mana, magic and (post-)modernity: dissenting futures in aotearoa

Futures 31 (1999) 171190

Mana, magic and (post-)modernity: dissentingfutures in Aotearoa

Martin OConnor*Professor of Economic Science, C3ED, Universite de Versailles-St Quentin en Yvelines, 47 boulevard

Vauban, 78047 Guyancourt Cedex, France

Abstract

In New Zealand, as in many parts of the world, forms of life, patterns of ownership andcontrol of economic activity, and visions of the future are becoming increasingly aligned withthe so-called laws of the market (supply and demand) and with the icons of efficiency andself-interest. The exhortations of ultra-liberal politicians combine with the dictums of the IMFand the World Trade Organisation to facilitate an experiment of the open economy, rendingup the former British colony to the pluckings of direct overseas investment and free trade. Atthe same time the nation is engaged in a legislative experiment that defines its future as avow-edly bicultural and respectful of the intrinsic value of other parties, present and future, livingon this planet. How should we resolve, how should we interpret this antinomy? The papersets elements of the Baudrillard critique of modernity against fragments of New Zealand poetry(from both colonial and post-colonial periods), in an interrogation of Aotearoa/New Zeal-ands new resource management texts. Four types of texts are juxtaposed: post-colonialresource management law, post-modern critique, anthropology (and some nostalgia), and post-indigenous/colonial poetry. In line with current preoccupations with sustainable development,we ask: what is the likely nature of the future, the future of nature, and of human nature, inthe land formerly called, Godzone and Aotearoa.1 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rightsreserved.

* Fax: 1 33 1 39 25 53 00; e-mail: [email protected] Gods Own Country, the happy name proposed by some of the settlers coming from Ireland and

Britain, seeing the relative comfort and prospects of plenty of the rich waters and land. Aotearoa is aname used by Maori, referring to The Land of the Long White Cloud as seen more than a thousand yearsago by Polynesian canoe voyagers on their horizon.

0016-3287/99/$ - see front matter 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.PII: S0016 -3287(98)00 126-8

172 M. OConnor / Futures 31 (1999) 171190

Beneath the leavesBeneath the earthBeneath the rockIt oozes upwardOff-hand quips trip into furtive steps and sidelong glancesIt flickers between passing unmet faces

The trees in heavy silence exude passive insinuations of powerThe musky smell of a thousand dead grandfathers Wait WaitFor what? I dont knowTwo thousand eyes in rotted soil stare doubt into souls FearOf what? I dont knowTheres a hole in this hill like a frozen hurricane and no one can get to the bottomof it there is a hole in this hill like a frozen hurricane and no one can get to thebottom of it.

Mouth of sacrificeWe sit like sandflies on the lipDrawn by the sense of inevitable....Vibration of impending....Dont look down you might jumpLook down you might jump [1]

Since 1984 central government bodies and territorial authorities with responsibilitiesfor New Zealand environmental and natural resource management have beenreplaced wholesale and reformed. The high point of this resource management lawreform (known widely as RMLR) was the introduction of a new Resource Manage-ment Bill to the New Zealand Parliament. In 1991, the 382-page Resource Manage-ment Act (henceforth RMA) passed into law [2]. It superseded around twenty existingActs plus ancillary Amendments and Regulations (all detailed in the 6th and 7thSchedules to the RMA)the principal of these being the Reserves Act, Water andSoil Conservation Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Town and Country Planning Act.The new law has been described by Ministry for the Environment officials as aworld first in recognition in law of the need for the environment to be managedas a whole [3]. Equally, it marks the vicissitudes of New Zealands coming-of-agein the community of nations. Freeing itself from the shackles of the British colonialheritage, the law-makers are recovering, inventing, or stumbling into a biculturalheritage. More-market; multi-cultural. Is this a post-colonial reformation, or a post-modern social disintegration? Or quite other things altogether or as well? The uncer-tainties, conflicts, and ethical dilemmas that one can read between the lines of thecarefully crafted RMA are, this paper will argue, the tangible post-modern signs ofutua Maori word meaning the corresponding return which is aligned to what

173M. OConnor / Futures 31 (1999) 171190

Jean Baudrillard (almost) calls an immanent reversibility of our times.2 The newexperiment in legislation seems to accord rights of existence to other beasts andother cultures. But this is largely a form of hostage-taking, respect of the Otherin order better to buttress the conservation of market society itself. As Baudrillardputs it:

We are all hostages. We all now serve as dissuasive arguments. Objective hos-tages: we answer collectively for something, but for what? This is a kind of fatethat is fixed, and whose manipulators we can no longer even see. But we knowthe scales on which our death is decided are no longer in our own hands, and wenow live in a state of permanent suspense and emergency whose symbol is thenuclear bomb. Objective hostages of a savage god, we dont even know whatevent, what accident will touch off the ultimate manipulation [6].

Everyone is, according to the liberal liturgy, sovereign, inalienable in their rights,individual in their desires and their needs. All species and cultures and ecosystemsare awarded their intrinsic values and alloted existence rights. Following Baudrillard,we can express this as the ethic/proscription that everyone must die a natural death:

For each individual it ought to be possible to go until the end of ones biologicalcapital, to enjoy things up until the end of ones life, without violence orprecocious death. As if each one of us had our own little printed schema of life,each with the normal expectancy of lifea sort of life contract [7].

Yet is it really possible to imagine that there can be a Brave New World whereviolent death (premature death, tragic death, accidental death, an unnatural death)no longer has to be? One fears that this cannot be true. What is more likely is thatthe Act seeks to place a mask over Death, with a sort of tactful apology for thedevaluation of what is destined to die.

A snail is climbing up the window-sillInto your room, after a night of rain.You call me in to see, and I explainThat is would be unkind to leave it there:It might crawl onto the floor; we must take careThat no one squashes it. You understand,And carry it outside, with careful hand,To eat a daffodil.

