of artworks, and photographs of people, places, events and artefacts than an exhibition could possibly accommodate. It also has a broader scope, with an extensive coverage of canoe and sail types, the star compasses and other concepts and devices used for inter-island voyaging, and land-finding techniques. It covers post-settlement societies, later voyaging (including for head-hunting) and the later interaction of the ‘two worlds’ – Polynesian and European. Just as fascinating are the accounts of the dispersal of plants and the non-human (and often unintended) migrants, notably the Polynesian rat and dog.

As editor (and with a hand in the curating of the exhibition), Massey University’s Professor Kerry Howe has gathered an international who’s who of scholars to provide this state-of the-art-account of Polynesian migration and settlement. Under Howe’s over-arching editorship, each section has a lead author and may include contributions by a number of others. It includes, among others, Rawiri Taonui on oral traditions, Geoff Irwin on the archaeological evidence of voyaging and settlement; Ben Finney on canoes, navigation and the voyaging renaissance, Roger Neich on voyaging in the post settlement period, and Anne Salmond on European voyagers and the meeting of Polynesian and European cultures. Howe rounds off the book with an analysis of western views of Polynesian migration and the ways in which these have been bounded more by European perceptions than by Polynesian realities.

The book is well written, lavishly illustrated and beautifully produced; it gathers the current state of knowledge and packages it well. It is a fitting tribute to epic voyages, Polynesian and European, and brings great credit not only to the editor and authors but also to the museum and publisher who have sponsored the whole enterprise; it has been an epic journey of its own.

So: should you buy this book, despite its price? Absolutely, if you are fascinated by the sea or want to learn and understand more about New Zealand’s past and its Pacific connections. If you buy a copy from the museum, you could get the exhibition T-shirt and cap as well, and have a matching set.

Rakiura: The Wilderness of Stewart Island

by Rob Brown, Craig Potton Publishing,
ISBN: 1877333476, $64.99
Reviewed by Gavin Hipkins

Craig Potton Publishing specialises in richly printed collections of New Zealand landscape photography. This focus reflects Craig Potton’s own status as a celebrated landscape photographer and his broad interest in preserving and creating personal engagement with New Zealand’s extraordinary landscape. In this light, Rob Brown’s Rakiura is certainly Pottonesque. Stewart Island (Rakiura) is presented in luscious plates interspersed with short essays.

The essays provide an engaging account of Stewart Island’s history from pre-European contact onwards, covering the island’s social, cultural and economic changes. Absent is the visual complement: photographs showing the presence of people and their impact.

In 2002, Stewart Island became a national park. In one essay Brown reminds the viewer to remain ever-conscious of the increased demands that tourism and national-park-as-commodity can have on local communities and unspoilt nature. He hopes that the island will retain its wildness and survive the potential threat of “crowded viewing platforms.”

Of course there is an irony here. In recording an idealised nature the book is also functioning as postcard for the reader. Having seen these beautiful – at times sublimely otherworldly – photographs, and noted that the last chapter is titled ‘Tramping on Stewart Island’, I too now want to visit. In celebrating the apparently untouched beauty spots on our most southern island, Brown cannot help but invite the very tourism of which he himself is so wary.

Rob Brown holds a BTech (Hons) Product Development from Massey and featured alongside Shaun Barnett (see the back inside cover of this issue) in MASSEY issue 8.

Wild Cards: Eccentric Characters from New Zealand’s Past

by John Dunmore, Auckland: New Holland Press, ISBN: 186966132X, $34.99
Reviewed by James Watson

In this book John Dunmore, Professor Emeritus of this university and pre-eminent historian of French exploration in the Pacific, has gathered together a substantial pack of ‘wild cards’, colourful characters from New Zealand’s past, and has provided short biographies of each, highlighting their eccentricities. Some of these characters are comparatively well known, having been the subject of full-length books, while others are obscure to most of us. Individuals who arrived during the gold rushes are particularly prominent, the South Island seems to make a disproportionate contribution, and many of those covered had literary inclinations. On the other hand, some, like James Mackenzie, the sheep stealer or Russian Jack, the itinerant, may well have been illiterate, at least in English.

