{"id":886348,"date":"2026-09-10T01:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T01:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/886348\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T01:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T01:50:09","slug":"witi-ihimaera-whenever-things-get-hairy-i-think-to-myself-theyre-only-angry-because-we-maori-survived-australian-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/886348\/","title":{"rendered":"Witi Ihimaera: \u2018Whenever things get hairy I think to myself, they\u2019re only angry because we M\u0101ori survived\u2019 | Australian theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

Witi Ihimaera was in his 20s when, while sitting in front of the television with his mother, they watched an old M\u0101ori<\/a> woman receive a birthday greeting from Queen Elizabeth. \u201cIf I received a telegram from the queen,\u201d his mother said, on the couch beside him, \u201cI would spit on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now 82, the revered M\u0101ori writer was at first inspired by this moment to write a novel about an ancient M\u0101ori woman who had lived to see all of their people\u2019s clashes with New Zealand\u2019s colonisers. \u201cI realised writing a novel about a woman who would then be about 150 would take 150 years to write,\u201d he chuckles.<\/p>\n

Over more than five decades, Ihimaera, who lives in Auckland, has often written about M\u0101ori politics and resistance in his more than 40 works for adults and children, including the 1987 bestseller The Whale Rider, made into a much-loved film<\/a> in 2002.<\/p>\n

His idea for a story about a wizened M\u0101ori matriarch eventually became a play, Woman Far Walking, which is finally having its Australian premiere later this week<\/a> at Brisbane festival, 26 years after it premiered in Wellington. The play follows Tiriti o Waitangi Mahana, a woman named for the Treaty of Waitangi<\/a> signed between P\u0101keh\u0101 (white New Zealanders) and M\u0101ori in 1840, her birth year. She is furious that she was named for the treaty, fuming: \u201cWhat a namesake. A fraud. Full of lies and P\u0101keh\u0101 promises.\u201d<\/p>\n

When the play premiered in 2000, Tiri had somehow lived 160 years and witnessed many of the major moments in the country\u2019s history \u2013 including surviving a massacre at Ngatapa<\/a> in 1869 and the 1918 flu epidemic that killed scores. The play didn\u2019t receive an entirely warm reception because, Ihimaera says, many P\u0101keh\u0101 were then resistant to acknowledging M\u0101ori losses of lives, land and language.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt got booed a few times by people who didn\u2019t like the fact they would have to apologise,\u201d Ihimaera says. \u201cIt got angry as well as acclamatory responses \u2026 In my work, whenever things get pretty hairy I just have to think to myself, they\u2019re only angry because we survived.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miriama McDowell as Tiri in Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking. Photograph: Andi Crown<\/p>\n

Tiri is now 186 years old in the new bilingual adaptation from Auckland Theatre Company, directed by Katie Wolfe. When Woman Far Walking opened in New Zealand last November<\/a>, audiences greeted it with \u201cmuch more receptivity\u201d, Ihimaera says.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just have to keep going through [angry responses] and make sure, for ever and ever, you keep putting the Indigenous point of view, or the alternative, radical, subversive point of view,\u201d he says. \u201cKeep on putting it because, somewhere or another, the equality will come in the middle, between the negotiations of both sides.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Treaty of Waitangi, a broad statement of principles on which the British and M\u0101ori made a political compact to found a nation state and build a government, has been the subject of fierce debate since it was first signed. There are major discrepancies between the two texts<\/a>: in the English version, M\u0101ori cedes sovereignty<\/a> to the Crown, while in the M\u0101ori text, they gave \u201ck\u0101wanatanga\u201d, or governance, to the Crown.<\/p>\n

Director Katie Wolfe sees the Treaty of Waitangi as, on balance, \u201ca very positive document\u201d and she is proud of the robust political conversations New Zealand has had. A new beginning to the play is being written for Australia, in which Tiri acknowledges she and the audience are on Turrbal country, in Meanjin\/Brisbane.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the sensitivities around that is there has been an ongoing struggle for treaty<\/a> in Queensland,\u201d she says. She hopes the acknowledgment of this local context by Tiri will be \u201cvery positive\u201d.<\/p>\n