2 Jean Baudrillard, Les Strategies Fatales in a section titled Le fatal, ou limminence reversible;translated in Fatal Strategies [4] the Fatal, or Reversible Imminence. Imminent: destined to arrive anytime. Immanent: inhering in the things themselves, everywhere present. Imminence/Immanence, play onthe double register of space and time, the reality/virtuality of the (not-quite) here-and-(not quite) now.As for reversibility: .... the sign of the apparition of things is also the sign of their disappearance. Thesign of their birth will be the sign of their death [5].


I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:Your gentleness is moulded still by wordsFrom me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,From me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayedYour closest relatives, and who purveyedThe harshest kind of truth to many another.But this is how things are: I am your mother,And we are kind to snails. [8]

This tactfulness explains, for example, the repeated emphasis on what is to be con-served, on what is being sustained. It is what leads to such tortuous prevaricationsin the tribunals over the best balance, and accounts for the obfuscation in the rhet-oric of wise and best use. No contract for a natural death would be worth the paperit was written on. Semantically excluded, real symbolic Death becomes immanent,felt by everybody as the anonymous terror of our real lives [9]. Panic by contiguity.Everything is connected to everything else, and so everything is at risk from every-thing (and everyone) else. The fact of violence, of death given and received, hauntsall of us, in the fluctuating images of marketplace manoeuvring, bankruptcy andunemployment, plagues, typhoons, car crashes, crimes of delinquancy and of passion,justified and unjustified wars, terrorist attacks, viruses, diffuse and concentratedpoisons, vagrant clones, contaminated needles and blood, and ethnocidal destruction.

Lords over creation with our genetic manipulations, yet also we are vulnerable,so vulnerable, each of us and all in the vicissitudes of co-existence. Conservationdouble-plays with extinction. GNP growth aligns with growing social exclusion,unemployment, anomie. The worry about the future is coalesced with theimminence/immanence of violence and death; vertigo of love, and of horror. Thisis the society of virgin nature, of mountain erosion and plagues of rabbits, far faraway from decimated tropical forests and offshore child prostitution, but linked inby electronic capital circuits and CNN that, after Coca Cola, offers the final universalof world-wide spectacle. Yes, also in Godzone we have streetwise brutality, glue-bags and instant kicks in the side-streets of the global society of the screen.

Landless bastardsLook at meSilently

Words cool fireAnalysis kills spirit

Landless bastardsEnter meSilently


Landless bastardsBurn with meSilently



There is a binoculated man looking at moss like marigolds on his garden.Where does he think he is?

Where is he?Where is you?

Where are me?Do ya wan ta smoke?

BurnWith

MeThere is a soul in this hill like a chosen watchgod and no wonder [10]

1. Mana: the magic sustaining the world

For the voyaging, and then colonising Europeans, the South Pacific was a spacepar excellence of the exotic. A place of languid dreamy sensuality, where sometimeslove flowed like coconut milk; where seafarers travelled the waves on the strengthof incantations, and cannibal warriors made savage communions with human flesh.

Missionaries, sailors, ships doctors, and professional ethnographers variouslydocumented these strange practices, and sent them back as stories of magical islesand fantastic superstitions. Some of these raconteurs lamented the passing of the oldsavage ways, and sought to write down a record of themto preserve some knowl-edge for posterity. But in seeking to write it, record, decode, this was the proof thatthe savage ways were already lost. The missionaries, carriers of the Word, perhapsknew best the stakes of the situation: to change the world, to convert, a new wordhad to prevail. And this was not new information, more facts, the truth; no: the word,the act, is what makes and transforms the world. After the passage of these voyagersand raconteurs through Polynesia, we have a new world; the old is gone.

This concords with what French anthropologist Jeanne Favret-Saada has said aboutthe magical word:

Now, witchcraft is spoken words; but these spoken words are power, and notknowledge or information. To talk, in witchcraft, is never to inform. Or if infor-mation is given, it is so that the person who is to kill (the unwitcher) will knowwhere to aim his blows. Informing an ethnographer, that is, someone who claimsto have no intention of using the information, but naively wants to know for thesake of knowing, is literally unthinkable. For a single word (and only a word) cantie or untie a fate, and whoever puts himself in a position to utter it is formidible..... In short, there is no neutral position with spoken words: in witchcraft, wordswage war. Anyone talking about it is a belligerent, the ethnographer like everyoneelse. There is no room for uninvolved observers [11].


In former Polynesian societies (and still in some places today), all events wereattributed to specific forces or agencies: the work of supernatural entities (the Maoriatua, for example), and of powerful men and women drawing on the supernaturalagencies. The world was filled with objects and places of power (tapu); and withsigns, omens (tohu) that indicated what and who was at work, and foretold the likelyeffects (or ineffectiveness) of that work. These forces whether human or superhumanare everywhere at work, for good and for ill; and to some extent they can be inflectedby individuals, by those with the power: tohunga (priests), seers (mata-kite, mata-titiro), or practitioners of witchcraft (matuku). Assistance of the gods (atua) couldbe invoked by rituals and chant (karakia), and intercessions were sought for everysignificant occasion: success in war or hunting; warding off sickness; safe voyage;safe childbirth. Intercession could be sought also from spirits of the dead (wairua,and most especially from the spirits of powerful ancestors); and against unrulydemons or spirits (kehua).3

What does it mean, a magical sensibility? Magic relates to a world of action, ofacts both benevolent and malevolent. [17] If we follow what some anthropologistshave had to say, magic can be understood as a gigantesque variation sur le the`medu principe de causalite (Rene Girard) [18], or, as put by Levi-Strauss [19]:

Magic is distinguished less from science through ignorance or disdain of determin-ism, as by a demand for determinism that is more imperious and intransigeant,and that science might, at the very least, adjudge unreasonable and precipitate..

In effect, the magical sensibility invokes a notion of the super-natural as anexplanatory principle, under the imperative of accounting for everything with a rea-son. Ethnologue Elsdon Best commented:

.... it must ever be borne in mind that there was no sharply defined boundarybetween the natural and the supernatural in the Maori mind: given certain con-ditions anything was possible [20]

From a modern scientific point of view, therefore, we would say that the role ofmagical attribution is to fill the gap left by the evident natural causesto come toterms with indetermination. This was Bronislaw Malinowskis view, which has hadwide anthroplogical currency. So for example, he said, amongst the Western PacificTrobriand Islanders,

... in the Lagoon fishing, where man can rely completely upon his knowledgeand skill, magic does not exist, while in the open-sea fishing, full of danger and

3 Italicised words are the key Maori terms; it would take too long to explain systematically their possibleconnotations and different usages. These summary statements draw loosely from a variety of sources,some heresay, others more authorititative, including: Elsdon Best [1216].


uncertainty, there is extensive magical ritual to secure safety and good results[21].

