The Whale Rider

Author Notes

For this newest edition of The Whale Rider, I pay tribute to the ancestor who started it all: the original whale rider. The whale rider is memorialised by a gable structure which rides atop the meeting house, Whitireia, in Whangara, a small Maori settlement near Gisborne; the meeting house was carved under the supervision of the great master carver Pine Taiapa and opened in 1939. When I was a very young boy and first saw the sculpture and heard the story of the whale rider’s epic voyage from Hawaiki (Sir Apirana Ngata pinpointed Hawaiki as the group of islands clustered around Bora Bora, notably Raiatea, in French Polynesia) my imagination was immediately captured.

The whale rider faces eastward across the sea in the direction of the place where the sun rises every morning. He is well known and claimed throughout Polynesia; he is a Pacific version of Ulysses and, like that Greek hero, he has become the stuff of legends. According to early twentieth century informant Wiremu Potae, who told it to William Colenso, his name was Kahutia Te Rangi and he was the firstborn son of Uenuku, one of the chiefs of Hawaiki. He had a brother, Ruatapu, who was jealous of him and wanted to kill him. He planned to do this by taking Kahutia Te Rangi and sons from other royal houses of Hawaiki out in a seagoing waka, and scuttling it. However, when the canoe began to sink, a huge whale came up from the bottom of the ocean to save Kahutia Te Rangi. It came in response to his chant, his karakia, today known as the Paikea chant, asking for assistance from the gods so that he might prevail.

The whale lifted Kahutia Te Rangi up and carried him to safety, swimming many days and nights. But it did not head back to Hawaiki. Instead, it carried Kahutia Te Rangi southward; perhaps it was on its migratory journey around the great Southern Ocean, heading for the rich krill feeding grounds at the bottom of the world. Sometimes the seas and skies were calm. At other times there were fierce storms, mountainous waves, heavy rain and dark skies split by thunder and jagged lightning. But Kahutia Te Rangi continued his karakia, and early one morning as the star Poututerangi (Altair) appeared over a far distant mountain arising from the sea (this was Mount Hikurangi, 1756 metres high, the first place on the earth’s surface to greet the sun every morning), he realised that the whale had brought him to a land only rumoured about in Hawaiki; a fabled, bounteous country of great beauty and richness called Aotearoa (New Zealand).

Kahutia Te Rangi made landfall at Ahuahu (Mercury Island), which is off the Coromandel Peninsula. There he took the name of Paikea to honour the whale that had brought him to Aotearoa, and in remembrance of his epic voyage. Other settlers were already living in Aotearoa and, in time, Paikea married a woman from Ahuahu, whose name was Parawhenuamea. Travelling south-east, he also married Te Manawatina at Whakatane and Huturangi at Waiapu. With his wives he fathered many children. He settled in Whangara with Huturangi, who was the daughter of Whironui at Koutuamoa Point.

From Paikea great chiefs descended, including Porourangi; and it was from Porourangi that my mother’s tribe, Ngati Porou, takes its name. Porourangi’s brother, Tahu, moved to the South Island and is regarded by many as their founding ancestor. As for me, I have always been very proud to be a member of Ngati Porou and to be able to trace my genealogy back to Paikea. He is what we call the tahuhu, the ridgepole, of Te Tairawhiti, the migrant voyager and originating ancestor of the tribe of the Eastern Tides, also binding other tribes of the East Coast, Hawke’s Bay and the South Island together by blood ancestry.

This is one of the many versions of the whale rider story. Another version describes Kahutia Te Rangi as not only a royal son of Hawaiki but also a man who, by mystical powers, could transform himself into a taniwha, a tipua, a whale even — operating fluidly between his human form and his ocean form. And why should we not believe this? After all, Hawaiki was a paradisiacal land, a Polynesian Eden half real, half unreal, where man walked with the gods and communed with beasts, birds, forests and all animate and inanimate things. In this version, the murderous Ruatapu pursued Kahutia Te Rangi to Aotearoa; it must have been a thrilling sea chase. Ruatapu summoned up a series of five tidal waves and sent them ahead of him, but Kahutia Te Rangi managed to get ashore and change back into his human form before they were able to swamp him. The waves then recoiled, returning to their source, where they overwhelmed he who had sent them — and so Ruatapu went to his watery grave. The local people say that if you come to Whangara in September you can still see these tidal waves breaking on the shore.

