The Legend Of Rātā And The Land He Was A Part Of
Murder, revenge, tree spirits and hostile sea-dwelling creatures weave an intricate web of understanding humanity’s place within nature in this story.
This week, the sound of Patupatu and chanting fills the halls of the Library of Found Things as the story of Rātā and his revenge floats down to us from the snow-capped shelves of Aotearoa (New Zealand).
Wahieroa’s wife, Tonga-rau-tāwhiri, was pregnant and she had a craving. “Bring me a túī bird, my darling, absolutely nothing else will sate my hunger.” So Wahieroa set off into the forest to catch a túī bird and catch one he did. He brought it back to his wife and she smiled and he smiled to see her smiling. The craving was satiated for a time but, after a while, she looked at Wahieroa and gave him a bashful smile, “Bring me another, my darling?”
Wahieroa was a good husband, so he set off into the woods again but this time he found his quarry much more difficult to hunt. He treaded softly and listened carefully for the sound of the túī bird’s call but there was nothing, so he walked further and further into the jungle.
Without knowing it, Wahieroa came to the hunting grounds of the ogre Matuku-tangotango who killed Wahieroa as soon as he saw him, leaving Tonga-rau-tāwhiri to give birth without a husband. She gave the child the nama Rātā and he grew up strong and knowledgeable of the injustice that had befallen his father.
When he was old enough, Rātā set out for the home of Matuku-tangotango where one of the ogre’s servants told him that the beast only came out with each new moon in order to feast on people. The servant told him that the beast could be killed at the pool where he washes his face and hair, so Rātā decided to calm his fury and wait for the new moon.
When the new moon rose, Rātā found Matuku-tangotango at the pool. He grabbed him by the hair and avenged his father’s death with bloody death. Rātā then searched the ogre’s lair for his father’s bones but the servant told him that the Potanari - creatures who dwell in the sea by day and return to a distant land by night - had taken the bones to their village long ago.
So, Rātā set off for the shoreline to find a good tree to make a canoe. He found one and felled it. He hollowed it out and created the shape of a good canoe before night fell and he grew tired. He left the half-made canoe on the sand and went home to rest. When he arrived the next day, there was no trace of the canoe or his woodworking and the tree he had felled was standing proud in the exact same place he had felled it.
Confused but adamant, Rātā felled the tree again and began work on his canoe for the second time. He worked all day and had the makings of a good craft again before he called it a night. When he got up the next day, the situation was the same. No canoe, no woodshavings, just a proud tree standing where he had felled it for the second time.
He felled the tree again, set about working it into a canoe and - because these things take time - he had only managed to carve the shape of the canoe out of the tree trunk before it was time to rest again. Except this time Rātā did not return home but, instead, hid in the thicket and watched the half-made canoe to see what happened.
After a few hours, when darkness had lathered the sand in mystery, he saw small magical creatures leave the treeline and start picking up all of the woodshavings, down to every splinter, and put them back together on the canoe. They did this meticulously until the canoe had transformed back into the tree it once was. Rātā sat mystified as he watched these creatures rebuild the living tree and set it back on its roots.
Rātā left his hiding place and asked these small forest spirits - who were called Hākuturi - what they were doing. They scolded Rātā because he had cut down the tree without paying his respects to Tāne, the god of the forests, with the correct rituals. Rātā felt ashamed and apologised and they taught him the correct way to pay his respects to the forest god. Then, instead of making him start his work all over, the Hākuturi made him the most beautiful canoe and they named it Niwaru. Rātā thanked the forest spirits and he took to the sea when the sun came up and paddled towards the distant land of the Ponaturi.
Rātā found the Ponaturi and he attacked them immediately, rescuing his father’s bones in the process. The Ponaturi, after they had gathered themselves from the surprise attack, chased him out of their village and would have overwhelmed him had he not recited an incantation he had heard priests sing. As soon as the last syllable left his mouth, all of Rātā’s dead warrior kinsmen rose up from the ground and attacked the Ponaturi, saving him and restoring the honour of his father’s bones.
The story of Rātā’s revenge for his father’s murder speaks to those of us who love a good revenge story, especially when it comes to righting an injustice. However, it also contains a philosophical thread that is integral to the Māori world view: Kaitiakitanga.
Brace yourself, clichéd dictionary reference incoming!
The Māori dictionary (told you!) defines Kaitiakitanga as guardianship, stewardship, trusteeship or a trustee.
Scholars Awatere & Harmsworth describe the Māori world view as a “genealogical sequence, referred to as whakapapa, [that] places Māori in an environmental context with all other flora and fauna and natural resources as part of a hierarchical genetic assemblage with identifiable and established bonds.”
Quite the mouthful but these bonds are what the notion of Kaitiakitanga as guardianship is all about. I don’t need to tell you that the western (predominantly Christian) view on environmentalism is complex. It’s rooted in realpolitik and complicated further by people shouting about it on the internet. However, you could take the Bible as a good place to start when trying to understand the philosophy that drives the arguments.
In Genesis 2:15 it says “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it.”
In this quote, we have humans being ‘made’ elsewhere, put into the Garden (i.e. Nature) and then given free rein to work it before taking care of it. This makes humans external to nature and while it does include a guardianship role, it’s more often taken as an order to dominate and control the environment rather than take care of it.
In the Māori worldview, humans are as much a part of nature as they are in charge of caring for it. You see, in the story, Rātā’s father’s name means “long piece of firewood” and he got that name as a way of remembering a specific moment in his past. What this moment was, exactly, depends on where in Aotearoa the story is told but what’s important is that his name connects him to both his past, his ancestors and to nature.
When Rātā grew up and decided to avenge his father’s death, he rushed to the trees in order to put them to use in his quest but the tree spirits (hākuturi) had a lesson to teach him. You see, no matter how morally justified his quest, no matter his father’s connection to trees, Rātā had to learn that nature wasn’t his to dominate. He had to learn that, while useful, nature was as much a part of him as he was of it. When he learned to respect it, nature (i.e. the hākuturi) didn’t just allow him to use the tree but they offered up the fullness of its boon.
Geopolitics, climate change, political party / wing sectarianism all muddy the waters of this very simple idea: we should consider ourselves part of nature and therefore look after it for ourselves and future generations.
The Māori have a saying which most beautifully sums up the entire idea: ‘Ko au te whenua, ko te whenua, ko au’ – ‘I am the land and the land is me’.
If you want to be vegan, go ahead. If you want to acknowledge the complexity of renewable energy usage and the problems with using cobalt and other rare minerals for the likes of solar panels and batteries, that’s fair too. What the story of Rātā might serve a purpose for is to remind us that the basic premise is fairly simple. We can discuss the ‘hows’ at any time but the ‘why’ is as clear as the shoreline of Aotearoa itself