Patricia
Grace’s Potiki explores the intimate connection
between the Maori people and the land which gives life to their community. Several elements emerge from the Maoris’
relationship with the sacred land: spirituality, the well-spring of life from death,
the power of stories, and the strength and source of identity. There are many
beautiful themes within this text which seem to speak to something within our
souls and provide the foundations of one’s homeland.
We are offered numerous views of the Maori
homeland through the individual stories of Grace’s characters. We learn that
the stories and the land are intertwined and could not exist without each other.
While past homelands texts have included this connection between home, location
and people, Potiki places more
emphasis and more sanctity on the physical land. To lose their land would mean extinction and
thus eradication of Maori culture, spirituality and ideals. The Maoris’ interaction with “Dollarman”
elicits a theme that spans from the Industrial Revolution to present day. Fortunately,
the Maori people understand what so many fail to see—that money does not bring
true happiness. Despite the Maori's
material poverty, they are full in spirit and hope. In Chandra’s Love and Longing in Bombay, the technological portions of the stories
seemed like a distraction for the characters and an inconsequential gloss over
the deeper meanings to be found. In
denying the development of their land and modernization, the Maori have chosen
what I consider the more courageous path—the return to working with the organic
source of all life. The Maori people live these deeper meanings every day. Within the
context of the pressures and fears of soon-to-be college graduates, I found
this theme quite inspiring when it comes to having the courage to find and
follow one’s path and to understand the source of one’s identity.They distribute power, cherish the unique
story of each society member and are willing to fight for their identity. Expressing a feeling of content that draws a
suppressed longing in readers, Roimata claims “Our chosen hardship was
something that was good and uplifting to all of us….We were whole and life was
good” (Grace, 105). This notion is
wrapped within the makeup of one’s homeland.
This
week during Business Ethics our class examined the writings of German philosopher
Max Scheler. In his work Christian Love and the Twentieth Century,
Scheler discusses mans’ “estate,” claiming that there is an inherent longing
for man to be part of a community, to be surrounded by his family, to develop a
craft and to grow with the spirit of the estate which is founded on the love of
creation and its quality, not profits (Scheler, 400). The Maori of Potiki live this same ideology coupled
with the spirituality of culture and the reverence of tradition and story. As I
connect these texts, I begin to understand the integral role these themes play
in the development of one’s homeland.
Not
only does “Dollarman” represent the false happiness of modernization and money,
he symbolizes the refusal to understand another’s homeland. This is seen when Toko looks into the eyes of
the “Dollarman” and responds, “I saw what he saw. What he saw was brokenness, a
broken race. He saw in my Granny, my Mary and me a whole people, decrepit,
deranged, deformed” (Grace, 102). It is a
version of this perspective that led to the destruction of Ibo culture in
Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. Many are not willing to see what it is
that makes another’s homeland unique and truly home. One thing I have learned from Homelands is the importance of
totally removing yourself from your own homeland and placing yourself in
someone else’s. Something as near and
dear to us as home can only be understood when all beliefs, relationships and geographies
are considered and embraced.
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