Honouring Dame Whina Cooper 50 years since the Māori land march

The Spinoff

a day ago

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Dame Whina Cooper's hikoi for Māori land rights. Stacey Morrison and David Hill talk about the experience of creating a book to commemorate it.
David Hill – author of Mother of the Nation: Whina Cooper and the long walk for justice, illustrated by Story Hemi-Morehouse
It's 1975. My wife Beth, four-year-old Pete and I were in the UK, on our Great Overseas Trip. We'd left New Zealand 12 months before: three people, three suitcases, three sleeping bags. Two years later, we came home, with Pete, eight-month-old
daughter Helen, the suitcases and sleeping bags, about five tea-chests, and a car.
News from 1975 New Zealand had reached us in little bursts. Lynne Cox became the first woman to swim Cox Strait. The Polynesian Panthers were politically active in Auckland. A National government stormed into power, headed by Rob Muldoon. And a remarkable woman called Whina Cooper led a hīkoi to Parliament, demanding protection and restitution of Māori land.
Half a century later, Penguin NZ contacted me. They were planning a picture book on Whina – Dame Whina as she subsequently became. Would I like to write the text?
My instant reaction was to say no. How could an elderly, sedentary, provincial Pākehā male possibly pretend to write with any competence about such a vigorous, nationally-known wahine Māori?
But the book was to be published for the 50th anniversary of that great hīkoi. What an occasion to be involved in. I'd written the words for several previous picture books about eminent New Zealanders: Ed Hillary, Jean Batten, Peter Blake, Joan Wiffen the dinosaur finder. I set about this new one in the same way. I read everything I could find on Whina, especially Michael King's grand biography. I looked at old TV footage. Boring health issues meant I wasn't able to travel, but I ransacked everything New Plymouth's Puke Ariki Research Centre and its staff could provide.
The more I read and watched, the more my awe for the doughty Dame grew. She was a demon gardener. She confronted Muldoon in his holiday home to get jobs for her iwi. She hated sleeping; it meant time off from all she wanted to do. She became an auctioneer and a crack clay pigeon shooter. And she was indomitable in her campaigns for Māori land rights.
I always make friends of the characters in my fiction, and the same happened with Whina. I heard myself talking to her as I worked on the story. I smiled when I read about her triumphs; shook my head as I learned of the bigotry, ignorance and inertia she had to face. I wished – oh, how I wished – that I could have met her, even though my research often made me feel that I had.
I assembled about 12,000 words of notes, plus images. Then came the slight problem. How was I to reduce those 12,000 to some 1,400 words of text for the book?
I'd come across the same problem with the preceding picture books, of course, and I'd learned some rudimentary tricks. Above all, accept the fact that the illustrations could not just complement but replace the text in many cases. Trust the artist! And for this book, we had the skills of Story Hemi-Morehouse (Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Kuia, Ngāti Toa Rangatira). I still feel that Story's name should come first on Mother of the Nation. Look at the warmth of her colours, the magical, sometimes mythic settings, the way her images swoop from intimate portrait to a crowd of thousands.
My first copy arrived in the mail, and I did my usual thing – exclaimed when I realised what it was; placed it on the dining room table and pretended to be surprised by it when I came into the room; looked at my name on the cover and tried to connect that name with the person holding the book.
My dedication at the start of Mother of the Nation reads 'In honour of a great lady and a great leader'. Ngā Mihi, Dame Whina; it was an absolute privilege to write about you.
Stacey Morrison (Te Arawa, Ngāi Tahu) – translator of Te Whaea o te Motu: Whina Cooper me te Hīkoi roa mō te Manatika
The whānau of Dame Whina Cooper are the only reason I was privileged to translate this book: their consent and kindness to agree to me being the translator was critical and personally overwhelming for me.
When I was asked to work on this project my first question was about their wishes, as they are paramount and if they'd wanted a particular translator, someone else they knew or of their iwi, that would have been what happened and rightly so. I personally also look for tohu – indications and signs – that an important job like this is in fact meant for me, which I soon saw and was comforted by. Both my Kuia (Grandmother) and Nana (who had come to Aotearoa from England) were members of the Māori Women's Welfare League at the time Dame Whina was the president.
You read that right by the way, my Pākehā Nana joined the MWWL and learned to weave and make kākahu, one of which I am the whānau guardian of now. So that connection was one of the tohu that eased my mind about taking on this story about a wahine rangatira, a woman of such intuitive and powerful leadership skills that her actions and words still resonate and inspire powerfully today.
When we train to be a licensed translator and interpreter through Te taura whiri i te reo Māori /Māori language Commission, we are taught some golden rules such as 'never omit, or add' text in the course of translation. Yet even though I focused on the words that David had already written, I still spent time searching through articles, footage and quotes of Dame Whina, so I could catch any turn of phrase she offered or layer to the words that I didn't want to miss.
I double checked the background behind place names, locations in relation to others Dame Whina travelled to – and I looked up extra detail on events mentioned to be sure I had the sense of both languages correct.
After we finish a first draft of the translation it's good practice to have it peer-reviewed, in my case I have a good peer in my husband, right there at home! It's not the first time we have nerded-out as a reo Māori-speaking couple and once I made it to the top of my husband's to-do list, I was grateful that we have this shared interest and love for te reo Māori.
The translator exams may be tough but there's continued testing when you turn over your work for proofreading by another Māori language writer and translator, in my case someone I hold in huge esteem, so hang on every nuance of their feedback.
Translation is an art and this book is written for tamariki so we also consider how age-appropriate the language is too. I welcomed feedback from my illustrious proof-reader and hope that we all ensured this book about the incredible Dame Whina Cooper ONZ DBE will add another feather to her korowai of influence, haere ake nei te wā – forevermore.
Mother of the Nation: Whina Cooper and the long walk for justice by David Hill and illustrated by Story Hemi-Morehouse; and Te Whaea o te Motu: Whina Cooper me te hīkoi roa mō te manatika by David Hill, illustrated by Story Hemi-Morehouse and translated by Stacey Morrison are both $25 and published by Penguin NZ. They're available to purchase at Unity Books.