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Renowned artist Cliff Whiting had a huge influence on Ngāi Tahu, says Tā Tipene O'Regan, who tells the story of how Cliff came to work for the tribe.
One of my earlier incarnations was as a lecturer in Māori Studies and New Zealand History at the then Wellington Teachers College, to which I was appointed in 1968. Not long before that my wife Sandra and I had been "mature students" in the college, and during a studentship of abundant revelation and new experiences, we'd been hugely engaged by a remarkable breed of teachers and innovative thinkers.

One of those was the creative art educator Gordon Tovey, who had already had a profound influence on the development of a whole new generation of Māori artists and art educators. What Tovey, and those he'd influenced, had released into New Zealand culture was a whole new pulse of dynamic innovation in the way Māori culture and tradition could be manifested through the arts.

They'd challenged the very concept of tradition itself, and, in so doing, had moved Māori artistic expression beyond the protective cocoon of museum-enshrouded, static, and repetitive forms into a bold new artistic language. However novel though, it was utterly and unmistakeably Māori in its form and in what it represented. One of the frequently-quoted figures at the heart of this process was Cliff Whiting of Te Whānau ā Apanui - commonly in tandem with another artist from Te Kaha coast, Para Matchitt.

I was not then (and neither am I now) an artistically informed or enlightened person. What appealed to me was the dynamism of the process, the vigour, and the life that it was breathing into the very sense of what "Māori Art" was. I could see it flowing on out into contemporary Māoridom. I recognised it all as a manifestation of something I was myself becoming deeply interested in within my own corner of Māori Studies. This was the notion that the dominating and distinguishing characteristic of Māori culture was its old heritage, of what I had begun to call in my writing, "Dynamic Adaptation". I was looking through the glorious turbulence surrounding me to a cultural characteristic that goes back to the foundations of Polynesian and Māori culture.

It was our own process. We owned it. Pākehā culture was not shaping and controlling Māori culture. Our Māoritanga was going to be what we wanted it to be - shaped and coloured by us. We were not going to be victims of cultural division - we were the new ethnic multiplication sum!
Tā Tipene O'Regan

I was seeing this notion everywhere I looked - in Polynesian archaeology, prehistory, and ethnology; in te reo, and, most evidently of all, in the way our own tūpuna had managed their 18th and 19th century experiences of cultural contact in Aotearoa. What the Pākehā scholars were calling Māori "folk art", the museum fish hooks the ethnologists were describing as "European-style Māori". Sir Āpirana Ngata's adaptations of lyrics from The Desert Song and other musicals, the Māori newspapers of the 19th century - all of these things were not manifestations of cultural decline or "Europeanisation" unless, of course, that was the way one wanted to view them!

What I began to realise was this whole creative phenomenon exploding around me was an absolute assertion of my emerging Dynamic Adaptation thesis. These were all expressions of Māori culture reshaping and evolving itself. It was our own process. We owned it. Pākehā culture was not shaping and controlling Māori culture. Our Māoritanga was going to be what we wanted it to be - shaped and coloured by us. We were not going to be victims of cultural division - we were the new ethnic multiplication sum!

Of course, these emergent ideas were not taking place in a vacuum. These were the early days of what was already being called "the Māori Renaissance". The Māori post-war demographic tide had already turned - although it would still be a while before the Power Culture recognised it. The great urban migration was well under way. The Māori world was alive with growth and change, and beginning to flex its political muscle in the world of New Zealand life and politics. We were all getting excited about race relations theory and the 1961 Hunn Report, rugby relationships with South Africa, Māori education policy, and so on. Visiting American scholars were writing books about us (with a somewhat pungent level of accuracy) and enraging our politicians; and the "Februarys of our discontent" were beginning to wind up at Waitangi. The disgrace of Bastion Point in 1977-78 and the wrenching social and political experience of the 1981 Springbok Tour were still to come. It was a vibrant, disputatious, creative national culture being powerfully impacted by external events from oil shocks to Vietnam. It was all on!

Back in my early lecturing days we developed the practice of taking our largely middle-class students out on field trips to rural marae to expose them to some degree of Māori life and culture, a world from which they were almost completely insulated. The marae communities of that period were almost devoid of younger people as a result of urbanisation, so we would work with our students on various community projects and the kaumātua would come into the wharenui and engage with the students in the evenings.

It was in about 1970, in the course of one such exercise at Koriniti on the Whanganui River, that I first became associated with Cliff Whiting, of whom I'd heard so much - largely from mutual friends. He had just started teaching at the Palmerston North Teachers College. We had our students working under his direction on the redecoration of the wharenui, Te Waiherehere, on the Koriniti Marae. He was exploring the idea, which was to become a trademark of his practice, of actively involving the community in marae restoration and thus reinvigorating the local culture through the arts. The kaumātua of that marae, Te Rangi Pokiha of Te Ati Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, was to become a treasured family friend and a profoundly supportive pou whakakaha for both Cliff and myself.