It is necessary to seek to understand the articulation of a magical world as a cos-mology, by which a society constitutes itself, comprehends its own existence and itspossible death, and by which it defines the organisation of this existence along theway. Where science would speak of conservation laws, in a magical world causesare identified on the plane(s) of active agency. This may be either human or inhuman,the important thing is that nothing is attributed to mere chance. The world is aprocess of making and unmaking, a product of work and will. Not only work as theinstrumental toil of hauling in a fishing net or weaving a basket, but the harnessingof the powers of the world to remake the world, bring change to achieve a desiredresult. Tikao refers to this as an aspect of mana, the well-known term for Maoripower, standing and prestige. Discussing the power(s) of the world, he refers to themana of the gods which keeps the world of life going, the mana of the Maori race,which brought them to this land of New Zealand and which, like personal mana,has given place to a Pakeha idea of things.4 So let us try for a glimpse of an old(and possible future) cosmology:

.... to the ancient Maori mana was [like] a fire which no one could put out .....From the beginning of the world it goes onit cannot be rubbed out..... The godsstand back to back doing the work of the worldgood or badand doing it bymana, which cannot be put out or overcome.

The human social world is, similarly, sustained by tribal and personal mana. How-ever, while the power of the world (the mana of the gods) endures indefinitely, thefortunes of humans are mutable, and so times may change:

Mana holds from the beginning to the end of the world, and it keeps the worldgoing. Personal mana can be overcome and annihilated, but that of the gods can-not.

This is made clear in, first of all, the fact of mortality, and at another level in theebbings and flowings of tribal potency. It is also made clear in the vanishing ofpeoples (as we will see). These phenomena may be taken as facets of what Baudril-lard calls reversibility [2325]. Anything that appears, is pre-destined to disappear;so understanding in a magical world relates to comprehending and inflecting theconditions of a things or a persons disappearance. Mortality is not a naturalphenomenon in the Western scientific sense, but is a question of power, mana, magicand fatality. For example, the Maori believed that anything that possessed a mauri(life force), all living things including bubbling brooks and the like, could be

4 This and the immediately following citations are from Teone Taare Tikao [22].


destroyed by makutu, destructive magic. Best cites a comment by Hori Ropiha trans-lated as follows:

Now man possesses a mauri, as also do whales, fish, eels, whitebait, greyling andbirds. Hence these things may be destroyed by means of magic, and so passaway; however big or numerous such things may be, if bewitched they perishutterly [26].

So, there are misfortunes in life, but nothing is merely an accident. According toBest [27], the two most common causes of illness and disease identified amongstMaori, were makutu (sorcery) and hara (acts offensive to the gods, or transgressionsof tapu). In a power-filled world, any mischance or mistake can have fatal conse-quences. Moreover, the presence of death in the world is, in itself, understood interms of mana and magical acts. This is made plain in the story, retold everywhereamongst Maori with many variations, of Mauis failure to conquer death. Asrecounted by Sir George Grey in his collection Polynesian Mythology, Mauis failurewas pre-destined by a prior blunder of his father:

Then the lad was taken by his father to the water, to be baptized, and after theceremony prayers were offered to make him sacred, and clean from all impurities;but when it was completed, his father Makea-tu-tara felt greatly alarmed, becausehe remembered that he had, from mistake, hurriedly skipped over part of theprayers of the baptismal service, and of the services to purify Maui; he knew thatthe gods would be certain to punish this fault, by causing Maui to die. [28]

The well-known denouement is thus pre-ordained. To conquer death, Maui intendedto enter the womb of the goddess of death Hine-nui-o-te-po and crawl through tore-emerge at her mouth. But while he was wriggling his way in, his squirmingencouraged the watching birds and Mauis brothers to laugh, which woke Hine-nui-o-te-po and contracting her muscles she caused Maui to die. And so, an innocent(?) mischance had the most momentous of consequences: that death remains irremed-iably in the human world.

2. The passage from magic to folklore

The arrival of the Europeans in the South Pacificwith guns, new maladies, Chris-tianities (new words: the Word), ethics, techniques, pen and paper, fig-leafs, blanketsand moralitiesshowed new and unfamiliar magics at work. Unfamiliar and oftenmortally dangerous. While the newcomers (and the opportunities they presented)were interesting, there were also perils to be warded off. Contest of magics, in away. But then, the arrival of the European came to mean the most radical reversalpossible: the disintegration of the magical worldview itself. In a certain sense it wasthe end of the world (the beginning of a new world).

Even if the power in the world that keeps it going is a fire which no one could


put out, the same invincibility is not true for the mana of a person or tribe. In theold Maori world, when the karakia stalls, mana is lost, something of the life force(mauri) of the people fails. Somehow, bit by bit, not just a piece of tribal lore here,a house of learning there, but a whole world was lost. Looked at from the Maoripoint of view, the Europeans came with different gods. These new powers in theworld were seemingly immune to contesting by Maori mana. For example, asrecounted by Best [29], it seemed the shafts of makutu were harmless when directedagainst Europeans; and, although magical efficacy depends on mana:

mana is not a self-supporting quality, both tapu and mana are really dependentupon the gods for their vital force, and this applied even to personal mana. If aMaori attempts to bewitch a European he may possess the necessary mana andalso deliver his recital in a faultless manner but the destructive power of hischarms emanate from the gods of the Maori, and those gods are powerless againstthe white man.

We are not called upon to prove or disprove this proposition. For, at a phenomeno-logical level, it accounts for what was observed. Confronted with the diminishing,the veritable destruction of mana, the alternative, the only alternative for the Maori(if they were to live), was a conversion and adaptation to the new world. As put bya recent Maori commentator, Ranginui Walker:

From 1835 on, whole tribes began converting to Christianity because it wasthought that the Pakeha God was more powerful than Maori gods. That powerwas manifest in the form of ships, weapons and an amazing array of goods pos-sessed by Pakeha [30].

