A Language older than Words Read online

  "Part of this work must be done by artists, philosophers, educators, and others who can articulate and perpetuate the Maori way of living, people who can help us untangle ourselves from the pakeha, the Europeans. And as a pakeha yourself there are many important things that you, too, can articulate. From your knowledge and from where you live. But I hope to think any piece of art spurs us into action. I want to believe in sustainability. Now. Not in the future. Not some distant day. Now. Great artists, such as Witi Ihimaera, describe that way of life and help us live it."

  He stopped, stared at me intently, then said, "I'm sixty, so I only have ten or twenty years left. I don't have time for a lot of words; I want to use those years for action."

  He looked away, then continued, "I hope before I die that I can hear kiwi again. Thousands of people come here, and I ask them, 'Hands up those of you who've heard a kiwi in the wild.' A bit less than one percent raise their hands. Kiwis have not always been so rare. Years ago I heard hundreds of kiwis all around me, in parts of Fjordland where predators hadn't reached. Because people hear the ruru in television advertisements, or kiwi on the radio, they think these birds are still common; it's not until they stop and listen that they realize they haven't heard a living ruru for a long time. The truth is that New Zealand has the most endangered birds in the world. The birds can't handle the rats, opossums, and cats—the worst of the introduced predators. People must begin to feel the responsibility of that very quickly."

  He paused, then began again to speak, at first slowly, then with greater urgency, "We need different heroes. One day in the native bush in Fjordland I stumbled across a tombstone. Scraping off the moss I made out 'William Doherty, 1840.' Doherty died trying to save birds. Seeing that rats were making their way into Fjordland he started to move some of the birds onto an island where they could be safe, and he died rowing back. He deserves to be recognized as a hero, as a man 150 years ahead of his time."

  Bruce was on a roll now, and spoke so quickly I could barely understand his New Zealand accent, "Actually, he wasn't ahead of his time. That was the time, then, and he could see it. I want to create a monument for him, do a garden in his honor using endangered native plants. We need heroes who leave threads for the rest of us to follow."

  He looked out the window, and his speech slowed. "We also need patches of native bush full of native birds and animals, cathedrals where man is not as important as he makes himself out to be, where he instead recognizes himself as a small part of the big family. If we were to make those spaces of harmony available within walking distance from every house, so everybody was a kaitiaki, we would change the world. That's the plan I'm working on. If everyone nurtured a seedling and planted it they would be building their new church. And I'm in a rush."

  Yesterday I received my monthly electric bill from the Washington Water Power Company. The envelope also contained a flyer for an event entitled Stars: A Celebration of Heroes that the utility will be putting on to benefit local charities. The head-liner for the evening is General H. Norman Schwarzkopf.