Although our friendship ripened from that point, it was only in 1976 when Api Mahuika of Ngāti Porou enticed me on to the Māori Advisory Committee of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust that Cliff and I began to grow an active working relationship. He was leading the trust's programme of restoration of marae around the country, and we were all heavily engaged in the wider protection of Māori heritage - the archaeological as well as the built heritage. It was archaeological site protection that brought Atholl Anderson of Ngāi Tahu onto that advisory committee, shortly followed by Te Aue Davis of Ngāti Maniapoto - both of whom were to later play a major part in the subsequent Ngāi Tahu Claim and cultural development. We were to work together in that context for the next 14 years, and the relationships we forged were both powerful and productive. Te Aue was already a noted weaver, and was now emerging as a distinguished student of traditional history. That was later to evolve into her work with the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography and for the New Zealand Geographic Board, of which I was a member. Cliff used his creative skills to work with us both on the 1990 Māori Map Project and the publication of the Māori Oral Maps Atlas, and other projects of that kind.

In the late 1970s, Bill Solomon, Te Rakiihia Tau, and myself were attempting to turn the attention of the Ngāi Tahu Māori Trust Board back towards the cultural revitalisation of Ngāi Tahu. I had been strongly influenced by my association with the resurgent Māori renaissance and was beginning to articulate the idea that if our generation was to successfully "relight" Te Kerēme o Ngāi Tahu, we needed to rebuild our own cultural strength to go with it. We initiated policies to support our marae and begin a process of revitalisation of te reo. Our efforts were - compared to the Ngāi Tahu effort of today - very modest. There was virtually no money and, after all, in terms of cultural competence, we weren't that hot ourselves! We did, though, have the unwavering support of our kaumātua - both those on our trust board and those beyond it in our rūnanga. Most of them, although confident in their identity as Ngāi Tahu, were culturally deficient themselves, and they knew it. That was, however, no deterrent to their tautoko!

My first major effort was to persuade Cliff to come south with me to a hui at Tuahiwi in 1982. From this hui was born the trust board tukutuku project - six panels for the Ngāi Tahu Trust Board boardrooms. At the conclusion of that hui, tasks were being assigned to prepare materials and equipment, and Cliff asked who was going to find and prepare the kiekie for the tukutuku. Rakiihia Tau leapt up and volunteered, "Ngāi Tūāhuriri will get the kiekie, two truckloads - what's it look like?" And, in due course, he delivered! Those panels involved a whole lot of kōrero about the traditions being depicted, and a reworking of tribal memory by the people involved - all of whom were learning the skills from scratch. They took the panels away to work on in their respective communities from Kaikōura to Awarua, and the interest percolated through the tribe. The panels were completed and erected in 1983.

My own creativity was limited. I was just the "go-to man" - organising materials, preparing the frames for building the panels, applying the primer, securing the tools, boiling the water for the kiekie, and so on. That pattern was to be repeated later with both the Takahanga and Awarua projects - particularly with Takahanga.

Once the long battle for the recovery of the Takahanga land was finished following the death of kaumātua Rangi Solomon, Bill Solomon and his sister, Wharetutu Stirling, approached me to discuss the development of the marae itself. We first had to get an archaeological clearance from the Historic Places Trust - a major project in itself. With that done, I asked Cliff to come and run a wānanga based on his work on marae restoration in the North Island. I knew he had an amazing slide show record of the projects I referred to earlier. I said to him, "Just come and talk about marae - what they look like, how they work - all that!'' That was the beginning of a whole series of preparatory wānanga, largely at Ōaro, learning kōwhaiwhai and tukutuku, with lots of work on te reo and waiata thrown in.

Cliff and I took a minibus full of Kaikōura people, together with a couple of packed cars, on a heke through the lower North Island and up the Whanganui River inspecting marae - everything from wharepaku to kitchen design arrangements. We were discussing the practicalities of marae layout and design, but essentially trying to expand the people's confidence in making decisions about what they were building. It worked.

Cliff brought the great Ngāti Porou kuia, Ngoi Pēwhairangi, to teach te reo using her rākau method, and that started off a whole new dimension in our lives. We drew in our soulmate from the Historic Places committee, Te Aue Davis, and she brought her weaving skills to the task. As well, she began working with Bill and me on Kāti Kuri manuscripts and traditional history also. All this was being melded into the design and decoration of the marae. Cliff, Bill Solomon, and Te Aue formed a great affection for each other. The community adopted Cliff and his late wife, Heather, as their own, and he was completely hooked, intellectually and emotionally, on the project.

Most of the other papatipu rūnanga of Ngāi Tahu became involved, especially Awarua. Ngāi Tahu's human capital in Māori artistic and cultural competency became expanded and enlarged. When Takahanga wharenui Maru Kaitātea was opened in 1992, it was a revolutionary advance in marae design, and greatly and widely admired.