Conversion to Christianity eliminated the tapu of chiefs, thereby diminishing theirauthority and lessening the tapu of places and the mana of customs Maori. Dissolvingof traditional structures (including slavery and polygamy) reduced the economiccapacity of tribal chiefs (rangatira) to sustain the mana in providing for the well-being and standing of the tribal group. As Tikao laments,

.... when the missionaries came they asked the Maori to wash away the tapu andall the old cannibal work and this the Maori did, with the result that his manadeparted. When the tapu was abolished by the Gospel the Maori mana van-ished.... [31]

When they abandoned the old ways (that were, perhaps, cruel in many ways), infavour of the new possibilities of the new world, the Maori, little did they know,were abandoning more than a way of life. They came close to abandoning life, toutcourt. The ethnographers, fatal accomplices, should perhaps have been boiled inmutton-bird oil alive. They documented the death of a world [32]. Were they, folklor-ists, not aware that their objectification was part of the process that helped toextinguish whole worlds: their intelligence and their scientific reports to the Polyne-


sian Society signed the death warrants for the peoples they came (a little bit) toknow?

3. Te Tiriti o Waitangi: the remaking/unmaking of the social world

The New Zealand Resource Management Act 1991 established, with all theunnatural force of law, a new sense of future history. It spoke of a collective duty:to ensure the sustainable use and management of New Zealands physical andnatural resources. Three motifs stand out: (i) sustainability; (ii) interests of indigen-ous (non-Western) peoples, here exemplified by the obligation to honour the Treatyof Waitangi; and (iii) the question of protecting environmental values and of ecologi-cal intrinsic value. Section 5 of the Act states:1. The purpose of this Act is to promote the sustainable management of natural and

physical resources.2. In this Act, sustainable management means managing the use, development,

and protection of natural and physical resources in a way, or at a rate, whichenables people and communities to provide for their social, economic, and culturalwellbeing and for their helath and safety while

O Sustaining the potential of natural and physical resources (excluding minerals) tomeet the reasonably foreseeable needs of future generations; and

O Safeguarding the life-supporting capacity of air, water, soil, and ecosystems; andO Avoiding, remedying, or mitigating any adverse effects of activities on the

environment.

A definition of effect is given in the Acts Section 3, and recognises temporary,permanent, and cumulative effects (positive or adverse), effects arising in combi-nation, and questions of risk and severity of impact. The severity of the dutieswhether to avoid entirely, to remedy in whole or in part, to mitigate (etc.)is leftunclear. This indeterminacy is what permits the Act to give the hope of protectionof everything, while in fact being a guarantee of nothing (viz., conservation andvirtual extermination) [33].

The duty that the Act imposes towards future generations is attributed, in Sections6 and 7, to all persons exercising functions and powers under the Act. This refersto the agencies of government at central, regional, territorial levels who are givenroles under the Act. But also it means all of us, since we all exercise various functionsand powers in the uses we make of resources and the environment. Thus for example,Section 16 states a duty to avoid unreasonable noise on the part of every occupierof land and every person carrying out an activity on land or water; and Section17 states a duty of every person to avoid, remedy, or mitigate adverse effects on theenvironment arising from their activity or an activity for which they are responsible.

The duties of care do not stop with natural and physical resources. In recent yearsthe principles of the Treaty of Waitangi have been proclaimed as precepts of justprocedure in governance and law reform in New Zealand society. By 1988 it wasfirmly established that the new legislation emerging from the RMLR was to take


into account the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi5. The year 1990 in NewZealand was celebrated as the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty, theevent that marked the birth of the modern nationthat is, the formal establishment,in 1840, of the British Crown as sovereign over the country. But the Treaty alsostated formal recognition by the British Crown, of the traditional authority (tinorangatiratanga) of Maori chiefs (and hence tribal institutions) in the exercise of theirresponsibilities for the welfare of their people and control of tribal land and otherpossessions. The antinomy of two authorities thus recognised has never beenresolved.

Section 8 of the RMA states that In achieving the purpose of this Act, all personsexercising functions and powers under it, in relation to managing the use, develop-ment, and protection of natural and physical resources, shall take into account theprinciples of the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi). Section 6 on mattersof national importance states that all persons shall recognise and provide for,among other things, the relationship of Maori and their culture and traditions withtheir ancestral lands, water, sites, waahi tapu, and other taonga. Section 7 concernedwith other matters requires having regard to, among other things, kaitiakitanga,which from Section 2 is to be interpreted as the exercise of guardianship; and, inrelation to a resource, includes the ethic of stewardship based on the nature of theresource itself. Under Section 45, national environmental and resource managementpolicy statements may have regard to .... anything which is significant in terms ofsection 8 (Treaty of Waitangi). Under Section 58, New Zealand coastal policy state-ments may state policies about .... protection of the characteristics of the coastalenvironment of special value to the tangata whenua including waahi tapu, taurangawaka, mahinga maataitai, and taonga raranga. And a miscelleny of clauses (Sections61, 65, 66, 74; and the 1st Schedule) require regional councils and district authoritiesto be responsive to any significant concern of tangata whenua for their culturalheritage in relation to natural and physical resources, to have regard to relevantplanning documents recognised by an iwi authority (that is a Maori tribal authoritywith standing in that district or region), and to consult with the tangata whenua ofthe area through iwi authorities and tribal runanga.