There are many variants to the story. Some say that Kahutia Te Rangi and Paikea were two different people; and the narrative concerning Paikea and his brother, Ruatapu, is still disputed. Leo Fowler, for instance, wrote in Te Mana o Turanga (1944) that there was another brother, Ira Kaiputahi; and he gives further information about the canoe that was scuttled: it was called Tutepewakarangi and it was a war canoe on its ceremonial first voyage. Fowler explains that the reason Kahutia Te Rangi changed his name was that Paikea is also the name given by Maori to a proper species of whale that is very long with a sharpish, V-shaped head, a pike-nose and a white underbelly fluted longitudinally. And the reason Kahutia Te Rangi was able to call on a whale to rescue him, or even to change into a whale, was because his genealogy connected him to beasts of the sea — to the porpoise and Portuguese man-of-war and, in particular, to large whales, including pike-nosed whales.

Another variation tells that Kahutia Te Rangi had to leave a wife and a son, Rongomai Tuaho, in Hawaiki when he eluded Ruatapu. Many years later, pining for his father, Rongomai Tuaho sent a magic bailer to Aotearoa to ascertain if his father was still alive. Another strand of the whale rider story is that the island you see close by the beach at Whangara, Te Ana a Paikea, is the whale itself, transformed into a rock. You can reach the island at low tide, but at high tide in winter a stormy channel separates it from the mainland.

I am telling you this to indicate that Maori mythology is very rich. All the narratives are multilayered, complex, extraordinary and transcendent. They occupy a place between the real and the unreal, the natural and the supernatural — the world you can believe in and the world you are told not to believe in. This is why Maori mythology is so prevalent in my work: Maori and Polynesian stories come from a different source, a different inventory than western tradition, and I am writing from within that different tradition. Accompanying my work as an indigenous writer is a whole thrilling mythology and history that encompasses all of Polynesia and the Pacific.

I’m not sure how old I was when I first gazed upon that sculpture of the whale rider at Whangara and heard the saga of his epic voyage accomplished by fantastic means.

By 1956, however, when I was twelve, the story had become a magnificent compulsion for me. Occasionally at weekends I would cycle twenty-seven kilometres to Whangara. It was a long way, especially if there was a headwind; and if I was lucky somebody would pick me up in their truck. People knew who I was because of my father, Tom, who was a well known shearer and sportsman. One of them was Rangi Haenga, also a shearer. ‘Off to Whangara again, eh?’ he asked. He threw my bike in the back, gave me a lift up the East Coast highway and let me off at the turnoff to Whangara. A short pedal later and I was there, on the rise above the village, church, wooden houses, marae … and Paikea, an eternal sentinel gazing out across the sea.

I would eat my lunch and just stare and stare at that sculpture. I would ask boyish questions, like: ‘Do you kick a whale like a horse to make it go? How do you stay on a whale when it dives? Don’t whales dive miles deep? How do you keep your breath for so long? How did you speak to your whale? Did you know whale talk? Maybe whales speak Maori!’ I gathered as much information as I could about Hawaiki, too. With great awe I realised that the distance was huge — over 3000 miles.

And so I would sit crosslegged, looking up at the sculpture of Paikea, dazzled by that phenomenal voyage. Sometimes I stayed so long that Moni Taumaunu would ring Mum and Dad in Gisborne and tell them, ‘If you’re looking for Witi, he’s out here at Whangara. He can sleep with us tonight, or else maybe somebody is coming into town and can bring him back.’

At the time, my sister Caroline and I belonged to the Comet Swimming Club at the municipal Macrae Baths. After practice I liked to take a deep breath and see how long I could stay underwater. ‘Where’s Witi!’ the instructors would say, panicking. ‘Oh, he’s all right. There he is, as usual, sitting at the bottom of the pool.’ But every time I surfaced I would check the time on my watch and get very cross: four minutes, not good enough. And down I would go again.

It never crossed my mind that the story might be a fantasy. As far as I was concerned, Paikea really existed; a whale did rescue him and he rode on it. Nobody could persuade me otherwise. Indeed, when I saw the film Moby Dick (1956), starring Gregory Peck and directed by John Huston, at the local theatre, I was annoyed at the way the big white whale was demonised: he was only trying to save himself from Captain Ahab.

Well, I grew into adulthood, and I didn’t achieve anything as spectacular as Paikea did. But in many ways, his story became the symbol of what I should do in my life — always look to the horizon, pursue my dreams, and not let anybody or anything stop me from fulfilling my destiny.