Following the Takahanga project, Cliff secured a commission from the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin. He took the project to Kāti Kurī at Kaikōura, and led the project of building a large tomokanga (gateway portal) there. This was a further extension of his practice of community involvement - he never stopped being an educator. By the time it was finished, Wharetutu Stirling, Bill Solomon's sister, had died. In 1994, a team of us travelled to Berlin for the installation and whakatūwhera. Te Aue Davis came with us as our kaikaraka. It was a very stimulating but emotional experience. I will never forget the memory of watching our little ope wandering through the great art galleries and museums of Berlin, looking in wonder at the treasures hanging there. We named the tomokanga, gateway, in Wharetutu's memory, Te Kūwaha o Te Wharetutu. It stands there today - a dominating feature of one of the world's great art museums; a symbol of the Ngāi Tahu renaissance.

From 1984 to 1994 I was a trustee of the then National Museum of New Zealand, and had become quite involved in the debates and the planning for what was to become Te Papa Tongarewa. In 1993, Cliff was appointed as kaihautū of the new museum, and he and Heather moved to Wellington. There was much talk about the evolution of a "truly national bicultural institution" - that was the notion that had been sold to us at the Ngāi Tahu Māori Trust Board when the then Minister of Internal Affairs, Hon Peter Tapsell of Te Arawa, came seeking our support.

In his new job, Cliff got stuck with giving substance to the kaupapa in Māori terms. I worked with him on developing an articulation of biculturalism. The difficulty was that there was practically no agreement about what "bicultural" meant in that context. I recall turning up with Cliff to present our policy documents to Te Papa's board, chaired at that time by Sir Wallace (Bill) Rowling. We said, "Well, here's our view of the Māori dimension of biculturalism; who's going to write up the Pākehā view?". Of course, they hadn't thought of that! There was a terrible argument. Bill Rowling became enraged. He said that it was not his job to define or describe Pākehā culture. Cliff was sensibly silent. I, somewhat rashly, took up the cudgels. "Well, you've been the bloody Prime Minister of the country, and now you're leading the biggest single exercise in national identity we've ever attempted. If you can't say who and what you are, who the hell can?'' The poor man went off his head and the meeting was adjourned.

The "Pākehā Establishment" still can't articulate with any confidence or clarity what New Zealand Pākehā culture is - what it comprises, its variety and diversity, and all the commonalities within it.

To be fair, they're pretty good at articulating what Pākehātanga is not - at defining it in the negative. The problem is that this is not much of a basis for articulating either the Te Papa vision or any half-decent national identity. It remains a challenge. Anyhow, at Te Papa, they stopped discussing the question, and Cliff turned to designing and building the extraordinary marae for Te Papa, Te Hono ki Hawaiki, which was opened in 1997. I turned my efforts back to the Ngāi Tahu Claim.

In 1999 I was invited to become Ūpoko Rūnaka for Awarua and found myself once again associated with Cliff and Heather. Cliff was in the process of extracting himself from Te Papa and before long, he and Heather moved to Bluff and set out on the huge task of decorating and adorning both our existing wharekai and the striking new wharerau, Tahu Pōtiki. It was Takahanga all over again - only more so. By this time Cliff's professional practice had been hugely extended both in concepts and materials, and the Awarua project was to benefit hugely from that. The wharekai at Te Rau Aroha Marae is a riot of exuberant colour and innovative design that owes much to the great experiment that is Te Hono ki Hawaiki in Te Papa.

The most powerful effect of Cliff's practice amongst us, though, is not so much the art itself, for all its imposing and vibrant presence. It is much more the way he pushes our kōrero and our whakapapa back to the forefront of our being. There is simply so much discussion and debate about the traditions themselves, their meaning, and their significance. That kōrero is translated into the art and invests it with meaning - with life. Cliff has the knack, as well, of picking up on the day-to-day mahika kai values in our lives, and pumping new meaning and significance into them - fish and birds, tītī and pōhā, appear in tukutuku panels alongside the poutama symbols and other traditional forms of spiritual significance. The treasures that our Awarua haukāika know about and are known for are seen right up there with all the "heavy Māori stuff" - our world and who we are is strengthened and affirmed.

Long before the great marae projects, Cliff completed his first commissioned work, the maihi for the Ōtākou Māori School, in 1964. It was a project he undertook with Para Matchitt. Later, in 1988 during his major mural phase, there was Te Ao o Ngā Atua at the Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology (CPIT), featuring Rākaihautū. Then, in 1990, three great works: the tomokanga at the Otago Museum, Ngā Kete Wānanga; the six powerful pou standing in the foyer of the Christchurch Law Courts building; and the two great carved pou standing in the Albatross Centre at Pukekura, Ōtākou.

In 1991, the Aoraki mural was completed and installed in the Visitor Centre at Aoraki, Mt Cook. This mural tells the oldest of our creation stories and was based on the karakia recorded from Matiaha Tiramorehu - the founder of Te Kerēme o Ngāi Tahu, the Ngāi Tahu Claim. The early morning dedication karakia was performed by our Arowhenua Rūnanga and I hold a vivid, life-long memory of the whakeke led by Sir Paul Reeves being called in through the gently falling snow to the karaka of Aunty Kera and Irihapeti Murchie. Standing sheltered in the grey early morning light, we were moved by the magic of the event and filled with admiration of our bare-chested and bare-legged toa, who were poised in the snow for their wero to the Governor General and his ope.

