potiki

A detailed Summary of potiki

Brigham Young University -Hawaii Campus

Land, to many of us, is a place of growth and development. When the Pakeha, or

white man, saw the fertile land of New Zealand, he saw opportunity and investment to

make more money. But did the Pakeha really know what land is to those who live as though

their land is everything they had? Of course, they must have known that land is precious to

them, but did they realize just how precious land was to the Maori's? Land was life to the

Maori people, and if it was destroyed, it meant that the land needed to be renewed with new

life. The land and life was sacred and immortal.

The novel, Potiki, explained in different points of view what the land meant to the

Maori people. Roimata made it clear that, "...the land does not belong to people, but that

people belong to the land" (110). She viewed the land as a sacred means of life renewal. She

even said that everything in time was a "now-time". The past and the present were only

named for convenience, but when all was one, and all had an influence on each other (39).

sky. The fish that was near him was another example of immortality in itself. When Toko

The Pakeha insistently bribed, then tried to destroy their competitor's land and scare

The Pakeha did not consider the fact that Maori land was Maori life. If they wanted to take

that died inside the wharekai. His statue was one with an eye to the land and an eye to the

the Pakeha, there was no reason for refusing this generous offer. So, because of their refusal,

in the carvings of the wharekai. A good example of this is Toko, who was a crippled boy

mans by which we survived and stayed together. Our whanau is the land and the sea.

Pakeha, the Maori's were still just savages trying to make a living out of nothing. The

Approximate Word count = 1008
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History

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