What does it all mean to take the Treaty into account? Article I of the Treatyreads, in English, as an agreement between two sovereign powers, whereby the Maorichiefs cede to the British Crown absolutely and without reservation all the rightsand powers of sovereignty which they at that time exercised and possessed. In theMaori version of te Tiriti, the Maori transfer kawanatanga to the British Crown, aterm meaning something like administrative governance. Article II in both Englishand Maori versions confirms the status of Maori tribal authority and honours theintegrity of Maori society as a going concern. The Maori text states the recognitionof tino rangatiratanga o o ratou wenua o ratou kainga me o ratou taonga katoa,which in the English version is rendered: full exclusive and undisturbed possessionof their lands and estates, forests, fisheries and other properties..... Article III in

5 As well as the text of the Act itself, as cited below, see documents from the reform process [34].


English extends to the Natives of New Zealand the protection of the British Crown,and imparts to them all the Rights and Privileges of British subjects. In Maori,the term tikanga rendered as rights, actually refers to something like proper conductin traditional life. So the Maori version reiterates the Article II recognition of Maorimana, the vitality of that society and of customary authority, whereas the Englishversion ignores (and thereby diminishes) that mana, and consigns to the Maori peopleto the same civic status, under the British Crown, as held by people of British origins.

We plantedThe totara treeThe ground freshly turnedReminded us of a burialPlacing there part of usOur umbilical link with people and landAncestors [35].

Considered as an historical document the Treaty was a colonial fraud. Consideredas a symbol of social change and tensionsof unresolved tensionsit is alive andwell. There is an obligation in practical fact to deal with the grievances that itsymbolises; this indeed is the obligation that the RMA (inadvertantly?) enshrinesin law.6

4. Conservation and virtual extermination

The tie-up in the Resource Management Act between the Treaty obligation andthe underlying sustainability objective, is rather plain. The Acts Section 5 establishesa duty to others (now and in the future) in respect of their economic wellbeing, life-support requirements and environmental amenity. Section 8, through reference to theTreaty principles, establishes Maori culture and tradition as, simultaneously, meansand end of sustainable management. There is, first, an obligation of safeguardingthe life-support requirements for the Maori people and culture. We can state thisironically as the obligation of avoiding, remedying, or mitigating any adverse effectsof Pakeha activities on the health and vitality of Maori culture. Thus, for example,under Section 6 of the RMA, the relationship of Maori and their culture and tra-ditions with their ancestral lands, water, sites, waahi tapu, and other taonga appearson a par with outstanding natural features and landscapes and areas of significantindigenous vegetation and significant habitats of indigenous fauna as an attributeof national importance to be protected and provided for. Second, the Maori and theirculture are espoused as a vehicle for achieving sound resource management. In the

6 See also [36]. There are many recent works that document these textual differences, and discusspossibilities of interpretation and also the history after 1850 of the sidelining of the Treaty provisionsunder British rule. Some of the more useful are found in [3740].


RMA this is made explicit, notably, in Section 7 stating matters which personsexercising powers under the Act shall have particular regard to:1. Kaitiakitanga;2. The efficient use and development of natural and physical resources;3. The maintenance and enhancement of amenity values;4. Intrinsic values of ecosystems;5. Recognition and protection of the heritage values of sites, buildings, places, or

areas;6. Maintenance and enhancement of the quality of the environment;7. Any finite characteristics of natural and physical resources;8. The protection of the habitat of trout and salmon.The duty (8), to act with regard to protection of the habitat of trout and salmon,works as a grand piece of metonymy for the whole conservation logic of the Act. Theterm kaitiakitanga is, in the Act (Section 2), defined as the exercise of guardianshipconnoting the ethic of stewardship based on the nature of the resource itself. Now,trout and salmon are unique, not least in being a cherished immigrant species toAotearoa/New Zealand. They are certainly finite, and are an amenity as well as anexploitable resource. Both the habitat and the fish themselves doubtless (and notwith-standing their exoticism) have their own intrinsic value, this value being as definedin Section 2 to derive from (a) Their biological and genetic diversity; and (b) Theessential characteristics that determine an ecosystems integrity, form, functioning,and resilience. Ipso facto they must be managed in recognition of this unique valueand character; and this would mean in the spirit of kaitiakitanga.

But then, extrapolating from the salmon and trout, we can see that a comparableduty of guardianship is established concerning the Maori people and their habitat.That is, the Crown requires us (and itself) to exercise stewardship in the interestsof the Maori people, through recognising what might be thought of as the intrinsicor heritage value of Maori, their culture and sites.

You can hardly see himfor natures camouflage; trout,magnificent trout, darklyspeckled, toffee brown.........

he floats upward,pouts, takes the flyfrom the puckered surface.Look out, trout [41].

What is the appropriate recognition of the mana Maori? What would it mean tokaitiaki (look after) the Maori culture and habitat? In original Maori social contexts,kaitiakitanga can mean any sort of looking afterfor example care of a child withina household, or of a person within a community, or regard for the vitality of a fisheryor of a tribal group. This relates back to the guarding of the mauri (life-force) of aperson or entity.


Life in the pre-European Maori societies was structured by a notion of reciprocityand reversibility encapsulated in the word utu. Gift-exchange was one expression,from inter-village marriage to the making of peace between tribes. Gifts were givento visitors; and to the hosts of a visit; these are examples of the koha, the reciprocalgift, still widely practised for example at a tangi (funeral rite and mourning), ormade to those hosting a hui (meeting of any sort), or in return for specialist servicesand to workers who have helped on projects such as a meeting-house or war canoe.But utu applies also to relations between human society and the non-human worldof plant and animal life, the land and sea. Roughly speaking utu is the rule (orcosmological principle) of a corresponding return. Every action will find its rec-ompense, will be completed in a proper return: life is returned by death; excessivepride will bring shame; revenge will be exacted for insult or theft; every gift will(and must) be met by a counter-gift; and so on.7

With the RMA, the cosmology undergoes a change. In a piece of Pakeha culturalpretention, the (residual) mana Maori is invoked in order better to protect valuesacross the boardMaori and Pakeha, man and beast, economic and ecological valuesalike. With the express statement in Section 5 of the paramount duty to ensure theneeds of future generations, the imperative of care and conservation is generalisedalso across time. The imperative widens in scope to include (i) the patrimony of theentire planet (or, perhaps, the entire planet, genetic and cultural stock, as patrimony),and (ii) the preservation of the human species as a whole (as beneficiaries of thispatrimony) with the New Zealand society being the present case in point. Extendedreciprocity? Nothing is less sure.