Ngāi Tahu is extraordinarily privileged to have such a huge proportion of Cliff's prodigious output standing within our takiwā. We are even more privileged to have had his input into a number of major Ngāi Tahu development projects, each of which has fired and rekindled our cultural life as a people.

My role in our relationship with Cliff Whiting has been limited to that of facilitator, organiser and occasional producer of whakapapa and pūrākau. My job has been to recover land, find money, and argue with politicians local and national; as well as driving trucks and laying priming paint, drilling holes, and sanding. In our relationship beyond Ngāi Tahu, I negotiated the acquisition of his great signature mural, Te Wehenga, for the National Library, and dealt with the officials installing Tawhirimatea in the Wellington Meteorological Office. My task has been - from time to time - to service his vision.

Our relationship has not always been easy. At times it has manifested some extremely "dynamic adaptation", but we have been linked together in a common cause - the refreshing of our culture and the expansion of our identity as Māori in the fabric of our society.

He hoa tūturu o te takata nei, ekari he hoa tūturu o te whakaari o Kāi Tahu!

Cliff Whiting: He Toi Nuku, He Toi Rangi

This essay was sparked by a stunning book on Cliff Whiting and his work, published in November last year by He Kupenga Hao i te Reo, a Māori language education and research organisation based in Palmerston North.

Cliff Whiting: He Toi Nuku, He Toi Rangi, written by Ian Christensen, has both English and Māori texts and carries insights into the work of an artist who has made a remarkable contribution to Māori art over a career spanning more than 50 years.

Born in 1936, in a whare raupō beside the Kereu River, inland from Te Kaha on the East Coast of the North Island, Cliff has developed a recognisable style of contemporary Māori art, based firmly on his Te Whānau-a-Apanui tribal traditions, which can be seen in his marae building, and the public and individual art works he has completed. He has contributed his expertise and time to a large number of marae renovation projects, and was also the first Kaihautū of Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. He has received many awards in recognition of his contributions, including
New Zealand's highest honour, the Order of New Zealand (1998), and Te Tohu Tiketike a Te Waka Toi (2003).

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A vibrant presence - Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu

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Renowned artist Cliff Whiting had a huge influence on Ngāi Tahu, says Tā Tipene O'Regan, who tells the story of how Cliff came to work for the tribe. One of my earlier incarnations was as a lecturer in Māori Studies and New Zealand History at the then Wellington Teachers College, to which I was appointed in 1968.

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Cliff Whiting with 'Aoraki', October 1987

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Legacy of Cliff Whiting lives on at Te Papa

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The renowned Maori artist and carver Cliff Whiting has died aged 81.

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Waka Huia 2015 Cliff Whiting one of the most influential Māori artists of our time.

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ISBN: 9781927225271
Title: Cliff Whiting - He Toi Nuku He Toi Rangi - P/B
Author: CHRISTENSEN, IAN

"An artist has an obligation to the art of his or her people. It's the people's art. It doesn't belong to you. It must identify Maori to Maori if it is going to remain relevant about our tribal beliefs, values and mana in today's and tomorrow's world." Throughout a career spanning more than 50 years, this observation of Sandy Adsett has been an underlying ethic reflected in Cliff Whiting's work as a teacher, an artist, and in arts administration. Born in 1936, in a whare raupo beside the Kereru river, inland from Te Kaha on the East Coast of the North Island, Cliff showed early signs of having inherited the artistic creativity inherent in his whakapapa. This talent was nurtured, encouraged, and challenged by many along his journey, in particular by Pine Taiapa of Ngati Porou and Gordon Tovey within arts education. Cliff has developed a recognisable style of contemporary Maori art, based firmly on his Te Whanau-a-Apanui tribal traditions, which can be seen in his marae building, and the public and individual art works he has completed. He has contributed his expertise and time to a large number of marae renovation projects, and was also the first Kaihautu of Te Papa Tongarewa, Museum of New Zealand. He has received many awards in recognition of his contributions, including New Zealand's highest honour, the Order of New Zealand (1998), and Te Tohu Tiketike a Te Waka Toi (2003). This new book provides insights to the thinking, the work and the development of this remarkable artist who has made an outstanding contribution to the tradition of Maori art making and meeting house decoration, forging innovative techniques and practises, exploring new materials and forms, while at the same time maintaining essential elements of tradition, ensuring the relevancy of 'beliefs, values and mana in todays and tomorrows world'. The book has both Maori and English texts, and is supported with a large number of images of the many projects, people and art works Cliff has been involved in over the many years of his career.

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Cliff Whiting - He Toi Nuku He Toi Rangi - P/B

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ISBN: 9781927225271Title: Cliff Whiting - He Toi Nuku He Toi Rangi - P/BAuthor: CHRISTENSEN, IAN "An artist has an obligation to the art of his or her people. It's the people's art. It doesn't belong to you. It must identify Maori to Maori if it is going to remain relevant about our tribal beliefs, values and mana in today's and tomorrow's world."

