Te Rangikaheke Flashcards
What can we learn from exploring the work of one 19th century Maori writer?
- Perspectives, individuality, specificity, nuances
- relationship between individualand collective histories, need individual to do collective histories
- development overtime in terms of how they write, word structures etc and technological way
- changes in individuals and world around them
- how the individuals posit themselves within their own writing
Wiremu Mahi Te Rangikaheke
- English name: William Marsh
- Was baptised and learnt to read and write through this
- Father was also called Te Rangikaheke which means descended from the heavens
- Te Arawa Iwi, Ngati Kararu Hapu, had four partners and few children
The writings of Te Rangikaheke
- 21 entire manuscripts of 670 pages total held in Auckland
- 17 further manuscripts that he contributed a total of 100 pages too
- 10 letters and addresses of 68 pages
- Over 800 pages nearly all of which are held at the APL
- One address and one letter (totaling 12.5 pages) at ATL
- This is just what we still have today and what George Grey has collected from 1849
- He also summarises everything he writes for himself
Arini Loader argument regarding Te Rangikaheke manuscripts
-The stories written down were not actually his but those of the Te Arawa people
Topic addressed by Te Rangikaheke
- The beginning of the world
- The separation of Rangi and Papa
- The sons of Rangi and Papa and the Karakia (incarnations) for each of them
- The Karakia for many purposes
- The story of Tiki
- The deeds of Maui
- Good and bad omens
- Whakapapa
- Waiata
- The Battles in Hawaiki
- The Migration of the ancestors
A Dream by Te Rangikaheke (17 August 1850)
- Going to visit the Governor, while thinking about all the things he should talk to him about he falls asleep
- Dreams of men with a dog, can’t distinguish whether they are Maori or Pakeha but they say: ‘Let us fight!’
- TR says no that is evil let us discuss first, they say write document and then fight straight afterward
- Perhaps this was not a dream but a vision of the future and a prediction of it
A Letter by Te Rangikaheke
- Telling the people of Hawaiki to tell them their histories so he can clarify Maori histories
- syas he met person called Maui from Hawaiki but he was too young to know enough to be able to have a proper conversation about it with him
- So Maui said write a letter for him to take back to the elders
D. M. Stafford
-Te Rangikaheke was ‘one of the more turbulent characters of Te Arawa… he became in his time a most controversial figure, claimed by some to be a chief of teh highest rank and by others a person of much less dignity. he had many admirers and ardent followers, but there were just as many who disliked and would have nothing to do with him.
Margaret Orbell Reading
- More informative reading than an argumentative one
- “he was a very talented writer, who achieved in his work a unique blend of the new and the old
- Believes the manuscript about Hawaiki must regard meeting a man who came from the Pacific islands, as the letter is unfinished it may be a copy of the original or the friend may have left before it was completed
Jenifer Curnow Reading
- Gey didn’t attribute some of teh published work to Te Rangikaheke
- Collections of Te Rangikaheke’s work were taken by Grey to Cape Town and only returned in 1922
- Probably around 1846 that Te Rangikaheke began writing to Grey
- Writing not as broken as much Maori writing from this period
