Up the Whanganui River Road, alongside New Zealand’s largest navigable waterway, my son Walker and I make our way towards the fecund interior. The first European up this passage may have been a trader named Rowe who made a business of brokering preserved M?ori heads. On his upriver quest he met his match, and was whacked by a M?ori club. His own shriveled, smoke-dried head was then sold to another white trader.
It is here we meet Niko Tangaroa, a modern M?ori who runs a “cultural exchange” company called Waka Tours. He offers to take us on a jet boat ride up the river up to an old marae, a sacred place for inter-tribal religious and social ceremonies, which literally means “the place cleared, free of weeds.”
But when Niko looks at the river he shakes his head. The Whanganui is in spate, running large and brown, as though all the rivers of New Zealand are tearing down this canyon. Niko wonders out loud if the trip is safe … but Walker has never been on a jet boat, and his enthusiasm is palpable. He is an active rafter and great swimmer, so Niko, after reconsidering his reconsideration, says we’ll give it a go.
River of tears
As we trundle up the canyon to the put-in Niko tells me that his late father, also named Niko Tangaroa, started what was the first M?ori ecotourism venture in 1992 as a political vehicle. The water of the Whanganui River has always been sacred to the local M?ori, but in the 70s the government backed the Tongariro Power Scheme that diverted the upper river to Lake Taupo, the fresh water lake the size of Singapore that smacks the center of the country. The scheme not only changed the nature and quality of the river, it reduced the volume during certain times of year to such a level that fish stocks were depleted. Niko says it altered a life-force, took away the spirit of the M?ori who lived along the river, and impacted local M?ori ability to truly uphold their traditions. Now it is a river of tears.
The affected M?ori fought to stop the scheme, but failed, and so Niko’s father thought that if he started a company that would share the river — its under history, its adventures, its spirit, with visitors — then he might be able to build a constituency with enough influence to correct the course. In his father’s lifetime it didn’t work, and in ways things got worse. The government sold concessions to outsiders to harvest river eels, the major food source for local M?ori, and the original serpents in this Eden. Herbicides leached into tributaries, and into the river itself. Hills were mowed down like grass to make way for “hoofed locusts” (John Muir’s description of sheep) and cattle.
Niko spent most of this period as a mechanical engineer in Perth, Australia, oblivious to what was happening along his heritage river. But with his father’s passing he came home, and in 2002 he took over the company. It was then that he says he rediscovered his identity and values. He continues with his father’s concept today, and with gradual grace Waka Tours is immersing visitors in the Whanganui River, connecting minds to spirits, and eliciting support.
Man or nature (or both)
At the core of the border war is a contest of opposing creeds: the one that supposes Man is superior to all in Nature, and as such the ecosystem must bend to human will. God is separate from Nature, and Nature is condemned of God. The sixth day creation passage in Genesis states, “And God said, Let us make Man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” In the Abrahamic concept land is a commodity that belongs to Man.
The other viewpoint, a sort of Paleolithic moral order, holds that people are a component to the community of everything on earth, that the whole of existence is related, and as such each element deserves respect and safeguarding. We are on equal footing with humans, mountains, trees, rivers and w?t?s, the giant flightless insects endemic to New Zealand. We are family.
As we pile out of the truck at the put-in Niko hands us raincoats and pants, and I look to the threatening sky, dark as a plumb. “They’re not for rain,” he grins. We zip up and pile in the boat.
Fighting for Pihanga
Before pushing off Niko cuts a curling fern frond from the bank — the same koru shape that adorns the tails of the Air New Zealand fleet, symbolizing new life, growth and renewal — and places it in the bow. He next bows and recites a prayer for our safe passage up the raging waters. Then, in a soft pool of light, we push into a river angry-red with the blood of sediment and silt flushed by the rains of the past few days. The river flows quite fast at the edges, while in the deeper middle it bubbles up like thick porridge. The normal seethe and suck of the river is an audible roar, until the jet boat engine starts. Then we are off plowing upstream against the ferocity of a liquid army charge, towards the menace of the Warrior Mountains.
In M?ori mythology the headwater mountains of Taranaki and Tongariro fought over the beautiful bush-cloaked female mountain Pihanga. They argued and threw huge rocks at each other. They vented poisonous gases as they hissed and roared. They turned day to night by filling the sky with ash and smoke. Eventually Tongariro emerged victorious and took his place next to Pihanga. Taranaki was heartbroken, and plunged towards the setting sun, cutting a path to the coast, filling it with a river of tears, the Whanganui river, which today is overflowing with sob.
We crash upwards, tacking the vectors and velocity, battling the surging, mixing chocolate-brown waves. Long, thin parallel masses of clouds break over us, a sign Niko says that the spirits are planting their k?mara, sweet potatoes. Then suddenly silver beads pock the river, and draw a curtain around us. Spray stings our faces like BBs, and the banks seem to be melting with the flood. Walker is lost in the dizziness of speed and hyper-sensation. It is easy to feel why jet boating is so intoxicating to everyone who is so subjected.
