Sunday, September 12, 2010

puff 521

puff is a daily spin on what is going on. For example the Hotaka says what is happening today on the radio.
puff is sponsored by Campus Press and pyff books and the Campus Press Update follows below.
What else is happening? Get back to us via the Comments section of this Blog!

Hotaka Wednesday 15th

Te Ao Paaho
Kaupapa koorero moo te raa

He aha ngaa mea e puta i te Pouwhakaata Tuatoru?

Rangahau

He aha ngaa mea tino pai i runga i te Pouwhakaata Tuatoru i teenei marama? He pai rawa teenei marama ki teenaaa i mahue noa? He aha te haangai o ngaa mea e puta ki te ao Maori?

Subject of the day
What’s on Television Three?

Analysis
What are the good things on Television Three this month? Is this month better than last? How does what’s on apply to the Maori world?

www.tv3.co.nz/

Health
A recent article in Time Magazine (Time Magazine August 30, 2010) talks about the benefits of living longer if you drink moderately. Note that for women heavy drinking amounts to more than a couple of drinks a day.
puff agrees with Dr Mercola who says;
'Most alcohol misuse and abuse stems from deep emotional challenges. Addressing these issues at a deep level is imperative to avoid the negative health consequences--both physical and mental--that inevitably result from excessive drinking.'

Saying of the week
Vanity is a cleft that widens as it is filled

Fran, Colin, Tama, the Treaty and after
Two commentators have recently announced or at least talked about a Post Treaty era. The most recent of these is Colin James in the Dominion Post on Sep 13th 2010. Not long before this Fran O’Sullivan surfaced in the Herald of August 28 2010 saying that in this post treaty environment iwi should be called to account on social work issues. Her article was discussed at length in last week’s puffs. Ngati Kahu came out with a response in the Herald on Tuesday 14th September.

Last week on Radio Watea Tama Nikora rejected the suggestion that Treaty settlements would be too expensive for the state saying there are ways to plan around this.

Is Fran O’Sullivan just stumping up indignation in the right wing corner or does she represent a deeper undercurrent of feeling? Is she foreshadowing the way Treasury thinks and might act? Fran O’Sullivan works off a stock of iwi bashing questions but the mere fact that her article is given serious space in the New Zealand Herald shows that it has some editorial significance or support. We ought, one supposes, explore what she is saying.

Fran O’Sullivan begins by rounding up the usual suspects. She sets out the distinction between iwi and state in her opening paragraph. Along with this is the inversion not emphasized by Fran O’Sullivan; Paula Bennett is, like Winston Peters before her, a Maori advocate for the state. A Maori Minister of the Crown is berating leaders of Maori tribes, some Maori wear the iwi hat and some like Bennett and Peters in his day wear the state hat.

In her next paragraph she takes iwi leaders to task for being tardy or indolent.

Then it is a matter of establishing that the iwi owe the government money. Are Treaty Settlements ‘found money’ or are there strings attached?

Next the Key government is accused of being craven and the claim by Maori for the foreshore and seabed as corrupt.

Then it is the Maori professor, Margaret Mutu of Auckland University, as space cadet. O’Sullivan says that Mutu is ‘disturbingly remote’. This calls into question the scholarship of Treaty claims and the general sociology and anthropology of race relations. The idea is that these academics live in a one dimensional world and this is usually hard anyway but in a small society like New Zealand it is very difficult.

The notion of ‘disturbingly remote’ runs into the idea of psychological problems touching on pathology as Fran O’Sullivan goes on to accuse Mutu of showing ‘learned helplessness’ and suggests that she is elitist. The underlying idea in the elitist suggestion seems to be that Treaty Settlement money goes into education which promotes the children of an elite but does nothing for people at risk.

Then O’Sullivan sets out the idea of a game, a double game where Maori tribal leaders are trying to get a privileged position as far as the ownership of assets now vested in the state are concerned while they have their own assets through Treaty of Waitangi settlements. They are, Fran O’Sullivan seems to be suggesting, playing poor when it comes to state assets while in fact Maori are collectively rich.