It is tempting to imagine what might happen if the characters in this collection were ever brought together in one room. Baron Charles de Thierry, who had proclaimed himself Charles I, King of Nuku Hiva (in the Marquesas Islands) and Sovereign Chief of New Zealand, might well find a natural conversation partner in Geoffrey de Montalk, poet and claimant to the throne of Poland. They might have deigned to include William Larnach, who aspired to be a laird in his castle out on Otago Peninsula. Lionel Terry, hopefully required to leave his revolver outside, would doubtless be reassured to find that there were no Chinese in the gathering. The Reverend Norman McLeod, the fiercely Calvinist Presbyterian minister who led a party of Scottish immigrants from Nova Scotia to Waipu, would be glaring across at the women who had been admitted to the gathering. These included Flora MacKenzie, sex therapist, brothel keeper and heavy drinker; Amy Bock, cross-dresser and thief; and Katherine Mansfield, the brilliant writer with a decidedly bohemian lifestyle. Even more offensive to him might well have been the presence of the charlatan known in New Zealand as Arthur Worthington, who founded the Temple of Truth in Christchurch and whose liaisons amongst some of the pious and gullible womenfolk of that city provoked an outburst that necessitated the reading of the Riot Act. Chances are that Worthington would be chatting with the ladies, focusing on the comparatively well-heeled Flora and on Katherine, a possible heiress. Having been married innumerable times himself, he might be a subject of interest to Professor Alexander Bickerton, the socialist scientist who lost his job at Canterbury University College for, amongst other things, denouncing the institution of marriage. Charles Thatcher, ‘the balladeer of the goldfields’, would probably find much common ground with the iconoclastic poet Rex Fairburn and they might have struck up a tune with the diminutive pipe-smoking goldminer Bridget Goodwin, ‘Biddy of the Buller’. A trio of ‘hermits in the bush’, Donald Sutherland, Ma-ori Bill and Jules Berg, if they attended at all, would be standing wordlessly and uncomfortably on the margins of the gathering, wishing they could return to their chosen solitude. On the other hand, John A. Lee’s voice would certainly be heard booming away, perhaps being heckled by an irate Mabel Howard, denouncing him as a traitor to the Labour Party.

When one considers this collection and then adds to it a few of the great range of possible additions that could be made, I’m not sure that New Zealand society has ever been quite as ‘drab and conformist’ as the introduction to this book implies. Again and again one finds fascinating characters cropping up in the columns of old newspapers, not least in the accounts of court cases. If “Ordinary mortals vanish into the pattern of daily life and become the wallpaper of existence: eccentrics are its ornaments”, then the room that represents New Zealand is positively cluttered with bric-a-brac. There are some splendid examples here and Professor Dunmore is to be congratulated on writing up such lively accounts of some of the characters that illustrate the diversity in our country’s past.

Massey Emeritus Professor John Dunmore is a pioneering historian of the French exploration of the Pacific. In February he became the first New Zealander ever to be awarded the French medal of Officer of the Legion of Honour.

Adverse Reactions: The Fenoterol Story

by Neil Pearce, Auckland University Press, ISBN-10: 1869403746, $40.00
Reviewed by Patrick Morgan

Beginning in 1976 deaths from asthma in New Zealand rose suddenly, tripling by 1979. In Adverse Reactions: The Fenoterol Story, epidemiologist Professor Neil Pearce tells the story of how he and a group of researchers discovered that the asthma drug fenoterol was the cause of this alarming epidemic.

Facing pressure and opposition from conservative medical opinion and the drug industry, they persisted in exposing the link between fenoterol and asthma deaths, and finally saw their conclusions accepted, the drug restricted, and the death rate fall.

Dr Pearce draws attention to many issues about drug safety in New Zealand and internationally, and about the contest between money and science in medical research.

He says the same problems have occurred many times when university-based researchers have discovered that a particular drug or chemical is dangerous.

“Other examples include the controversies about oral contraceptives and stroke, the toxicity of benzene, diesel fumes, passive smoking and chromium (the chemical featured in the Erin Brockovich film).

“The usual approach is for the company concerned to hire consultants to criticise the research publicly, either when it appears in print, or even prior to publication. In recent years, these efforts have been further developed and refined with the use of websites and publicity that stigmatises unwelcome research findings as ‘junk science’. In some instances these activities have gone as far as efforts to block publication.