As Jean Baudrillard has put it, this is the mature age of capitalism, in which nolonger accumulation is the key, but rather the reproduction in sustainable fashion ofan existing stock of natural, cultural, genetic, and built capital [46,47]. The discourseof generalised protection serves to disguise its radical antithesis, the fact that, today,everything is at risk. We all live - birds, plants, beasts and human societiesunderthe shadows of the Bomb, of the Market, of Debt, of bankruptcy, of resourcedepletion, ambient poisons and species extinction. In Baudrillards phrase: in a stateof radical emergency, of virtual extermination [48]. The Act takes on the appearanceof a sort of Bill of Rights for threatened economic, cultural and ecological interests:those in the future who are dependent on us (and, equally, at risk because of us);those of a distinctive culture (who are also at risk because of us); and variousnon-human interests (also at risk because of us). We, those of us with powers and

7 Williams Dictionary of the Maori Language indicates succinctly this all-embracing character. Utu,as a noun, is rendered as return for anything. As a verb it means to make response by whatever agencyor manner. This logic (if we may call it that) is very plain in the mythical accounts (e.g. those recordedby Grey, Best, and Tikao), the old stories of love, trickery, and war, where insult and injury were repaidby revenge, and the gods (atua) constantly invoked to intervene on ones side. For discussions of utu asa general principle, see [4244]. Many anthropological works propose to decipher the logic of Maorisocietyor more exactly, speculate on possible (cosmo)logics of reciprocity and gift-exchange, whichthe Maori supposedly knew. These include the classic by Mauss who postulated the triple obligation togive, to return the gift, to receive, pinning his case on an example of the Maori hau; see [45].


responsibilities under the Act, are proclaiming ourselves stewards for them all! Wait.Dont Look Down! Remember that the status quo of (more-market) economic activityis the primary activity making its claims to be sustained. In this sense, through theAct, we take the future, the other cultures, the other species all hostage: We proposeto respect them, in order better to insist that they respect us. The Act is also (andabove all) a Bill of Rights written for ourselves. Thus: We are hospitalized bysociety, taken hostage. Neither life nor death: this is security [49].

5. Hospitality towards the future?

Our coexistence on this planet in love and pain and war, is reciprocal and largelyinvoluntary. The old Maori knew about that. In a magical sensibility, a death is anevent in the whole tissue of the world, it is a rupture and discontinuity which affectsthe whole. Each being with their mana and their hau (aura, life energy) is an agencyat every moment in the work of the world, and their action carries onfor goodand for illthe work of making/remaking the world. Dignity and honour are sus-tained through being open to the vicissitudes of life and death.

.... For though I cannot love you,Yet, heavy, deep, and far,Your tide of love comes swinging,Too swift for me to bar.... [50].

An old Greek word, xenos means the unknown and strange. Also in the ancientGreek, xenios (from the same root) is the word for host, the one who receives thestranger. The visitor, when s/he comes, implies the presence of the unknown. Hospi-tality means to receive another party as a visitor, and to give, be the host to theother. It means also to be given over to the other and to what they bring into theworld for you. This is the pleasure of mutual hospitality that may come when recip-rocity and reversibility is embraced rather than refused.

.... These we eat nowThese for the tangiThese for seedAnd these, e kare ma, are yourKumara [51].

Thus, to be sociable means, among other things, to be at home with death. In the(post-)modern world that the RMA represents, Death is the visitor left always knock-ing, refused entry. The conservative value-laden modern management discourses arecuriously xenophobic. Such a high premium is placed on (false) knowledge of thefuture, scenes and scenarios of conservation, the preserving of valuespreoccupa-tons that are only too close to the standard quarterly forecasts of GNP growth (stockmarket indices, phallic phantasms of perpetuities, as in the pension funds). In this


overly value-laden modern world, the visitor is refused unless preceded by afutures contract.

Of course, the futures contracts are not worth the (virtual) paper that they arewritten on. The traditional Maori society in Aotearoa got its futures contract (Tetiriti o Waitangi) a long time ago; and that society has already been destroyed. Lost,just as surely as has been the bulk of the native forest that once covered 80% of NewZealand lands. From the cosmology of 150 years ago, not even the ghosts remain.

The Treaty as a futures contract? There was no contract. Objective hostages ofan unknown god. The Maori rangatira had to gambleeverything was at stake. Bysigning or by not signing, they and their people were infinitely at-risk. So theirsignature was a challenge, the situation one of duelas in the wero, the Maoriceremonial greeting which is, according to circumstance, the challenge to a poten-tially hostile party, and the welcome of visitors onto the marae. Whereby the world,by the challenge issued, is summoned to respond, obliged by the players wager todeclare itself either favourable or hostile [52].

Come, we will play together, you and I,Who are born and nourished in this haunted savage place.Domain of enchantments and the collapse of time,Everything birth and death at once [53].

The irrevocability of the Maori loss does not stem so much from having beendefrauded of their fisheries and land considered as economic resources, as it stemsfrom having the dynamic of reciprocal exchange severed and refused.

I yearned to returnBut your banquetWas bullets.

The bloodThe shameCannot beSalvedIn wine [54].

In one sense the Maori lost their gamble (the game was never a fair one). In otherways, even partly dead, they have won. Because they took up the challenge of thesituation, mounted counter-challenges with some generosity, which the British neverreally reciprocated. Honour is on the Maori side. The Treaty remains alive and prob-lematical today, precisely because it stands for an invitation and a challenge to theBritish that was never taken up. This haunts many Pakeha like a plague. It is not aquestion here of what the (Pakeha) law of the day might say; we are dealing withpowers of another (symbolic) order: inhuman laws of retribution (utu) that are, simul-taneously, only too human. Now, dead and alive, they haunt the Pakeha with theirmodern more-market demand: they want their capital back. Utu, the absolute ruleof returning in kind for anything.


6. Post-modern times?

And yet,

.... and yet we dream, all of us, instead of dying boorishly in this usury, ofreceiving death and giving death. Because to give and to receive is a symbolicact (it is the symbolic act par excellence), which lifts from death all the indifferentnegativity that it has for us under the natural order of capital [55].

