in besidedness
while we’re here
lets be clear
that Te Rauparaha’s Ka Mate Ka Ora
actually tells
the passionate truth of a woman’s generative strength
our agency with respect to life & death
cf: Janet Charman, the pistils, OUP, 2022, 66.
Ka mate! ka mate! Ka ora! ka ora! Ka mate! ka mate! Ka ora! ka ora! Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru, Nāna nei i tiki mai whakawhiti te rā! Hūpane! Hūpane! Hūpane! Kaupane! Whiti te rā! I die! I die! I live! I live! I die! I die! I live! I live! This is the hairy man Who fetched the sun causing it to shine! One upward step! Another upward step! One last upward step! Then step forth! Into the sun that shines! - Te Ngeri a Te Rauparaha (c.1768?–1849) Nō Ngāti Toa, nō Ngāti Raukawa; he rangatira. Haka by Te Rauparaha, a chief of Ngāti Toa and of Ngāti Raukawa descent (Karetu, 63-68)
Cf. Robert Sullivan in: Kamate Ka Ora, Issue 1 December 2005. https://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/kmko/01/ka_mate01_sullivan.asp in besidedness: Te Rauparaha’s Ka Mate Ka Ora Written in celebration of Matariki: 24.6.22.
I have recently read two highly influential analyses in English of the haka Ka Mate Ka Ora[1] in which the conduct of Te Rangikoaea is finessed in ways that seek to guard the mana of Te Rauparaha, the composer of this taonga, from the punitive, misogynistic sexual prejudices of patriarchy. But in these readings, the protection given to Te Rauparaha comes at the expense of the woman whose outstandingly brave composure saved the poet’s life. Most obviously in the misleading prominence these critics and other cultural commentators give to, or fail to correct, in regard to the rendering of Te Rauparaha’s line ‘Tēnei te tangata pūhuruhuru’ as: ‘This is the hairy man’ [my emphasis].
That is a (purposely?) confusing reading, which effectively disguises the fact that here Te Rauparaha makes reference to a woman: Te Rangikoaea. He is actually acknowledging himself to be forever indebted to the vibrancy of her sexual life force—her female generativity: A power he embodies in a personification of the pubic hair of her vulva: the hairy one.
Nobody can deny that Tangata Whenua have every reason to be wary of the motives and actions of Pakeha audiences & critics with regard to indigenous taonga. But no matter how protectively intentioned, translations and readings that obscure both the enormous personal courage of Te Rangikoaea and equally, the profound aesthetic breakthrough made by Te Rauparaha in his recognition of it, do a disservice to both of them.
No-one could be more invested than Te Rauparaha himself, in guarding his and Te Rangikoaea’s joint reputations from the mockery and derision of their enemies (of any era). When correctly translated, this, his haka, becomes the primary evidence of his self-protective agency. But for such a realization to be accepted Ka Mate Ka Ora must be read in a non-assimilated context. One free of the Judeo-Christian horror of women’s bodies introduced to Aotearoa by the European missionaries. For only when treated on primarily indigenous terms, can it can be clearly seen that Te Rauparaha’s is a cultural artefact whose sexual compassion and emotional fire makes for an astounding enhancement of the respective mana of both the composer—and his saviour.
But recognizing this requires untethering Ka Mate Ka Ora from its media enabled representations in the minds of sports audiences—ignorant of Te Reo—as an inchoate howl of combat savagery. And it will also require an acknowledgment that in those men—and women—who in actual combat settings where they faced imminent death, have performed Ka Mate Ka Ora, it met their primal need to call on the symbolically protective power of the mother.
The historical events of the period of Ka Mate Ka Ora’s composition are key to such a thematic recognition.
In the early 1800’s in Aotearoa, the chief Te Rauparaha, while evading hot pursuit from his enemies, had taken refuge with allies at Motupuhi Pa, northwest of Mt. Tongariro. However, mana whenua there did not have sufficient resources to defend him directly. If he was to survive, he had to hide. The snap decision was then taken that he should huddle himself down in a pit formed in the earth for a kumara store.
As his pursuers approached, Te Rangikoaea hid the existence of this hole by blocking it with her body. Te Rauparaha inside; curled himself up in a fetal position underneath her—she sitting on top of him. In the close confines of his cramped below ground refuge he could hear his pursuers demand to know where he was. Directly above his head were Te Rangikoaea’s genitals, with their covering of pubic hair.
She did not give away Te Rauparaha’s presence despite her double vulnerability: Under imminent threat from Te Rauparaha’s attackers and also profoundly exposed, in bodily terms, to Te Rauparaha himself. Yet her reaction to this crisis was precisely gauged to offer no provocation to the enemy intruders, while not betraying in any way, her complicity in their quarry’s protection.
Failing to discover his hiding place, those hunting Te Rauparaha decided the chief had fled—and left.
Te Rauparaha, emerged safely from his hiding place, then felt moved to express his profound thanks to the woman who had saved his life. At the same time, he knew the circumstances in which she had enabled him to evade his enemies could make them both a laughing-stock. For it would now become known to all that despite his high status as a Rangatira, the most tapu part of Te Rauparaha’s person, his head, had been below the vulva of this woman. It was a circumstance that had the potential to be a form of social death for them both. As news spread of how he and Te Rangikoaea had outwitted his enemies, mockery of Te Rauparaha’s ignominy would be a salve to the chagrin of those whose murderous intentions the pair had thwarted.
As emotion recollected in tranquillity Te Rauparaha’s composition therefore does much more than broadcast the triumph of his survival. In it—by humbly affirming as sacred, the pro/creativity of the woman who has saved him—he seizes control of the narrative. His haka draws on the pure-adrenalin soaked moments of his captivity to celebrate the female power a mother carries with respect to her infant’s gestation; life; and even death. Set in the womb of Paptuanuku, the earth mother, and implicitly recognizing the femaleness of Hine Nui Te Po—Atua of Death, Te Rauparaha’s haka invokes maternal protection. His narrative recreates his own terror when poised on the cusp of death with it’s repetitions felt in performance as propulsive waves of vocal energy. These are spasms that acknowledge as a maternally enabled symbolic rebirth, the composer’s privilege in being delivered once more into the world of light.
The genre of texts on which Ka Mate Ka Ora is considered, by some, to be based,[2] can function in Māori society as epithalamia do in a European setting. There should be no cultural cringe associated with such universal material. One notable ancient parallel for such ngeri-work created by tangata whenua in celebration of erotic marital congress—can be found in the Greek poet Sappho’s comedically awe-inspired recognition of the energy she imagines wedding guests imputing to the bride and groom on their first awkward night of sexual consummation. Her imagery evokes a specifically phallocentric energy:
They’re locked in, oh!
The doorkeeper’s
feet are twelve
yards long! Ten shoe-
makers used five
oxhides to cobble
sandals for them [3]
Ka Mate Ka Ora is an equally awe-inspired depiction of the heaven and earth[l]y exigencies of sex & death—in which Te Rauparaha says as much again, and more, of thepro/creative gynocentric energies of women.
notes
[1] Robert Sullivan, Kamate Ka ora, Issue 1.December 2005. https://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/kmko/01/ka_mate01_sullivan.asp
Tihema Baker, Ka Mate Ka Ora, New Zealand Geographic, May/June 2022. p.114.
[2] New Zealand Folk Song: From Kamate to Kikikiki https://folksong.org.nz/kikiki/indexkids.html
[3] Mary Barnard, Sappho, A New Translation, UCLA Press, 1958, Fragment 33.
john geraets 