Te Wahine Atamai

Emalani Case

As Emalani alludes to Chimamanda’s Ted Talk ‘The Danger of a Single Story,’ and how we can not just apply a single story to one people group, I feel compelled to look at the side of the coin I haven’t yet explored. That is, my interest in Mangaia has stemmed from a broad stroke assumption that all Mangaia’s in our contemporary society share the perspective of my Kuia; that our people were savages, and we were “saved” by the Papa’a.

You can certainly argue that we have been painted as “savages,” and internalised this perspective as modern-day Mangaians; however, the other side of that coin, which I find myself ascribing to, is that all Mangaians in this day and age believe that we were savages. That there are no Mangaia’s left who either know and/or care about our pre-colonial history, beliefs, practices and ultimately worldview. Emalani says “we owe it to our ancestors to complicate the story, to recognise the messiness of our histories, and to not romanticise the past.” I would love to know what this looks like in our own context; what are the complicated intricacies in the story of my ancestors, what was messy, when did we behave like savages, what does savage even mean, how did we engage with the world/the environment.

There is undoubtedly so much depth to who we are as a people, yet as it seems there are only two options that paint our story: we were savages, or we are contaminated by Christianity – I’ve yet to see anything outside of these two perspectives. I feel challenged by this piece to not only engage with both sides of our story, but also be open to the option of there being more depth and more breadth waiting for me to engage intricately with not only who I am, but who (and where) I have come from.