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Interview with Cliff Whiting, based on discussions with Mary Barr, Robert Leonard, John McCormack, Bernice Murphy, and Cheryll Sotheran..
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Tell us where Maori art comes from.
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Cliff Whiting: The Maori came here from the Pacific carrying with them a culture that was portable and adjustable, containing all the fundamentals for transplanting and developing their society-religious and philosophical concepts, a sense of family identity, an experience of their Pacific heritage. This package was a map of their whole cultural being, and it's still with us today. It's been developed further and it's still being used. That they bought a cosmology with them is obvious because you can still find elements of it elsewhere in the Pacific, where you also have stories about Tangaroa, Maui, and you still have reference to Tane. However, the stories' and characters' importance seems to change from group to group-from the Tahitians to the Hawaiians-within Polynesia itself.

It's terrible that people say Maori didn't have a written language-it's not that at all. They did. They did it with their arts. And their arts were mnemonic. For instance, when you look at a war canoe, you are looking at a statement of cosmology. Its prow is a statement of creation; its stern piece is a statement about the condition of man; and the centre, where people sit, is a statement about the present. It's complicated. That's why it had to be all mapped out.
How did they bring this knowledge with them if they didn't have a written language?
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Those early Maori had an interesting way of describing evolution. It started with absolutely nothing, and then you arrive at the great darkness. It's in there that everything evolves, and, out of there, come the parentless people. First, there were Io Matua te Kore, the creative force, and others. Among them were Rangi, the sky father, and Papa, the earth mother, who are the most significant for our story. Their family was born, about seventy of them, all male. They lived in an uncomfortable, restricted environment, firmly enclosed between their parents, which made them want to break out. They needed to do something, they needed to be expanding, developing. They had to do something drastic about the ones dearest to them. So, they started discussing the whole issue of separation-how to deal with their parents. Some wanted to kill the parents, some didn't want to do anything, and others wanted to separate them. It was difficult, it was hard, they did not all agree, but, in the end, they reached a consensus-to separate their parents. The way they found that consensus was to develop the concept of a space on which a speaker could stand and be heard. As well as the speaker having that right to stand and speak, the others also had a right of reply. Those are the simple rules, the protocols of the marae that have come through from those times to now. Whether it was in informal or challenging circumstances, they went through that ritual, as we still do today. The concept of marae developed into a physical thing. They gave it boundaries and they gave it protocol. In a sense, you might say there was a kind of treaty way back then, as part of their very being.
Te Po, Te Whaiao, Te Ao Marama. From out of the darkness, the world of being, to the world of light.
From out of the darkness you come and you have to do something-Te Whaiao-literally chase the world of being. You suddenly realise you are something and have to act and enter the world of light. This is the pattern for creative processes. There has to be that first step, then the second one, and the third one. It is a continuous pattern that goes through everything.
So, what happened to the family? With Rangi and Papa is the source of what we call whakapapa, genealogy. Their sons, the brothers-Tane Mahuta, Tu Matauanga, Tawhiri matea, Tangaroa, Rongo matane, Haumia Tiketike, Ruaumoko, Whironui-become the creators of the natural world of storms, winds, bush, birds, and so on. The rest become minor folk. But, the anxiety of the parents unsettled the family, so it was decided to turn the mother, Papatuanuku, face down so she couldn't see her mate.

In the new environment the families of the brothers would expand and develop. The next important phase was the acquiring and developing of experience, the gathering of the baskets of knowledge. Io Matua to Kore, the supreme force, lived in the highest of the skies. He was curious about what had taken place with the separation of the primal parents, so he sent down messengers to investigate the family and report back to him. That is really how it happened. After the messenger reported, he returned to the family and requested that one of their number be selected to make the journey up to Te Tihi o Manono, there to obtain knowledge.

Tane was elected by his brothers to go. An older brother, Whironui, was jealous-Tane was very much the younger. Anyway, Tane set off. Then the older brother attacked him with all of his forces. Tane reigned supreme when he got to the top. He collected Nga Kete o Te Wananga me nga Whatu Kura. These were the baskets of knowledge and some special stones. The battles continued on the way down until they both arrived back onto Papatuanuku, and it's there the final battle took place. Before being defeated completely, Whiro descended to Rarohenga, the underworld, taking Nga Kura (the stones) with him, while Tane kept the baskets of knowledge to share with all men. The baskets of knowledge contained the good and the bad. People could take what they wanted from them. All of that knowledge was available. They contained karakia (ceremony), they contained the arts of war, they contained all sort of things. Meanwhile, from the underworld, Whironui, in his jealous rage, inflicted awful diseases and mishaps on man.