“In many instances, academics have accepted industry funding which has not been acknowledged, and only the academic affiliations of the company-funded consultants have been listed. Thus, the fenoterol story is still relevant today.”

Neil Pearce, PhD, DSc, FRNZ, is an epidemiologist (a health researcher who studies the causes of epidemics). A professor at Massey’s Wellington campus, he is Director of the Centre for Public Health Research, which he established in 2000. The centre conducts a wide range of public health research including respiratory disease, cancer, diabetes, Ma-ori health, Pacific health and occupational and environmental health research.

DISASTER RESILIENCE: An Integrated Approach

by Douglas Paton and David Johnston, Charles C Thomas Publisher,
ISBN: 9780398076634, US$48.95

Explored here are the factors that make communities resilient to disaster impacts. The authors discuss how risk can be managed by identifying factors that influence individuals and communities capacity to coexist with hazardous events and adapt to their consequences.

David Johnston heads the Disaster Research Centre, a joint initiative between Massey and the Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences.

Society and Politics: New Zealand Social Policy

by Grant Duncan, Pearson Education New Zealand, ISBN: 9781877371646, $34.99

In a review in the New Zealand Journal of Tertiary Education Policy, Steve Matthewman of Auckland University described the first edition of this text as “a refreshing antidote to customary works of social policy” and “a timely and able publication”. Among the topics covered are sovereignty, social contract and the Treaty of Waitangi; liberalism; socialism; feminism; nationalism, imperialism and racism; neoliberalism and conservatism; and the contemporary third-way model.

Grant Duncan is a Massey senior lecturer in public policy.

Tramping In New Zealand

Bird’s Eye Guide Tramping in New Zealand, written and photographed by Shaun Barnett is a guide to 40 of New Zealand’s best tramps. Set apart from other guides in its use of the latest generation of ‘bird’s eye’ computer-generated maps, the book is published by Craig Potton Publishing and retails for $34.99.

Shaun Barnett developed an interest in mountains and tramping whilst a teenager living in Napier. Since then he’s tramped throughout New Zealand, visiting all of the country’s National and Forest Parks. He has also hiked in Australia, Nepal, South America, Italy, Canada and Alaska. Sea kayaking and climbing are activities he enjoys too.

A full-time writer and photographer since 1996, he has written over 450 articles for popular magazines and newspapers both in New Zealand and overseas. His publishing credits include NZ Geographic, The Listener, the Dominion Post, Forest & Bird, Action Asia, Geo Australasia and NZ Wilderness magazine. From December 1999 to May 2003 he was the editor of NZ Wilderness magazine, and since June 2003 he has been roving editor.

He is the author of Classic Tramping in New Zealand (1999) co-authored with Rob Brown, (winner of the 2000 Montana Book Award for the Environment category), Natural New Zealand (2001), North Island Weekend Tramps (2002, revised 2004) and Tramping In New Zealand, 40 Great New Zealand Tramping Trips (2006) with Roger Smith (who did the maps).

He is currently researching and writing another book, this one on the history of New Zealand’s Forest Parks, which has been supported by grants from the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, and Federated Mountain Clubs (FMC).

Since 1999 Shaun has been an active member of the FMC executive. In this role he has produced several posters (on hypothermia, the Adams Wilderness Area, and celebrating clubs) attended many DOC hut and track review meetings, written submissions, advocated for Wilderness Areas, and edited a booklet on high country tenure review called Freedom of the Hills.

His tramping ambitions include a piecemeal traverse of the Southern Alps from St Arnaud (Nelson Lakes) to Milford Sound. This has involved linking tramps, completed in stages, with various companions. In 2001 he completed the most arduous section of the traverse on a 28-day, 250-kilometre trans-alpine tramp from Aoraki/Mt Cook to Arthur’s Pass, and in 2003 completed another significant chunk when he walked from the Karangarua Valley to Haast Pass. Shaun now has just one five-day trip and one four-day tramp to complete the traverse.

Shaun, 37, lives in Wellington with his wife Tania, and two sons,Tom and Lee.