The enigmas of love, the politeness of the host and guest, compassion of a friend,knife-edge of the duel, conversation with a god, and with death. The passion forinstrumental reason has rendered all these things infinitely mysterious if not sense-less. Yet, they are the human sentimentsfollies and irrationalities that take overwhere Reason, dispassionate assessment, and rational calculation leave off. Therewould be nothing much human in the world without them. People would, indeed,rather play Lotto with their own lives than follow to the letter the conservativediscourse of the Act.

In the many domains of what we now call folklore, modes of living are affirmedin myth, story and other symbols, that say: To live well then means to be well inlife, to give and receive in abundance. This includes to receive the gift of life, topass on this gift to others, and to be received back by life: this also is to die well[56]. There is something to be said for a world where everythingdeath as well aslifecan be understood as given and received. For, though life can be cruel andsickening (as Maori tribal battles probably often were), this is a world in whichhumans can have a place with meaning.

If sustainability is to be anything other than a bad joke, New Zealand people willneed to learn in new ways how to be sociable with death. Otherwise we run the riskof contributing indifferently to an evolution of societywhose trends are alreadyevidenttowards violent forms that are increasingly senseless, mindless, and uncon-trolled, and where no response is forthcoming except the counterviolences ofrepression. Conservation discourse, which evidently is haunted by the imminence ofreal losses, wants to give rights to life and to existence of all things. An under-standable sentiment (in a hypothetical world devoid of hate). But how can this helpus to make sense of, to live with, the inevitabilities of loss? The discourse of rightsto be respected, of interests to be provided for, simply occludes the real problemof finding an etiquette for social and economic life, for living with reversibilitythis understood not as something resolved supernaturally by the invisible hand ofthe market, but as an adventurous and sometimes antagonistic process together oflife given and received, death given and received.

Most people know this, which is why they still have dinner parties in spite of thewashing up, throw parties that get gatecrashed, go trout fishing and fall in love. Afterall, says Baudrillard, if you want to get away from the madness of the world, youhave to sacrifice all of its charm as well [57].

All this leaves us with a curious problem of interpreting the drift of the NewZealand resource management law reforms. The conservation logic is only too appar-


ent, the emphasis on the identification of rights to be sustained: values, interests,and activities worthy of respected and to be provided for. Yet, ironically and surrep-titiously, the Act lays down a challenge and a summons of a quite different order.It confronts us with, asserts, our duty to the future and to other life. To carry outthis duty would depend on nourishing a capacity to give, capacity to grieve, capacityto receive and pass on.

The low lamentation of waves greeting the shoreechoed our weeping girlLet your tears of grief cover the skyYour ancestor, double arched Uenukuwill give you his sign to standBattle onFind the sun again [58]

This duty, if it is one, is not something that can be enforced in the courts. It can beupheld, if at all, only through dignity of personas a challenge, a willingness togamble on the possibilities of a co-existence in this world. The old Maori world islargely dead and gone. Yet probably we will need to recover a magical sensibilityof the world, or we shall sterilise our remaining bits of the planet even while welose our soul. When we show true hospitality, open the door to the future to theunknown, we gamble on the other. The visitor may destroy us. The Maori gambledin 1840, and for many of them the outcome was a dead loss. Yet, finally, it has tobe an open door. There is no calculation possible, but this incalculability is whatmakes us free.

Albatross is circling reachinghigher sky, new air to rideweaving gold and spinning sunlighthave to catch your morning tide [59].

References

[1] Lambert R. Canaan Fire. In: Cooper J, OConnor N, editors. True Confessions: A collection ofwriting by young people from Nelson. Nelson: Pyramid Publications.

[2] The Resource Management Act: An Act to restate and reform the law relating to the use of land,air, and water, 1991, No. 69, 22 July 1991, House of Representatives, Wellington (New Zealand).

[3] Ministry for the Environment. Introducing the Resource Management Bill: A special newsletter tohelp people understand New Zealands biggest law reform, December 1989, p. 1.

[4] Baudrillard J. Les Strategies Fatales (Grasset, Paris), 1983, translated in Fatal Strategies(Semiotext(e)/Pluto, New York/London), 1990.

[5] Baudrillard J. Fatal Strategies. 1990:157.[6] Fatal Strategies, English translation. 1990:356.[7] Baudrillard J. LEchange Symbolique et la Mort. Paris: Gallimard, 1976:2479.


[8] Adcock F. For a Five-year-old. In: Ten Modern New Zealand Poets, Chosen by Harvey McQueenand Lois Cox. Auckland: Longman Paul, 1974:157.

[9] Fatal Strategies, English translation. 1990:36.[10] Lambert R. Canaan Fire. In: Cooper J, OConnor N, editors. True Confessions: A collection of

writing by young people from Nelson. Nelson: Pyramid Publications.[11] Favret-Saada J. Les mots, la mort, les sorts. Paris: Gallimard, 1977. English translation: Deadly

Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980:910.[12] Best, E. Notes on the art of War as conducted by the Maori of New Zealand. Journal of the Polyne-

sian Society, vols. 11-13, 1902-1904.[13] Best, E. Maori Forest Lore, Transactions of the New Zealand Institute, XLII, 1909:433-81.[14] Best E. Maori religion and mythology: being an account of the cosmogony, anthropogeny, religious

beliefs and rites, magic and folklore of the Maori folk of New Zealand, Part 2. French A, McFadgen-Richardson B, editors. Dominion Museum Bulletin No. 11. Wellington (New Zealand): GovernmentPrinter, 1982.

[15] Grey G. Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealanders, as furnishedby their priests and chiefs, English edition. Auckland: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1906.

[16] Teone Taare Tikao. Tikao Talks: Ka Taoka Tapu o te ao Kohatu, Treasures from the Ancient Worldof the Maori, told by Teone Taare Tikao to Herries Beattie (first published A.H. and A.W. Reed,Wellington, 1939; new edition by Penguin Books in association with Cadsonbury Publications,Christchurch, 1990).