One of those dreams was to become a writer. It wasn’t high on my list but, as the years went by and I didn’t become a fighter pilot, All Black, film star or astronaut, writing moved more into the zone of possibilities. Another dream was to see the world. It was not unexpected, therefore, that thirty years later, in 1986, I had turned myself into both a writer and a diplomat for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (that had never been on the list) in the United States. At that time I was forty-two, working in New York and residing in apartment 33G at 67th Street and Broadway. From the apartment there was a view down the Hudson River towards New York harbour. By then I had two daughters, Jessica and Olivia, aged nine and seven, who lived in New Zealand but came to stay with me for the holidays. On one of those vacations, over Christmas — New Year, the weather was freezing and the best place to go to keep warm was a nice heated movie theatre. We saw lots of movies on that particular vacation — including An American Tail, Explorers, The Ewoks: Caravan of Courage and Flight of the Navigator — but they had a curious effect on Jessica. One afternoon, she stamped her foot on the pavement and asked me, ‘Daddy, why are the boys always the heroes and the girls so hopeless? All they do is yell, “Save me, save me, I’m so helpless!”’ Her comment made me double up with laughter, but I knew what she was talking about. My daughters have a marvellous mother, Jane, who has always had very strong views about the equality of women.

I haven’t got my calendar with me, but it must have been after Jessica and Olivia returned to New Zealand and spring arrived in New York that an astounding event occurred: a whale came swimming up the Hudson River to Pier 86 at 12th Avenue and West 46th Street. I can recall watching the event on local television; and today it has become part of the city’s folklore: ‘Yeah, that whale, what a thing to do, right?’ You see, the Hudson River at the time was very dirty, what Maori call pango — a word that is often translated as ‘black’ but that has more distasteful connotations. Some people thought the whale had lost its way. As for me, I was really overwhelmed with aroha, love: that whale had come to say hello. It had come through all that pango stuff to tell me that although I was living on the other side of the world I was not forgotten. Filled with gratitude and inspired by both events — the visit of my daughters and the whale — I wrote the novel, which takes place in New Zealand, on the other side of the world. Indeed, I was able to write the book at astonishing speed; that’s what inspiration does to you. Visitors turned up during the writing, but fortunately they understood — well, I hope they understood — when I couldn’t go out on the town with them. By the end of six weeks the book was finished. Win Cochrane, my boss, cast a benevolent eye over me when I snatched the occasional half-hour at the consulate to complete the second draft. Sometimes he would come out of the office to find his secretary, Vivienne Troy, typing the manuscript.

I called the book The Whale Rider, and I presented the manuscript to Jessica and Olivia the next time they came to visit. I had written it for them. Then I sent a copy to my publisher, David Heap, in New Zealand; and the first edition was published in hardback in 1987. I was still in New York, so I arranged for David to take the book to Whangara where it could be blessed and launched. The kaumatua of the marae committee was Jack Haapu, and he and Nohoroa Haapu organised the hui. My parents and sister went out to Whangara, and later they told me how stunning the evening had been: the moon came out, shining full upon the carving of Paikea, and far out to sea a large whale leapt into the air.

I wish I could say the book had a rapturous reception, but it didn’t. There were very few reviews: none in the New Zealand Listener, Landfall or any of the other literary magazines. The University of Auckland Library database lists only two, including one by Michael King in Metro, but I am sure there must have been a few in regional newspapers, too. However, from 1987 to 1994 the book had a popular audience; it went through three different editions and was published in a Maori edition in 1995.

Some very fine people worked on the book, including well known Maori artists John Hovell and John Walsh, who illustrated covers, and Timoti Karetu, who provided the Maori translation. The only place you could buy the book was in New Zealand, but somehow people around the world got hold of it, and they would write me letters. Not until the film, Whale Rider, was released internationally in 2002, however, was the novel successful in securing overseas publishing interest — in particular, an American edition (2003), in the very country in which it was written. For that edition I reversioned the novel; and I also took the opportunity to make one simple but profound change to something that had always bothered me. In the first edition of 1987 I had given the final blessing on the girl hero to the ancient bull whale to say. In the second version, I gave the words to the elderly female whale: ‘Child, your people await you. Return to the kingdom of Tane and fulfil your destiny.’ The Whale Rider now fully affirms the role of the female throughout the natural world as well as the human one.

Today the first New Zealand hardback edition is worth a lot of money. Heck, I haven’t even got a copy myself, and I’d be pleased if you have one I could buy.