The uneasy suggestion, uneasy that is to O’Sullivan and co, is that Maori are building their way into the state.

Fran O’Sullivan goes on to talk about or at least hint at entrenchment. This is where a sector or interest group, in this case Maori, have automatic first cut at something as a given or entrenched right.

The play with long and short or immediate term is a significant part of this analysis. Fran O'Sullivan seems to be suggesting that iwi leaders are playing for advantage in a cynical way across short, medium and long terms.

In her last paragraph Fran O’Sullivan seems to be querying the very leadership of the tribal leaders group. The accusation seems to be that these leaders are not acting responsibly with regard to their own communities. If Maori are as rich or richer collectively speaking than others in the population of New Zealand then action by them to help people in their own communities ought to be forthcoming.

O’Sullivan’s views might lead one to think that Treaty Settlements are really Clayton’s settlements. Or actually they are loans or like loans that iwi take up at the risk of having to use the settlement for social welfare purposes rather than as the iwi sees fit.

There would seem to be a need for shared social capital- also known as trust- a need for a history of co-management of welfare that could be turned to at times like this. While this seems to exist in such fields as Education, Health and local government there is the need to so this perhaps in corrections or social welfare.

Colin James is referring to two things. One is the foreshore and seabed and the other is intellectual property. He sees the latter as being particularly important.

The foreshore and seabed arrangements may go past a treaty arrangement but it also goes past generally accepted notions of property in this country with the idea of a coastline that no-one actually owns but which is a shared territory. The difference with this is mainly a matter of scale, The common area in this case is not a plot at the back of the village where people grow cabbages and compare cauliflowers. It is the whole coastline.

Its almost an antiquarian English model where there will be a commons but just as there are departures for the nobility, the lords of the manor who might be free to hunt foxes every third Saturday while others may only watch, there will be variations around the coast of the country in regard to customary title. In the main these will be quaint arrangements regarding the collection of shellfish for events and not things that get in the way of recreational use of the foreshore and seabed.n So the foreshore and seabed will be a commons with differences. We seem to have come a long way to have gone back so far.

The commons always gives a sense of collective identity though and the scale of all this could change the way we think of ourselves.

Commons are usually kept within the confines of some other kind of property. The communal gardens are within the village or the estate. In the proposed new legislation regarding the foreshore and seabed New Zealand is about to be surrounded by a commons. Visitors by sea will come through the commons, and over it if they come by air, to the state. We are altering the space in which we live.

Intellectual property is another thing and we will be looking at that later in puff.

In the meantime Tama Nikora's challenge lingers in the air...

Requested by puff readers- a serialisation of Mapori Unpacked, Second Edition by Peter Cleave ISBN 978-1-877229-74-9 Campus Press
27B Dorset Crescent, PHokowhitu, Palmerston North
Introduction

The wider language family to which Maori belongs stretches from Madagascar to Easter Island. This reflects the voyaging traditions of the Maori and other peoples in the group. These languages are sometimes called the Austronesian languages and they arch over Australia from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific.

A more local grouping of languages is found in Eastern Polynesia from Easter Island to Hawaii to Aotearoa- New Zealand. This set of languages is similar to but different enough to be distinct from languages spoken in Central Polynesia such as Samoan and Tongan. Closer still there are likenesses between Cook Islands Maori and the Maori spoken in Aotearoa- New Zealand. Within the country there are slight differences in dialect but people understand one another.

The language is characterised by a case system. This is like but not exactly the same as the gender system found in European languages like French. This system is set out in the main body of Maori Unpacked and then followed up with an extensive appendix. Also distinctive is the VSO structure of the language, the sequence of Verb-Subject-Object and this is looked at in various ways in Maori Unpacked.

In 1987 Maori became an official language of New Zealand. In 1840 at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi there were Maori and English versions. Maori were given control of their own treasures or taonga and later the Maori language, te reo Maori was claimed to be one of these treasures or gifts.