Just as the rain begins to pound we pull into the left bank to an ancient fortified pa, Tieke K?inga, from where some of Niko’s relatives hailed. Niko takes the fern that has traveled with us and places it on the ground, saying that the gesture is a symbol of how M?ori of the Whanganui are woven by the filaments of water, of how we are all interdependent. The Department of Conservation turned the knoll above our mooring into a tramping hut, but Niko’s family has occupied the land since 1993, and continue to be involved in a legal land claim. They have reconstructed a beautiful marae, with an elaborate totem pole, and bring tourists here to experience a powhiri or welcome ceremony, followed by a communal meal.
Calls for safe passage
Niko says there are strict protocols to be observed when visiting the marae, and he has Walker and me sit on a bench in the rain. It is quiet, and in the flat light the raindrops look like silver threads, like static on an old film. The air seems thick enough to drink. I open my mouth and discover it is.
Then two women in feathered robes assemble in front of us and make which is called the karanga, the call to the visitors. Their voices don’t sound feminine or siren-like, but rather like a composite of all Maori who have ever passed through this marae, their laughter and cries. The purpose of the call, Niko interprets, is to weave a metaphorical rope around the guests for safe passage. Then there is an Inoi (prayer) to ensure the safety of the villagers and the proceedings. Next, from a fierce-looking male, there is a Wero, a challenge, to determine our intentions. At last there is the haka powhiri, the welcome dance, meant to pull the spiritual canoe and the visitors into the marae, but unlike at rugby matches and tourist shows, here it is performed without urgency, as though underwater, with an underwritten grace that is more ethereal than thespian.
After the ritual and a feast of a hot lunch we walk to the totem pole, which is carved with figurines of past stewards of the river. The rain stops for a moment and white butterflies hover like tiny ghosts. I can smell, I think, the lineal past wafting from the moist earth. A butterfly alights on my sleeve, folds and unfolds his wings a few beats, then floats away like a whisper and melts into the light.
As we board the boat, I look to the water’s edge where a colony of ferns glisten and dance as the current strokes the stems with fluid fingers. I look upriver to the warrior mountains and remember traveling through the next river valley in the mid-90s, but that trip is a mackled page in my existence now. I took a paddle down the Rangitaiki River, bordering the Uruwera Mountain Range, and flashed through some 50 rapids in a few hours. I hiked through Tongariro National Park, distinguishing in many ways, but notable in that it allowed New Zealand to claim itself the second country in the world to establish a national park, following in the footsteps of the US with its Yellowstone designation; and it was first in the world to achieve UNESCO World Heritage status for both its natural and M?ori spiritual and cultural values.
A game of chance
After my epigrammatic adventures I drove to the lakeside resort of Taupo where I gave a presentation on adventure media in the United States to a hall of Kiwi outfitters. A tall lanky man with a pioneer face — north-weathered, sinewy and hollow, with a habit of flicking his eyes to the horizon, as though searching for a distant mountain — approached me after the slide show and introduced himself as Himalayan guide Rob Hall. I knew of the legendary mountaineer, the guide with a stellar record of getting clients to the top of Everest, the cautionary climber with the strict summit-day turn-around rule, the rival to American Scott Fischer, who ran Mountain Madness, an outfitter into which my own adventure company, Mountain Travel Sobek, sometimes booked Seven Summit clients.
There was a vivid sense that Rob collaborated with forces behind the pageant of the ordinary world. Rob talked a bit about his upcoming Everest climb, and an opportunity to entice Outside Magazine writer Jon Krakauer, who was on assignment, to switch from Scott Fischer’s expedition to his own. I encouraged Rob to recruit Krakauer with a better offer, advising that a feature in Outside could do wonders for his business.
Ultimately Krakauer did switch expeditions and joined Hall and his team on the fateful climb on which Rob himself lost his life, leaving his pregnant wife and the whole of the New Zealand climbing community to mourn. I have no idea if I had any influence on that decision, or if things might have turned out differently had Krakauer remained with his original choice, Scott Fischer. There is no doubt in my mind, though, that Krakauer’s presence as a media observer affected decisions and outcomes. Since Galileo, scientists have adopted the view that they were objective observers of the natural world. That was implicit in every aspect of their behavior, even the way they wrote scientific papers, saying things like, “It was observed …” For 300 years that impersonal quality was the hallmark of science, and became the accepted rule of media. Scientists, writers and reporters claimed to be objective, with the observer having little or no influence on the results.
But in the 20th century a different perspective evolved. Physicists now believe one cannot even measure a single subatomic particle without affecting it totally. If one inserts an instrument in to measure a particle’s position, its velocity will change. If the velocity is measured, its position will change. This basic truth became the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: that whatever you study (or report) you also change. In the case of the Everest Expedition of 1996 the act of observation may have altered the outcome severely, and I wondered for years if I should feel any fault for a few words of advice.
Now, though, we disembark the boat, hoping our presence in some way will make a difference, perhaps through my words, and Walker’s photography. Niko turns and shakes our hands with enthusiasm, offering that Walker and I are now part of his extended family … that we are now stewards of this river.
Richard’s PBS special on New Zealand, Quest for Kaitiakitanga (winter of the Cine Golden Eagle Award), is airing now (check local listings) and the award-winning companion book is available from Menasha Ridge Press.
All photos courtesy of Didril Johnck / Johnck Media, LLC.