  The flyer doesn't mention that in 1992, an international war crimes tribunal found Schwarzkopf and his fellow defendants guilty of nineteen counts of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity for their roles in what is inaccurately known as the Persian Gulf War, a "war" in which 148 United States soldiers died (many from so-called friendly fire) and between 250,000 and 500,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, lost their lives as well. Schwarzkopf was in charge of the American assault. In this war, American troops used plows mounted on tanks to bury Iraqi soldiers alive in their trenches: after one wave of bulldozers incapacitated the defenders, another filled the trenches with sand. In at least one verified incident, American soldiers slaughtered thousands of unarmed Iraqi soldiers walking toward American positions, hands raised in an attempt to surrender; the Americans used anti-tank missiles to blow apart ostensible prisoners. Two days after the cease-fire was declared, Schwarzkopf approved the combined arms slaughter of Iraq's Republican Guard Hammurabi Division as it retreated from the front ("Say hello to Allah," an American said as his laser-guided Hellfire missile destroyed an Iraqi vehicle). In clear violation of international law, American forces used napalm, fuel-air explosives (which release a cloud of highly volatile vapors that mix with air and detonate, creating overpressures of up to 1000 pounds per square inch—"Those near the ignition point are obliterated," notes a CIA report blandly), and cluster bombs (some of which, called "Bouncing Bettys," rebound off the ground to explode at stomach level, and others of which spew almost 500,000 high-velocity fragments— "specially formulated metal shrapnel to maximize damage to both man and machine"—per acre, and which were overwhelmingly used against taxis, buses, trucks, and Volkswagen Beetles; less than ten percent of the destroyed vehicles in one section of what has been called the "Highway of Death" were associated with the military. Most were, as one GI described, "like a little Toyota pickup truck that was loaded down with the furniture and the suitcases and rugs and the pet cat and that type of thing."). The United States Air Force intentionally bombed a baby milk powder factory, a vegetable oils factory, a sugar factory, the country's biggest frozen meat storage and distribution center (three times in one day), grain silos across the country, twenty-eight civilian hospitals, 52 community mental health centers, a major hypodermic syringe factory, 676 schools (including eight universities), many marketplaces and apartment buildings, and civilian highway traffic (Najib Toubasi, to provide one example out of tens of thousands, was driving a bus filled with 57 civilians when it was struck by two bombs: "People were running away and the planes followed them and strafed them with machine guns. ... I was wounded in my right leg. I was holding on to a woman with my right hand and a child in my left hand. We were running across the desert. The woman got hit, and the child was screaming, 'I don't want to die! I don't want to die!'"). Many of these attacks took place after the cease-fire was declared. Americans intentionally bombed the Amariyah civilian bomb shelter, twice. The first bomb opened a hole in the shelter's roof, which enabled the second bomb to be dropped cleanly through the hole to blast its way to the bottom of the shelter, where it killed all but seventeen of the 1500 mostly women and children hiding there—"Nearly all the bodies were charred into blackness; in some cases the heat had been so great that entire limbs were burned off."

  I will not be attending the event billed "An Evening to Honor the Heroes Among Us."

  "Not everything the Maori have done has been beautiful," Bruce Stewart said, "and I can't let my love for my own people blind me to that. Before the Maori arrived, there were other groups who lived here, called the Maoriori and the Patipiahiti. These groups were extreme pacifists, and very evolved in their thinking. It is said that whenever any scuffle broke out among these people, at the first sign of bloodshed all fighting must cease. The Maori then came, and slaughtered these earlier, more peaceful people. We need to not only cherish and maintain what is best from our Maori culture, but we also need to face the parts we do not find pleasant. And we need to see our way to re-evolve a culture as beautiful and advanced as the one once here."

  Jeannette looked at him closely, seemed to study his features. There was a long silence, then she asked, "What would you wish to save?"

  Bruce said, "It frightens me that being Maori is becoming a matter of wearing greasepaint and singing action songs for competitions. It hurt me to learn that computers are now used to judge singing contests, and it disturbs me that dances once held in circles are now held in rows, with people facing each other like in combat. I'd like to see the circle come back, and the drum, and I'd like for people to once again dance for their own spiritual well-being, rather than for competition.

  "Still, because the culture is hard to annihilate altogether, some good things remain, such as the familyness and the maraes. I'm especially glad that people are starting to get back to the concept of nonownership of the whenua."

  As was true for so much of my time speaking with Maoris, I got lost in the voc
abulary. I raised my eyebrows.

  He saw me, stopped, then said, "The English word would be earth. But English, which is very exacting when it comes to legal deals and dollars, is imprecise when it comes to things like earth. In English, earth can be called soil, which has connotations of being unclean, as in 'The clothes are soiled.' And it can be called dirt, which of course has similar connotations. That could never happen in Maori.

  " Whenua also means placenta, and so is associated with female energy. That caused problems when the Christian missionaries came. The Maori recognize two types of energy, the tapu, or male energy, and the noa, or female energy. We view these energies as opposites. When the opposites are in balance harmony is reached, called waiora, the two waters. But the missionaries said the tapu was good and the noa was evil.