Between 1840 and the mid 1970s language loss occurred in a major way. In the 1860s English became the language of instruction in the schools and there began a long period of decline after that. The language claim to the Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal in the early and mid 1980s show a response to that decline.

The tribunal released its report on the claim in 1986. It recommended five ways forward. The first was to pass laws allowing te reo Maori to be used in courts and dealings with local and central government. There were also recommendations to establish a statutory body to 'supervise and foster the use of the Maori language', examine the teaching of te reo Maori and 'ensure that all children who wish to learn Maori should be able to do so', recognise and protect te reo in broadcasting and ensure that speaking both Maori and English be a necessary or desirable requirement for certain public service positions.

This, the second edition of Maori Unpacked may be of use to people in the five areas set out above but it is also intended as a general introduction for people within and outside of Aotearoa- New Zealand. There are many other books which are very useful starting with the Dictionary of Maori by Henry Williams. A selection of grammars and dictionaries are in the Bibliography at the end of Maori Unpacked.

Studies in 1973 and 1998 by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research and Te Puni Kokiri respectively indicated that language retention has not been an easy task. Iwi radio, Maori Television and, perhaps, the use of books like those mentioned may all be important.

Maori Unpacked takes a word by word approach. The reader is shown what each word is, a noun, a verb, an adjective or whatever. The book may be a useful tool, a way in to the language.

Maori Unpacked has been written in a way that intends to make grammar interesting and fun to use. At the same time this book is also a primer for people wanting to learn the language in a systematic way.

There are several Appendices meant to throw light on what has gone before and a glossary of Maori words.

Kia pai oo koutou na haerenga aa reo,
May your language journeys be good,

Peter Cleave

Aokautere

2009


1

Unpacking sounds

Stretch.

Take a deep breath.

Say

a
as in ah

e
as in tech

i
as in fee

o
as in took

u
as in moo

Write out a card for each sound and put the cards along a windowsill where you can see them.

Say or sing the sounds each time you look out the window.

Make another set of cards and put across the lintel of the door you use most when leaving the house.

Say or sing the sounds each time you leave the house.

Stand at the gate and revise them all.




2

More sounds to unpack

Make cards for the following;

p

k

t

r

n

m

h

w

and these ones too

ng

wh

Put these together with your vowels in odd spots around the room so that they catch your eye in unexpected ways.

When one of these pairs of cards does catch your eye say or sing it three times.

Put some of these combinations on the walls of your room. Stand in the middle of the room and turn from wall to wall reading them out.






More unpacking

take a consonant like

t

and put it with the vowels as in

ta

te

ti

to

and

to

and then do the same thing with


p k t rn m h w ng and wh

Make more cards with these combinations on them.

Make one card with all the combinations on them.

Say the sounds.

Say them again.

Keep saying them.





And try doubling the vowels

aa

ee

ii

oo

uu

Play with these sounds, don't just unpack them and leave them sitting on their own.

Say the sounds softly.

Say them again loudly.

Keep saying them.

Make them feel wanted.

Say and sing them out loud.

The neighbours will love it!


Play a Magic Trick on yourself by shuffling the sound cards and pulling one out of your sleeve.

And have these sounds ready for further use!









Try combining consonants with these longer vowels as with

taa

tee

tii

too

and

tuu

and then do the same thing with


p k t rn m h w ng and wh


Etahi kupu hou- some new words

kaa- fire

koo- spade

uu- firm

huu- shoes

tuu- stand

raa- sun, day




How about repeating some vowel sounds?
And how about some more vocabulary?

taka- fall

heke- come down, descend

piki- climb

noho- sit

tuku- release, let go

How about combining different vowel sounds?
And how about some more vocabulary?