[17] Cf. Otto W. Les Dieux de la Gre`ce: La figure du divin au miroir de lesprit grec. Paris: Payot, 1981.[18] Girard R. Le bouc emissaire. Paris: Grasset, 1982:779.[19] Levi-Strauss C. La Pensee Sauvage. Paris: Plon, 1962:18.[20] Best E. Maori Religion and Mythology, op. cit., p.103.[21] Malinowski. Magic, Science, and Religion, as cited by George Homans, Anxiety and Ritual: The

Theories of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown, American Anthropologist, 43:16472. Reprinted pp.837, In: Lessa WA, Vogt EZ, editors. Reader in Comparative Religion: An AnthropologicalApproach (3rd ed., 1972, Harper and Row).

[22] Tikao TT. Tikao Talks: Ka Taoka Tapu o te ao Kohatu, Treasures from the Ancient World of theMaori, told by Teone Taare Tikao to Herries Beattie (first published A.H. and A.W. Reed, Welling-ton, 1939; new edition by Penguin Books in association with Cadsonbury Publications, Christchurch,1990, pp. 958).

[23] Baudrillard J. Fatal Strategies.[24] Baudrillard J. Echange Symbolique et la Mort.[25] De la Seduction (Editions Galilee, Paris), 1979, English translation: Seduction. London: MacMil-

lan, 1990.[26] Best E. Maori Religion and Mythology, p. 139.[27] Best E. Maori Religion and Mythology, p. 108[28] Grey G. Polynesian Mythology and Ancient Traditional History of the New Zealanders, as furnished

by their priests and chiefs, p. 22, see also pp. 3841. His translation from the Maori suffers badlyfrom Victorian convention.

[29] Best E. Maori Religion and Mythology, p. 107.[30] Walker R. Tradition and change in Maori Leadership. Inaugural Lecture (Chair in Maori Studies),

July 1993. New Zealand: University of Auckland.[31] Tikao TT. Tikao Talks: Ka Taoka Tapu o te ao Kohatu, Treasures from the Ancient World of the

Maori, told by Teone Taare Tikao to Herries Beattie (first published A.H. and A.W. Reed, Welling-ton, 1939; new edition by Penguin Books in association with Cadsonbury Publications, Christchurch,1990, pp. 968).

[32] OConnor M. Magie et Fantastique dans le Pacifique. In: Andre S, editor. The Passage from Magicto Folklore. Editions Haere Po No Tahiti, Pateete, 1993:7196.

[33] Arnoux R, Dawson R, OConnor M. The logics of death and sacrifice in the resource managementlaw reforms of Aotearoa/New Zealand. Journal of Economic Issues 1993;27:000.

[34] People, Environment, and Decisionmaking: the Governments Proposals for Resource ManagementLaw Reform, December 1988, Ministry for the Environment, Wellington (New Zealand), pp. 3, 5, 19.


[35] Williams H. Totara Tree, p. 29 in: Karanga, (Coromandel Press), no date.[36] OConnor M. Honour the Treaty? Property Right and Symbolic Exchange. In: Whitwell J, Thompson

MA, editors. Society and Culture: Economic Perspectives. New Zealand Association of Economists,Wellington. 1991;1:13879.

[37] Evison HC. Ngai Tahu land Rights and the Crown Pastoral Lease Lands in the South Island of NewZealand. Christchurch: Ngai Tahu Maori Trust Board, 1986.

[38] Orange C. The Treaty of Waitangi. Wellington: Allen and Unwin, 1987.[39] Kawharu H, editor. Waitangi: Maori and Pakeha Perspectives on the Treaty of Waitangi. Auckland:

Oxford University Press, 1989.[40] Kelsey J. A Question of Honour? Labour and the Treaty 1984-1989. Wellington, Sydney and Lon-

don: Allen and Unwin, 1990.[41] An Anthology of Twentieth Century New Zealand Poetry. Trout by Brian Turner, pp. 3589.[42] Firth R. Primitive Economics of the New Zealand Maori. London: Routledge 1929; Reprinted in

1959 by Government Printer, Wellington, 2nd ed., 1972.[43] Metge J. The Maoris of New Zealand, Ruatahi, 2nd ed., London: Routledge, 1976.[44] Salmond A. Hui: A Study of Maori Ceremonial Gatherings, 2nd ed., Auckland: Reed Methuen, 1976.[45] Mauss M. Essai sur le Don, Forme et Raison de lEchange dans les Societes Archaques. In: Annee

Sociologique Nouvelle Serie 1, 1923/24. English translations: The Gift: Forms and Functions ofExchange in Archaic Societies. New York: W.W. Norton, 1954; new translation London: Rout-ledge, 1990.

[46] Baudrillard. Design and Environment, pp. 185203. In: For a Critique of the Political Economy ofthe Sign. St Louis: Telos Press, 1981 (the English translation of Pour une critique de leconomiepolitique du signe, Paris: Gallimard, 1972).

[47] OConnor M. On the Misadventures of Capitalist Nature, Capitalism Nature Socialism 1993;4(4),reproduced in OConnor M, editor.Is Sustainable Capitalism Possible? New York: Guilford Publi-cations, 1994.

[48] Fatal Strategies, p. 35.[49] Fatal Strategies, pp. 356.[50] An Anthology of Twentieth Century New Zealand Poetry. Duggan E. The Tides run up the Wairau,

pp. 234, Selected by Vincent OSullivan, 3rd ed., Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1988.[51] Karanga. From Kumara by Haare Williams, p. 11.[52] Baudrillard. Seduction, English translation, p. 143.[53] OConnor M. Innocence, or Lau-dela` de la Seduction, May 1987.[54] Karanga. From Te Kooti by Haare Williams, p. 25.[55] LEchange Symbolique et la Mort, p. 253.[56] OConnor M, Arnoux R. Ecologie, echange ineluctable, et ethique de lengagement: sur le don

et le developpement durable, Revue du MAUSS No.15/16, May 1992. Paris: La Decouverte, pp.288309.

[57] Fatal Strategies, English translation, p. 181[58] Te Pua 1(1). From Nga Roimata by Trixie Te Arama Menzies, pp. 22-23. Auckland: Puawaitanga,

Te Whare Waananga o Tamaki Makaurau, September 1992.[59] True Confessions. From Morning Tide by Bronywn Allen.

mana, magic and (post-)modernity: dissenting futures in aotearoa

Documents