  "My point is that the Maori still have these concepts; we just need to reclaim them, and to live them more. In this way the young give me great hope. They are searching for truth and wanting to live it. It does wonders for mothers, for example, to take their children down to the gardens and speak Maori while they plant their food."

  We were back inside now, and Jeannette looked at the walls of the room where we sat, and to the beautiful wood that made up the textured ceiling.

  Bruce noticed her look, and said, "This place arose from the need to be sustainable, and not just on the dollar or food levels. Maraes are our art galleries, our museums, our places of history, our universities, our preschools. They are the places where we are buried. They become our whole life.

  "People say they don't have the money to build them, but I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that most people don't have the will. This whole place is assembled from the wastes of the city, and is a statement on the use of materials. In the old days they just flattened old buildings with great big donkey-knockers on cranes. I used to get in there and grab all this beautiful timber, some of which you can't find anymore because the trees are gone. And most of this place is made of car cases that originally came from tropical rainforests and were just going to be dumped. I love these car cases; they're so beautiful, I haven't got them covered. I'd love to be carried to my gravesite on a car case."

  He paused for a long time, and had I been able to think of a question, I might have asked it. I'm glad I didn't, because finally he said, "But this place is more than a statement. It represents my mum. It is my mum. When I was a child, racism was lovely and loud and blatant. When I was just starting school I was wounded deeply by the other kids, who would point and call, "Maori, Maori, Maori." Suddenly I knew I was something that wasn't good. I didn't know what it meant; I just knew the kids were pointing at me. Many things like that happened. And now I'm glad they did, because eventually instead of trying to become a pakeha, which I did for a lot of my life, I started to get angry. I used that anger to do this work.

  "Then the anger turned over to love. And that's because of my mum. She loved me without question, even when I was hard on her. I won a lot of prizes in school, and my mum was proud of me; she helped me a lot. But on prize-giving night in sixth form, when I was seventeen, I made myself sick because I didn't want anyone to see my mother. I had kept her a secret for a long time because I thought her darkness made her ugly. What sort of a system would make a boy ashamed of his mum?

  "My mother never said a word. Just loved me. That's why I say she's my greatest teacher. I never heard her running down the pakehas, which probably she should have. She realized what was happening; that's why I have a pakeha name. She told me, 'If people go down a list and see a Maori name, straightaway you're not going to get this little privilege.' Bruce Stewart looked good on the list.

  "My mother died when I was 17, that same year. I saw her with all my schoolmates, and she asked me for a kiss. I said, 'Not in front of my friends.' And I never saw her again.

  "I went through a lot of grieving, and later went into the bush, and spent many lonely years, savoring and trying to understand. And one of the things that emerged is this house, which is designed as the mother. My mother, and the great mother."

  He paused again for an even longer time, but I had learned my lesson, and just waited. A deep sigh, and he continued, "As we built this marae, we realized that we were actually building ourselves. People who've done a lot of work here have changed. We rescue a piece of beautiful wood out of an old building, and as we restore it and put it in place, we rescue and restore ourselves." Another sigh, and I knew he was finished. There was another question I had to ask: "Do the trees and grass speak to you?"

  "They don't at this stage," he answered. "I wish they would. They did to the old people. I think a lot of things spoke to the old people. I'm just taking it a stage at a time by instinct.

  "The most important thing for me is to go down to the nursery and walk amongst all those little trees. Some of them you have to wait for the seed, and get it at the right time; some seeds have to hibernate for two or three years before they can grow."

  He became once again more animated. "Little nurseries like this are springing up everywhere. And they're done not by the government but by ordinary people. That's why they work. People come here when we're planting, to get their little seedlings. And you see the children come back. The children are more aware than their parents, and the younger children know more than the older ones.