Starting with a

ao- world

au- I, me

tai- sea, seaside

ae- yes


Starting with e

reo- language

heu- separate

nei- here, near speaker

hea- where




Starting with i

kiekie- a climbing plant

tio- oyster

riu- district

ia- he, she, it


Starting with o

moumou- waste

hoa- friend

koi- sharp

koe- you, singular


Starting with u

hue- gourd

tuohu- bow

tui- bird

ua- rain

About the Roma- Requested by puff readers in Eorope. A serialisation of Isis, the days of the Voles ny Benjamin Drum.

Isis: the days of the voles
by
Benjamin Drum
ISBN
978-0-9582939-9-0
Isis, the days of the voles,
Second Edition
puff books
27 B Dorset Crescent
Hokowhitu
Palmerston North

For the Big Day Out Crew
1
Summertown
They say that if you sit by the river long enough you will see the bodies of your enemies float by. Is that an old Chinese saying? Or was it meant to apply to the Isis? In flood with the punts awash and drifting. Flat with the sculls hissing along. Down at the Joiner's Arms feeling the first cool of night as the sun set on it or just waiting quietly, hoping for a glimpse of a vole, the Isis was always a river to sit by.

Our man Simon Lodge was doing exactly that, staring at the river as though it had something to tell him. Oxford does that to you. North Oxford is otherworldly. The dreaming spires have nothing on what the landscape especially the riverbanks do to you.

Lewis Carrol drew all sorts of pictures on picnics by the river but our man was thinking about a crime. Something that bit rather more than a childrens fantasy, something that was clearly for adults, certainly something without the veil of childhood.

People were missing. There was a ripple of hurt from this that got to a lot of other people. Simon, sat, figuring and wondering as the early evening came slowly to the Isis.

The panther snatched the morsel of meat and gulped it down. It prowled from side to side in its cage.The panther always seemed to be too big for its cage.

In this small private zoo the panther always seemed big anyway.

The man who had thrown the meat, the owner of the zoo, walked up a path and sat by a fountain. His name was Julio. His heart settled down and he began to plan his day. Small birds hopped around on the ground. They were the only free creatures in the area.

He picked up the phone.

It was quiet except for a contented, low purring sound from the panther.

At thirty nine Julio looked a little older, maybe in his early forties.

Julio had no family, no partners either. They slowed him down. They were, for Julio, redundant.

Julio's favourite sport was cockfighting. He went down to the village on a Friday night and sat with the smell of cheap wine and cigarillos and the noise of peasants barracking and watched the fights. It gave him a contrast to the almost complete control he exercised at home.

Julio liked the art of Salvador Dali. He liked the paintings of desert scenes with surprising things in them. He had one above his chair near the fountain in his private zoo. An original.

The kinds of car he liked most was a Porsche. He liked its being low slung with lots of power beneath the hood.

Julio's favorite clothes were shades and black silk shirts. He liked polished black leather shoes with elevated heels. And silver chains, not gold.

Regarding colours, Julio saw things in black, and white but he also liked kaleidoscopes of colour and he liked his peacocks flashing their tails.

His favorite animal was the panther but he had a great regard for all animals. Astoundingly for someone so cruel to humans he hated animals being maltreated.

Julio's favorite programme was the Sopranos but he thought that Tony was weak to see a shrink. He thought that America was a very strange place i some ways. The Sopranos was in one corner, the religious people in the mid west, Julio couldn't even get a feel for the Hispanics in the USA these days. He was importing all of the key characters for he drama to come. The locals in the states baffled him so he was avoiding them.

To say that Julio could be moody would be to understate things. His rages were legendary. But he could be cool as well. His rages were, in fact, mostly seen by the animals.

At school he was good at biology. He liked dissecting frogs and all that but he had an attraction for genetics. His teachers had tried to encourage him in the arts but he was unresponsive.

He was feared by his schoolmates. And he in turn was impressed by some of the older boys who, if he was honest, scared him a little. But he studied them and started to build his own self image to follow one or two of them.

Esme rode her bicyle along the river path. The bells were already ringing at her school. Too much time texting her chum, Bella. She stood on the pedals as she went past the Boathouse.