The story of Tane's journey to obtain the baskets of knowledge comes out as a major pattern, used on whariki (mats) and in tukutuku weaving, known as Poutama. The pattern is a stepped pattern generally placed right in the middle of the meeting house, on one side ascending, on the other descending. The old folk say the verticals describe the journey up and down and the horizontals the battles. Today this pattern has other interesting interpretations. Christians interpret it as the 'Stairway to Heaven', but they don't talk about the downward track as the pathway to hell. It's a good pattern for education.
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You have been talking about all these brothers. When do women arrive on the scene?
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Later Tane and Tu Matauanga started searching for a way to reproduce themselves. This is where the female element starts to come in. They have to refer back to Io Matua who suggests they can find it in the earth itself, in Papatuanuku. So they start experimenting with clay and make a form. To make this thing live they have to go back to Io Matua and he gives them Te Ha, the essence of man. Tane returns, breathes into the form and she becomes Hine-ahu-one. Tane mates with her and they have a daughter, Hine Mama. As she matures, Tane mates with her too. Then she is curious to find out who her father is. When she finds out it is Tane, it really upsets her. This sets up a whole lot of new developments. She becomes so incensed by that knowledge she changes her name, and becomes Hine Nui Te Po, and goes to join her uncle, Whironui, in the underworld. Tane pursues her, trying to stop her. She tells him to return to carry on with the development of man, but she will be down there to receive the souls of men and care for them in that way.

We now have to jump forward to Maui. There are many stories about Maui. He's a superhero-he captures the sun, fishes up a great fish from the ocean. He's the character in many stories who demonstrates all the human qualities. He realises for man to become immortal he must somehow defeat Hine Nui Te Po, his great-grandmother. So, he takes off on this journey to overcome her, taking with him certain characters to witness this, including a fantail. He turns into a lizard and crawls up into her uterus while she's asleep. His purpose was to get at her vital parts and stop them from working. But, as he's disappearing into her, the fantail laughs, because it thinks it's such a funny sight. Of course, she wakes up, closes her legs, and he's a gonner, finished. Maui's action was an attempt to immortalise man. His failure meant that, from then on, the only way you can become a god is by dying. Then the ancestors, rather than the gods, become important. Out of that come concepts of ancestry, the whakapapa, which is the focus for traditional Maori art..
How did Maori find out about these sorts of things?
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In the traditional society, knowledge was not openly available. Very little of it was known to the common person and this maintained a hierarchy, a social order. Some people assume that you could go to any Maori and get all the information from them, like going to a library. But it wasn't like that at all. The social structure was such that you progressed from one level to the next. So, while parts of the knowledge could be given out, other parts were held back. You had a social structure based on knowledge, with the tohunga (religious expert, priest) and rangatira (chief) at the top, down to the common people.
What was the impact of European contact on this structure?

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The alienation of Maori land and resources by colonial force, the musket wars, and the new religion broke down traditional values and a traditional relationship with the natural environment. The missionaries cast the tohunga as a heathen, undermining his mana. He lost influence. The old hierarchy and ways were replaced with a philosophy of commonality and individualism. The old cosmology of many gods was replaced by the one Christian god. The gods had been integral to the whole environment. Like Tane, whose gifts to the arts include trees for carving the ancestors, leaves for weaving mats and baskets, feathers for cloaks. This integrated world was undermined.

In the face of these changes new Maori leaders like Te Kooti emerged. They fought individualisation-the fragmentation of land title and the erosion of community identity that came with it. Many of these new leaders actually drew on Christianity, but always with the aim of preserving communal interests, protecting their land, their turangawaewae, against the colonists. They mixed a little of the old with a lot of the new. But they kept some big concepts like marae intact. They directed the creation of larger wharenui, new whare kai (dining halls), and other structures. As the traditions were broken down, new ways of doing marae art emerged. In the old days, the art had been symbolic and stylised. The new developments were more interpretive, mixing traditional forms with a naturalism foreign to the old art. There were new materials and new tools too. The kokowai (ochre) traditionally applied to carvings gave way to paint. The ochre was the blood of Papatuanuku, spilt in the original separation. As such, it afforded protection from malignant spirits, curses, spiritual diseases. Whereas paint provided color, contrast, and line-a new fluidity to interpretation. And that's where you start to get the contemporary thing.
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In what ways do you think Maori artists working today relate to the traditions of the culture?
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Some do and some can't. Maori art is tribal. In all cases, the teaching of tribal traditions is fragmented, if it does happen at all. This process isn't helped by the fact that most Maori live away from their tribal areas. Knowing tribal and personal genealogy, history, and the resources and the landscape of your tribal area are still the main ingredients to create traditional tribal Maori art. Of course, the old conditions necessary for the creation of traditional Maori art cannot now be duplicated. Today, we find ourselves torn between the old and the new. For instance, with carving, you have to deal with totara, kauri, or timber of some kind, because surrounding it are the ritual and experience of people. That's couched in the words, in the karakia and the chants, that tell you how to deal with that thing, that it too has a life. Your working is all in the korero (stories) that surround it. Those sorts of supports are not easily found today. The resources have gone and had probably already gone by the 1930s and 1940s. Now, we can only look at Tane in a National Park. We have to really beg to go and talk with him, because you might trample something or break some other rules and regulations. We no longer have the direct relationship of being able to name the trees, watch their growth, determine their future. That stopped way back when the tohunga was abolished, demolished, or disappeared with the musket. All of his supports disappeared with him. It sounds like doom and gloom, but we are moving down track in other ways.
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You've talked about the importance of people with knowledge and the passing on of that knowledge. How has this happened more recently?
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We can now look at a very important period in New Zealand's educational history, from the 1940s to the 1960s, when there was quite a different emphasis placed within the system on developing the arts. This came about because Maori recognised the need to get into the political scene. There was the emergence of enlightened young Maori people who had trained in universities-they were doctors, lawyers, and those sorts of people. Maui Pomare, Peter Buck, Apirana Ngata. There weren't enough of them, but at least they were there. Those figures were vitally important in the lead up to when the education system began wanting to engage itself with the indigenous culture. I think that's important and it had very important after-effects.
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How would you assess Apirana Ngata's influence?
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In Ngata's time, artists were chosen people. They were chosen by a system, a hierarchy-a rangatiratanga. Because of Ngata's position in Parliament, he was recognised as a new kind of rangatira. His selecting people for particular jobs qualified them in those jobs: carving, painting, building, weaving. That was the system throughout the country, and he controlled it, in consultation with prominent tribal leaders, of course. Ngata went about building meeting houses throughout the country, re-establishing family links through the ancestral house, reknitting together communities to take a collective position on their land interests. A very potent force was the development of the community meeting houses because establishing the tupuna (ancestors) in there was a way of trying to come to terms with the individual ownership of land. Certainly, the learning of the arts was part of that, and re-establishing quality in a different kind of way. Ngata oversaw that. If you didn't have your weaving right he would cut the whole panel and you would have to redo it. There were certain standards set-work had to be seen by the dominant culture as being of excellent quality, etcetera-but there was also the question of tribal identity. So coming out of that was the establishment-the re-establishment-of marae, and the refocusing of a whole host of issues: health issues, land issues, political issues.