N\u012b Dekkers-Reihana and Miriama McDowell in Tiri: Te Araroa Woman Far Walking. Photograph: Andi Crown Photography\/Andi Crown<\/p>\n

Miriama McDowell, who plays Tiri, says the treaty is \u201cat the centre of so many conversations I have as an artist\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s extraordinary: we have a document that is still so alive, that is beating so loudly, that we talk about it in so many different contexts. That is the power of this play: we just continue to bring it out into the light.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ihimaera likes to go to the national library in Wellington to look at the treaty: for him, it is a triumph. \u201cThe fact we have a treaty, first of all, is the main thing,\u201d he says, emphasising that subsequent renegotiations have led to the return of M\u0101ori land and more equity for M\u0101ori language and health in national legislation.<\/p>\n

\u2018If you don\u2019t know the language, then you don\u2019t understand the legacy\u2019: Witi Ihimaera. Photograph: Murdo Macleod\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

He was worried that the treaty principles bill<\/a>, defeated last year in the New Zealand parliament, would wind back M\u0101ori rights because it proposed abandoning the principles that courts and parliament had developed over decades to guide the relationship between the crown and M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always that risk, but fortunately now there are really good, young negotiators, and we have been able to use the law to fight the law,\u201d he says. \u201cWe have now been able to use our understanding of government process to make endless submissions to government, making sure we appear on television, on the radio, on daily news, constantly putting the M\u0101ori position. The younger generation is now front forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Remarkably, two years ago at the age of 80, Ihimaera enrolled in a year of te reo M\u0101ori<\/a> classes to learn to write more fluently in his native tongue; he felt he had been \u201cventriloquising\u201d for most of his life. He has just written his first book completely in te reo M\u0101ori, out next year.<\/p>\n

Learning his ancestral language was a quest to more deeply understand his culture \u2013 but te reo M\u0101ori also has unique challenges for a novelist. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult because M\u0101ori think in terms of the collective, rather than the singular, ego-driven character. We have certain principles at the centre of our psychic world. But I\u2019m hopeful people will understand why M\u0101ori are always standing up for their language, because if you don\u2019t know the language, then you don\u2019t understand the legacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ihimaera\u2019s life has always been extraordinarily adaptable: in the 1970s he served as a diplomat, including a stint as second secretary<\/a> with the New Zealand High Commission in Canberra where he would sneak away to join the Aboriginal tent embassy<\/a> protest and \u201csing songs all night\u201d. He cites many female Indigenous Australian poets, novelists and activists as influences, from the late Oodgeroo Noonuccal through to Larissa Behrendt, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Melissa Lucashenko, Anita Heiss and Marcia Langton.<\/p>\n

Ihimaera was celebrating his 50th anniversary as a writer at the 2023 Brisbane writers festival when news of the failure of the Indigenous voice to parliament referendum<\/a> came through. \u201cI was with my Aboriginal friends, who started to cry and scream,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI found myself saying to them, \u2018Tomorrow will be a new day. This will happen; it might take another 100 years \u2026 but one still must keep on walking.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In Australia, Victoria is the only state or territory to sign a treaty with Indigenous people<\/a>, which occurred last November. Ihimaera \u201cwouldn\u2019t dare\u201d to give specific advice about treaty negotiations to Aboriginal people \u201cwho have been on this Earth longer than any other peoples in the southern hemisphere\u201d. But he does share a saying of his Te Wh\u0101nau-a-Kai tribe: \u201chei whana pana m\u0101r\u014d.\u201d Which essentially means \u201cNever retreat.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Witi Ihimaera was in his 20s when, while sitting in front of the television with his mother, they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":886349,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-886348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=886348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/886348\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=886348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=886348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=886348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}