Isis Investigations is situated in Summertown, North Oxford.There is no business reason for this. In North Oxford most people solve their own problems and then some belonging to other people. But our man Simon liked it. A nice place to think he said. And a nice place to live he supposed.

Simon Lodge had been glad to take the case because his girlfriend Sam was driving him mad. Sam was small, Jamaican and a chatterbox. Actually she was part Dalmation as well, on her mother's side.

Simon was a born listener really. Lazy people usually are and Simon is nothing if not indolent. Simon looked about his age which was twentynine, He was thinning a little on top and had just started to lose his youthful slimness. He wanted to be older, more assured, no question.

Simon's father was Paullie as far as he knew. He had no brothers or sisters. He had been bought up, so to speak, in College.

At Winchester Simon had played rugby. It had not been that much fun. But such as it was it was his sport and he could tell you things about rugger at he strangest times.

Simon's favourite artist was Picasso. He liked the blue period, especially paintings like the one of he woman ironing. The one where her body seemed to be stretched sdo that her arms were impossibly long. It was what life did to you thought Simon.

He liked jazzy little sports cars. Nothing better than zipping around the South in a jaunty little red number in High Summer. Nothing wrong with some solid sounds either.

Simon dressed like an undergraduate. Sloppy. But with his own sense of style, Nostalgic about ties he still wore his school tie at twenty nine and looked to be still doing so at fifty nine.

Grey and blue were his favorite colours. As long as the grey was not too dark and the blue of the Oxford kind. He'd spent a little time in London but he remained loyal to Oxford, town and gown.

Simon liked dogs. Especially dogs that could run. The loyalty of dogs was a big thing too, for Simon. He liked small teams, groups that stuck together through thick and thin.

The best shows on television for Simon were mysteries like Bergerac. They snapped him out of his own issues and helped him to relax. He enjoyed trying to work out the perpetrators.

Simon was a dreamer but he could, if the occasion demanded be steady. He could be quite self absorbed but he could swing into action when required. And people trusted him and felt they could depend on him.

At school he was good at history. He liked trying to explain why things happen. He was alright at maths but did not stick at it. And if he put himself to it he could fudge it with languages. But putting himself to things was not at all Simon's style.

His workmates loved him and hated his lack of organisation. He had a reasonable sense of humour without always trying to be the class wag. He had a way of fitting in, of making or allowing others around him to feel comfortable.

Sam ran things at Isis Investigations when Simon was not around. This was a bit of a stretch for all involved. People with things to solve were engaged in talk of a kind they'd not met before. Mind you, Sam got to meet new people. Thin on the ground though, thought Simon. Desperate measures and all.

The two of them were in Simon's loft in the Boatshed. More of a half landing actually but Sam had started calling it a loft and Simon had been too tired to steer her in any other direction. They loved it there. Handy to things but out of the way. People liked calling on them there.

A man was being chased in an American city.

He ran and ran.

And then he died, shot by the two chasing him.

The chasers vanished, fading into the night like cats.

The chasers faded back into view in a club later that night.

They were looking for work, the next job.

Turned out to be in England.

Samantha went on about the last case, the case of the murdered Pole. Gastonbeiters, people on the run, undercover intelligence people, CNN spies- this last a reference of some kind to deep cover journalism Simon reckoned- drugrunners, romance, death.

Sam looked like a teenager. It was the big eyes and the slight build perhaps. For twenty nine she was doing alright or at least that's what Simon thought. Herself she thought she could lose more weight but she knew that's what the television and media wanted her to think.

Coming from Peckham was a bit of a stumbling block in North Oxford. At least it might have been for most people. Not Sam. She could have been from Black Stump in the farther outback and Sam would have made it interesting.

Netball was her sport. She played centre. Even though Sam was very short she could jump. She seemed to levitate on court. And she was a good team player, certainly a good communicator.

