Maoritanga in Whale Rider and Once Were Warriors: a problematic rebirth through female leaders

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Whale Rider and Once Were Warriors portray families who struggle to reconcile their Maori identity with life in twentieth-century Aotearoa/New Zealand. The two movies mirror one another in so far as the former features a Maori chief struggling to prevent the loss of Maori culture within his rural tribal group while the latter follows a nuclear family struggling to reconcile its urban identity with its rural Maori roots. Both movies pit an image of the city as an urban ghetto associated with ‘social deprivation and lack of traditional culture’ against that of the country as a site of ‘Maori cultural identity and salvation’ (Spooner 2001: 95). The task of reconciling both falls to women who must undergo symbolical and/or actual death before being reborn as leaders. Though both movies conclude on a hopeful note, the path to reconciliation they suggest points ‘to a contradiction which continues unresolved in practical reality’ (Webster 1998: 39) and fails to address issues inherent in the concept of Maoritanga.