  "The biggest thing that stops us is ourselves. When ancient Maori warriors were defeated, they were ready to go again two weeks later, because they were warriors—made up of battling stuff. And along the way they tapped unseen forces. We can still do it. All of us.

  "We are suffering from a great illness, and the way to get better is to serve others. We should all be in service. It makes us well. I serve the birds and trees, the earth, the water.

  "Anybody can do it. They can do it in their way. Its action time."

  I looked at Jeannette. She looked at me. We smiled. I turned off the tape recorder. That was enough for one day.

  Metamorphosis

  "Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it." Antonio Machado (translated by Stephen Mitchell)

  WHEN I MOVED INTO this house, lawn surrounded it on three sides. One of my great pleasures these last eight years has been to watch Kentucky bluegrass give way as wild plants moved in to take its place. The first year saw an explosion of thistles, all green and spikes and purple flowers. I feared they might take over, their thorns keeping me from stepping out the door. I needn't have worried; they thinned out two years later. Then vetch, dalmation toadflax, scotch broom, each of these noxious weeds moved in and moved just as quickly out, each one preparing the ground for what was to come next, and each one teaching me that noxious weeds are at least sometimes a sign that disturbed ground is trying to heal itself. I realized, too, that as with everything else, our lawns manifest our cultural desire: they are static, they are artificial, and they are kept sexually immature. Yet with the lawn now gone, the natural scenery changes every day, as new flowers bloom and old ones form seedpods, then die. It changes every season. It changes every year. Each spring and summer different flowers, grasses, bushes, trees. Mullein ("nature's toiletpaper"), Queen Anne's lace, native grasses of a dozen different types and names, wild roses, pine trees.

  This summer a nine-year-old boy has taken to visiting me—or more accurately visiting the birds, dogs, and cats— nearly every day. One day I asked him if he knew the name of a huge bush that over the past several years had sprung seemingly from nowhere to hide a good portion of my gravel driveway. He asked, "Does it have purple berries?"

  I looked at him, then looked at the bush, then back at him. "I don't know. I never looked that closely."

  We walked to the bush, and it did. Huge sprays of them. I don't know how I missed them before. He said, "I don't know the name—Grandma would—but I know those berries make great paintballs. When you throw them, the juice makes an awesome stain."

  I made a mental note. He continued, "The seed for this bush probably came from one of those
other three bushes back there."

  He saw my incredulous look—I've lived here nearly a decade, consider myself reasonably attentive, and never noticed the bushes—and he said, "I was trying to see where the geese go on their paths through the wild roses, and I saw a bush there, there, and there." He pointed to each bush, clearly visible from where we stood.

  There is a lot to learn.

  This summer I was fortunate enough to witness an outbreak of aphids on a maple tree outside my door.

  Because summers in Spokane are hot, then dry, then even hotter, several years ago I planted a half-dozen deciduous trees on the south side of the house. They've grown and spread to the point now that they make passable shade for the dogs and birds. Maybe in another few years they'll cool the house as well.

  About six weeks ago, I noticed some aphids on the leaves of the maple tree's lower limbs. I watched them shake their tiny bodies as they seemed to settle into more comfortable positions from which to suck the tree's juices. A few days later I noticed more aphids, and then more, until nearly every leaf revealed a score or more of the little buggers. The leaves were covered with honeydew—a sweet substance exuded by aphids—which dropped to splatter where the tree overhung the porch.

  Were I an employee of the Forest Service, I probably would have declared a forest health crisis, and used the opportunity to cut down not only that tree, but all trees of merchantable value within a couple miles. Were I otherwise a typical resident and consequently more interested in chemical control than observing processes, I would have sprayed the tree with an insecticide. As it was, I asked my mom what I should do. She said I should spray the tree with water to wash off the aphids. I thanked her, then did nothing at all. How much richness, I wondered, do we deprive ourselves of by accepting the default decisions handed to us by our elders? It should be said that my mom's plants are healthier than mine.