Sam liked the French impressionists. She liked the way things were in soft focus. And she could put herself into the paintings and feel at home. She had hung some prints in the boatshed and Simon did not seem to mind.

Her favourite car was a mini. She liked the way they could zip in and out of traffic. The closeness to the ground was something else that she liked. You were not removed or detached from the speed at which you were going. You were in touch and that's how Sam liked things.

Sam dressed like a trainwreck. Everything was out of Oxfam. Big earrings, bright scarves, black leggings, never skirts. And dreads. And never, never any lipstick.

Her best colours were black, red and gold. She liked the bright markets of the Caribbean. And the music, especially the old stuff from the likes of Peter Tosh.

Sam liked cats, even big ones like lions. The smooth, slinkiness of the felines got to her. She also liked their speed and intensity. And having one cuddle up so that she could stroke it was very fine as well.

Her favorite television shows were late night music ones. She was ready to slow down at that time. A glass of red wine, a desultory read, anything but Virginia Woolf and that was her for the day.

Sam had two moods, manic and more manic. Sam was an energy bunny, an output of force that never needed to be renewed or, at least, never seemed to need to be. Simon was a good foil for her. Apart from being a good listener he was patient and he quite enjoyed the things she said.

At school she was good at English. She could write and she could listen or read and comprehend. And, of course, she could talk. But her teachers also said that she had a first rate analytical mind whatever that was.

Her schoolmates thought she was something of a nerd but they liked her style. Sam would take on any topic and they liked that. Her skill was taking any topic that might be thrown at her and extemporizing on it. But she could go on...

Samantha was actually responsible for the present case, at least for starting things off for Isis Investigations. She'd gone outside the boatshed and found an old woman crying by the river. It was just another day by the Isis. Those schoolgirls were both hanging about as usual. The one called Esme had given her a hairy look. The Tramp was around somewhere.

But once started the old lady would not stop. And so the case began. Two people were missing from the camp in the layby on the Banbury Road. A man and and woman in their mid twenties. Acrobats. Police not trusted. Gypsies in North Oxford. Enough said.

But Sam had kept asking Simon about it so that, taking the line of least resistance he'd gone out to the layby where the housetrucks and caravans were parked. He knew them and they him. They all went back a fair way together because, as Simon always told Sam, they knew things that other people do not know. And they never forgot.

And it was a good distance to ride and a good break from some of the occupational hazards for Simon in North Oxford. A bike ride in the fresh air beat being baled up by the Don and being regaled with stories of outrages in the annual common room meeting at college.

The chasers were out in the world now. Off the blocks. In the hunt. With instructions.

Looking for gypsies.

Finding the terrible tearaways was easy though. The layby out from North Oxford. Catching them was another story. The twins were fit.

Was there bait?

As Sam started work on The New Case he thought about the previous one. Long and short of the Case of the Murdered Pole was that Simon had some rare coins up front and an equally rare collection of jewelry at job's end as a fee. His to dispose of, of course, and that presented problems for him but there were rewards such as what these things were worth when shifted.

So Simon had made money on the murdered Pole. That didn't sound very nice but that is the way it was. In fact he and Sam had spent the best part of two months doing not a lot. Watching the Isis, going to the Oxford pubs, visiting friends at the colleges. Laying about and making the best of their luck.

He ventured as much to Sam. This bought forth a stream: the English upper class, North Oxford, people who Hunt, Marx and class. The oh so priveliged two-of-them. Luck?

Sorting out what the bait might be had been easy. The bait was life in the fast lane, drugs, America, anything to be out of Oxford and The South.

The bait was Vegas.

The hard bit had been how to present the bait.




Campus Press Update
Papers on Social Work 4th Edition by Peter Cleave has been released by Campus Press, There is a discussion of Whanau Ora the New Zealand government's strategy for social work announced in April-May 2010. There is a revisiting of the theme of restorative justice. All this and the classic, prize winning essays on social work education and value systems that have made Papers on Social Work one of the best selling books in the Campus Press set, internationally and locally.