Now, there really are no places that focus specifically on the teaching of tribal art, other than the Institute in Rotorua, and possibly a place in Te Awamutu. There's always been a generalised approach and it's been called Maori art. This is where we've had difficulty in earlier years, because the Institute in Rotorua seemed to think they were fulfilling all the art and cultural requirements for Maoridom in the traditional sense. But, of course, people started to recognise-we certainly did as younger people-that it was only doing a certain kind of thing, very much based on a maintenance system, and that any depth of knowledge of the art itself or of tribal orientation seemed not to be there.

That school in Rotorua developed during the Ngata era. For a time, they went in search of a particular technique, and the master carver they brought in seemed to have a knowledge of older ways of teaching the art of carving, and a knowledge of the older traditions. He came to the school and said to the trainees that they shouldn't learn that, that it would be too difficult for them to follow it through, and that they would probably end up in more trouble than was good for them. Whether that was a good way out of having to front up later to the deeper issues of traditional work, I don't know. But that school certainly served the purpose up to a point, which was mainly tourism. It did one or two major things, but it refined techniques and design within traditional areas rather than adding to the dynamic process of the art. There's a conservatism that identifies Maori art. People look at a fairly modern piece and say, 'That's not Maori art.' Then you say, 'What is it then?' And they say, 'It should be like this.' And, of course, they come up with the near-souvenir form and shape.
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What about the state education system?
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From the late 1940s into the 1960s, there was a re-focus by state education back into the Maori community. There was, firstly, an advisory service, and into that they then brought young Maori people like myself and others before me. And, working in conjunction with Pakeha, we developed-we weren't taught-we developed a Maori course. That really set the challenge. It was a challenge that was put on our plate, by Gordon Tovey mainly, to run in-service training courses for teachers, so that children, Maori children in particular, would have the opportunity to engage in their own culture and their own arts and crafts. Tovey was the key figure. He got a lot of ideas from A.S. Neill at Summerhill, the alternative school in England, and Herbert Read. Tovey brought young Maori potential into the Art Education Advisory Service and into in-service training. And this is where you get people like Ralph Hotere, Para Matchitt, Clive Arlidge, Muru Walters, and myself. There were also women like Mere Kururangi and Mihiata Fairlie, who later had influence.

It's interesting hearing Beeby, then Director of Education, talking about visiting Maori communities and trying to find out what they would like for their children. They all wanted nothing but the best, the best that was being taught to Pakeha children. Try as he might to get them to think that there might be some way of retaining those things they would feel were precious to them-no way! They wanted the best that Pakeha had.

In-service training was a kind of authorisation process that came through the first induction of the mainly Maori advisers into Maori art and craft. The first two-week course was at Ruatoria, where Ngata had come from, and was organised by Tovey. At that particular course, the authorisation of Maori art and craft was given full support by Ngati Porou, Ngata's people. Tovey had gathered in the support of tribes throughout the country, so he was involved in a kind of nationalisation. Having a figure such as the prominent carver Pine Taiapa was another very important move in terms of gaining that authorisation. These people were very supportive and gave that authorisation to the use of Maori arts and crafts in schools for all children, and, from there, it expanded out. So, you can start to see, from here, that the sharing of cultures was certainly put in place and that the recognition of the cultural source was also of concern. The initial training programme was carried out in a Maori district and authorisation gained from the people. You're starting to look at biculturalism-it's a planned process.

