{"id":438929,"date":"2026-05-21T21:04:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T21:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/438929\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T21:04:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T21:04:15","slug":"witi-ihimaera-smiler-in-honour-of-the-octopus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/438929\/","title":{"rendered":"Witi Ihimaera Smiler: In honour of the octopus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Witi Ihimaera Smiler, author of Te Kaikaukau: The Swimmer I Te Ao O Te Reo<\/a>, explains why the wheke is so central to his philosophy of language and life.<\/p>\n

Kaua e mate wheke, mate ururoa.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t die like an octopus, die like a hammerhead shark.<\/p>\n

This popular proverb translates as never give up, fight to the end like the hammerhead shark. I don\u2019t mind the motivational purpose of the proverb but the problem with the comparison is that the octopus is perceived to give up easily.<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t been able to verify the provenance of the whakatauk\u012b: who created it, when and where and under what circumstances. But the hono of the octopus with cowardice was wrong then and is still wrong now. Maybe the fault is in the way the wheke swims \u2013 headfirst and tentacles trailing \u2013 it looks like it is always running away.<\/p>\n

But of the two creatures, the octopus is more intelligent. It has a big brain in its head as well as mini-brains at the base of each tentacle, nine brains in all! This intelligence has enabled it to adopt a different strategy to the shark. For instance, the hammerhead shark certainly attacks; the octopus varies its strategy to include an array of defensive moves \u2013 it lives to fight another day. The most important difference is, however, in the kaupapa. The shark attacks for food; its desire is to appease its hunger. The octopus defends for a very specific reason: to protect its wh\u0101nau.<\/p>\n

Which is why, in my latest book Te Kaikaukau: The Swimmer I Te Ao O Te Reo, I have mounted a defence of the wheke which appears in p\u016br\u0101kau and m\u0101tauranga of Polynesia as a wondrous primeval entity. A shapeshifting marine creature, she (the octopus in mythology was female) is the mother of the universe, ensuring the interdependence of all things across it.<\/p>\n

In the 1920s, anthropologist and scientist Te Rangi H\u012broa used the wheke to pictorialise the questing intelligence of our early canoe voyagers departing Ra\u2018i\u0101tea (the head of the octopus) as tentacles, each reaching out to populate the Pacific purposefully, not accidentally. How did Te Rangi H\u012broa know, way before P\u0101keh\u0101 did, that each arm had its own brain? In this representation, the octopus is considered the lone survivor of the world that precedes us. She is the guardian of the original wisdom, infinite knowledge and fertility.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

One M\u0101ori myth tells of the hero Kupe pursuing a giant wheke from Tahiti \u2013 and discovering New Zealand in the process \u2013 because the octopus had been destroying his nets. But in a Hawaiki version, the same story is told from the octopus\u2019s point of view. Her name was Tumu-rai-fenua and she and her human partner, the tohunga Muturangi, were the owners of the reef that Kupe fished at. She destroyed his nets because he was taking away the food from her children.<\/p>\n

In this earlier version, Tumu-rai-fenua seeks to save her children by luring Kupe to follow her. And forget all those stories that imply Kupe killed her! She lived on to raise more children in Aotearoa\u2019s waters. Hers is an extraordinary story of motherhood.<\/p>\n

More recently, Rose Pere used the image of the octopus to to represent M\u0101ori health<\/a>. The head represents the wh\u0101nau. The eyes of the octopus are the waiora. Each of the eight tentacles represents a specific dimension of health: wairuatanga; hinengaro; taha tinana; whanaungatanga; waiora; mauri; h\u0101 a koro ma, a kui ma; and whatumanawa.<\/p>\n

Frankly, the octopus is a great symbol of M\u0101ori intelligence. The M\u0101ori have always fought for the wellbeing of the family and language nests.\u00a0Our ways of traditional warfare have always used our surroundings to assist us: guerilla tactics including tactical retreat and camouflage, just like the black cloud the octopus uses when it disappears. The octopus plays the long game when it comes to survival. So have M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n

In my own world, I have fought my battles with the strength of my mind and creativity. My books prosecute the power of the P\u0101keh\u0101, they are my weapons, my pen is mightier than the sword. My brain is mightier than my brawn.<\/p>\n

Maybe we should change the whakatauk\u012b so that it is more relevant to us today. Or at least create a new one to go with it:<\/p>\n

Mate ururoa? Kao. Ora wheke.<\/p>\n

Die like the shark? No. Live like the octopus.<\/p>\n

Te Kaikaukau | The Swimmer I Te Ao O Te Reo by Witi Ihimaera Smiler ($45, Auckland University Press) is available to purchase from Unity Books<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Witi Ihimaera Smiler, author of Te Kaikaukau: The Swimmer I Te Ao O Te Reo, explains why the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438930,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[489,111,139,69,147,22319,406,221418],"class_list":["post-438929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-books","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-science","tag-te-reo-maori","tag-wildlife","tag-witi-ihimaera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438929"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438929\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}