Papers on Social Work, Fourth Edition has the ISBN
978-1-877229-47-3

NZD 60.00 including tax plus 7.50 Post and Pack no matter how big the order.

Payment COD into nominated account.

Delivery within a month.

Order through comment or email to puffmedia@yahoo.co.nz using the Order Form at the bottom of this email.

About the author.
It is said that Peter Cleave has more books in New Zealand Libraries than any other author. Beginning as a collaborator on The Oxford Picture Dictionary of Maori in 1979 there has been a consistent pattern of a book published, an article in a referred journal and then a radio commentary repeated over a long period. With this pattern of published work have come the prizes; the First Class Masterate from Auckland University and a Commonwealth scholarship to the University of Oxford, the Phillip Bagby Scholarship and Rhodes Foundation funds while doing the Oxford Doctorate, the chair of the college common room and on from these to taking the prizes for best paper at conferences like the International Federation of Social Workers in Montreal in 2000.

Peter Cleave is without peer at the meeting place of language, culture and criticism, locally and internationally and this is seen in the sale of his books to libraries in New Zealand and Australia and around the world.

At the same time Peter Cleave, a former captain of the Manurewa High School First Fifteen in South Auckland, works on community radio and touches base with working people. He left school to work on the MV Tofua, a Banana Boat and began to learn about the Pacific, something he is still doing.

About Campus Press
Campus Press is the biggest academic press outside the universities in New Zealand. It was established in 1992 and for the last twelve years has been based in Palmerston North. Campus Press mostly supplies libraries.

Papers on Social Work, 4th Edition follows other releases in 2010 like Takutai: the Foreshore and Seabed, New Zealand’s most topical book with implications for US, European and other coastlines. ISBN 978-1-877229-46-6 See the attachment for the cover.



Takutai, the foreshore and seabed by Peter Cleave gives an historical background and then an analysis of the 2004 Foreshore and Seabed Act and the 2009 Ministerial Review. There is a wide range of examples of co-governance and co-management by iwi and councils of the foreshore and seabed from around Aotearoa/New Zealand. International case studies are also given. The Conclusion sets the scene for the Repeal of the Act and the introduction of new legislation in 2010.

What the critics had to say about the advance article;

one of the most well-conceived discussions of the present state of the Act that exists in print anywhere. …an extremely useful contribution not only to academic discourse, but to issues affecting the national life of the country.

Professor Paul Moon

Takutai costs 57.00NZD from Campus Press with a 7.50 NZD freight charge no matter how big the order.

Order by return email using the Order Form at the bottom of this email if you like.

 

Full Review of Peter Cleave’s Ten Volume Set

By Paul Moon

July 2009

The very nature of academic publishing is that it serves a niche market, and in a country as small as New Zealand, that niche can be so narrow that some books probably never see the light of day because they are simply uneconomic to produce. So when a ten-volume set of books is released, written by Professor Peter Cleave – one of New Zealand’s respected academics – attention is bound to be aroused by the scale of the venture, and by the promise of a substantial body of content.

The work’s opening volume comprises a collection of articles, some of which are new, and some of which are revised versions of existing articles that Cleave has written or presented. The relevancy of the work is underscored by the first paper, which contains suggested options for dealing with the vexed issue of the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004. The Government has indicated that it will reach some conclusions on this matter within the next two months, but regardless of what is decided, it will be interesting to see the extent to which Cleave’s recommendations are reflected in Government policy, and for academics to debate some of the themes raised long after any settlement has been made at a political level. This article stands out as being the most detailed in this volume, and certainly one of the most well-conceived discussions of the present state of the Act that exists in print anywhere. For this piece alone, the first volume in this collection makes an extremely useful contribution not only to academic discourse, but to issues affecting the national life of the country.