While Tovey was interested in Maori, he was more interested in the mixture. He had a very strong intuition that there are two traditions to draw on, instead of pulling in behind one and being overwhelmed by it. Tovey's programme, then, started looking at biculturalism. An 'Arts of the Pakeha' course was to follow the Maori one, and then a course for teachers called 'The Integrated Arts'. That was one where there was an attempt to weld the two cultures together in the areas of dance, poetry, and visual arts. All of this was being guided by Tovey, who was using his intuition, reading overseas people who were also dealing with indigenous cultures, like Levi-Strauss, and, at the same time, observing what was happening here. Excursions or discoveries like that leave a lot of people behind. And dealing with teachers, who were and are a very, very conservative group of people in the main, was difficult. However, it was a brave attempt and I still believe that it did much to enhance and develop the concept of shared cultures.

So, out of this was where we started ourselves to realise the mix and that we could invent, we could create if we wanted to, and I think that was when we developed as a group of people. Away we went. That's when we started inventing what we thought were new traditions, only to find later on that they weren't.
What sort of support did your group get?
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When I talk of the educational process I'm talking about a form of patronage. Government and local bodies have also offered great patronage for the arts in the form of commissions. What it's doing to the arts, I think, is another discussion, and what it's doing to the marae focus is another matter, but the links with the traditional are still there, the earlier business of authorisation by the tribe itself. The outcome of that would be some major structure such as a canoe, a storehouse, certain marking posts, or things like that, and, later, the meeting house. Some of these issues are not clear in the minds of the artists now, in that they don't recognise that really it's themselves doing it for themselves, and dealing publicly with what used to be a very private affair-tribal status, pride in the establishment of houses.
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What about people outside this more traditional patronage system-say, a young Maori artist who has been to art school? What happens to them as Maori?
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They end up in a bit of a dilemma. The art schools don't have any Maori training, so those artists, if they don't return to their tribal base, they must surely continue on with the forms their training has led them to, which is western, European-oriented, individualist. These are the things we are trying to address now, that training area.
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How?
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We need a decentralised system, facilitating a sharing of expertise and traditional skills in communities, allowing that sort of development alongside the individual thing. Using facilitators to activate the art in communities, in tribal areas and cross-tribal areas. This allows for tribal privacy in the development of traditions. That's what we're trying to do with Te Waka Toi, our Arts Council. The government access schemes are trying to train people so they can get jobs. We want to train them to have, to find, responsibility within our culture, so we can be assured of the transmission of the culture.
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[IMAGE: Cliff Whiting Te Wehenga o Rangi raua ko Papa 1969-76]

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Cliff Whiting: Te Po, Te Whaiao, Te Ao Marama (From out of the Darkness, the World of Being, to the World of Light)

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Interview with Cliff Whiting, based on discussions with Mary Barr, Robert Leonard, John McCormack, Bernice Murphy, and Cheryll Sotheran.. . Tell us where Maori art comes from. . Cliff Whiting: The Maori came here from the Pacific carrying with them a culture that was portable and adjustable, containing all the fundamentals for transplanting and developing their society-religious and philosophical concepts, a sense of family identity, an experience of their Pacific heritage.

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Born in 1936, in a whare raupō beside the Kereu river, inland from Te Kaha on the East Coast, Cliff Whiting showed early signs of having inherited the artistic creativity inherent in his whakapapa. This talent was nurtured, encouraged, and challenged by many, in particular by Pine Taiapa of Ngāti Porou and Gordon Tovey.

Whiting developed a distinctive style of contemporary Māori art, based firmly on his Te Whānau-a-Apanui tribal traditions, which can be seen in his marae building and his public and individual artworks. His style across a wide range of art forms, including wood carving, sculpture and construction, bone and stone carving, oil and watercolour, ink drawing, printmaking, fibre-weaving and photography, along with an innovative approach to using new materials, has in turn been inspiring to many younger New Zealand artists.

He contributed his expertise and time to a large number of marae building and renovation projects, he served on numerous national arts committees. He was the first Kaihautū of Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand where he worked to establish a fully bicultural kaupapa as a foundation for the institution, as well as carving Te Papa's Marae, Rongomaraeroa. His many large scale works are displayed in numerous locations around New Zealand including the National Library, the Christchurch High Court, the Beehive, Television New Zealand, and the visitors centre at Aoraki Mt Cook. In 1998, Whiting was appointed to The Order of New Zealand.

Cliff Whiting died 16 July 2017

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Born in 1936, in a whare raupō beside the Kereu river, inland from Te Kaha on the East Coast, Cliff Whiting showed early signs of having inherited the artistic creativity inherent in his whakapapa. This talent was nurtured, encouraged, and challenged by many, in particular by Pine Taiapa of Ngāti Porou and Gordon Tovey.