Land of the Long White Cloud

In her preface to this collection of Maori stories, Te Kanawa explains that the impetus to gather them and set down came after a gathering of Te Kanawas in 1987 at their ancestral home in New Zealand. She also states that these retellings are her own recollections of stories heard in childhood, and that she has not attempted to authenticate them.

While not qualified to judge their authenticity, to this reader the collection is striking for the vigour of the tales and their retelling. Some of the stories are about the creation of New Zealand and of the gods and monsters who frequently engaged in conflicts and battles with humans. Some end in death and destruction, others in accommodation of various sorts as in the story of mortal lovers Wetenga and Putawai and the child Putawai bore Manoa, a wairua or spirit. The spirit world is an active one, and is often intertwined with that of the tribes people who inhabit a landscape of changing colours and moods. Sometimes it is lush and green, sometimes suffused with a golden yellow light, and frequently, mysteriously blue as in the story of lovers Hinemoa and Tutanekai. Foreman’s images of water, calm and still at times, but also raging around Maori canoes, remain in the imagination.