Other articles in this volume focus on issues surrounding Maori language – its survival, its transition from an oral to a written language, and its re-emergence as an oral and written language. To this is added a highly original and possibly even provocative piece on conceptual interpretations of pa; a reflection on issues associated with the 1981 Springbok rugby tour to New Zealand, and concludes with a series of brief but brilliant articles which tackle a variety of culturally-charged concepts, and which, among much else, challenge the reader’s understanding of meanings associated with them.

From a collection of articles, Cleave then provides in the second volume of this collection a book. Starting points? A discussion of contemporary Maori society and culture, is primarily about New Zealand historiography, into which is injected a broad range of arguments and perspectives relating to issues such as culture, identity, tradition and modernity, and the media. One of the great strengths of this volume is the extent to which Cleave is able to draw on international material and examples to illuminate his arguments, without the reader ever getting the sense that he is being overwhelmed by comparative examples from other countries. It is a difficult balance to establish, but when handled as masterfully as in Starting Points? The benefits are immediately apparent. The theme of literacy raised in the first volume reappears briefly in this one, but in a substantially different context, with a strong connection with the way in which history works in cultures that had/have strong oral components. In the central sections of this volume is a series of analyses of the works of other writers, in which Cleave adopts the format of quoting passages from articles, and then providing a commentary on them. This is an approach to criticism that is too seldom utilised. In the case of this volume, it has enabled Cleave to deconstruct and then reconstruct ideas and themes, using these sources as interchangeable building blocks – able to be assembled in a variety of forms according to the writer’s perspectives.

Following on from Starting Points? is the third edition of one of Cleave’s seminal works: Rangahau pae iti kahurangi: Research in a small world of light and shade. This work, on themes and approaches to research in a broadly Maori context, has become a recommended text book for many tertiary course around the country, and draws heavily on traditional concepts of learning and understanding as part of the basis for one of the frameworks of research. The traditional is not closed off from critique, however, and Cleave’s great strength in this area is his ability to combine an in-depth cultural knowledge with recent scholarship on research, producing insightful and useful conclusions for anyone engaged in this area of study.

Another third edition in this collection is Papers on Social Work. His volume is made up of seven papers dealing with subjects from the more standard ones, such as ethics, to the some unlikely choices, such as the city space and social work, and the thematically-related article on places of inquiry. Yet, whether predictable or otherwise, Cleave brings new insights and challenging perspectives to the reader. Even the most experienced social work practitioner would be bound to have the perceptions of their profession augmented as a result of reading this book and absorbing some of its ideas.

Papers on Social Work is followed by the 244-page volume Papers on Language. Made up of thirteen articles, this work has Cleave again drawing on a useful quantity of international scholarship, and revealing why he is so highly-regarded in the academic community. There are too few writers in this country capable of combining material from so many different disciplines and in a way that produces such a wide variety of perspectives. Again, there is some material here that appears elsewhere, but its precise employment this volume avoids any sense of repetition. A few of the shorter articles in this volume would be suited mainly for teachers of te reo, but otherwise, the tenor of the works as a whole is well-suited to the general academic reader.

The next book in this collection is the 197-page What do we know about the mark on the wall? Images, rules and prior knowledge. As for its subject, Cleave opens with the teasing line: ‘As the author I still have difficulty saying what his book is about’. But rather than answer with a pithy summary, Cleave allows the ideas contained in this work to speak for themselves – no more, no less. Themes about the meaning of ideas, place, and memory compete with topics on historiography, sociolinguistics, and social geography, among many others. This is probably the most challenging book in the collection. Cleave moves, sometimes with great speed, from one topic to another, often leaving just hints of whole new areas of potential exploration. The reader might feel settled with an idea, and then in the next paragraph, Cleave might challenge that idea from several angles, before hauling the topic elsewhere, with a series of careful thematic links. There is no stated topic for this book, and nor ought there to be. It is like a rhapsody, with different motifs surfacing at various points, connected by very little at times, yet, at the conclusion, it all seems to have a link of sorts to the idea of knowledge. This is possibly one of the most satisfying yet challenging works in the collection.

Te Pu Tapere- the impulse to perform, formerly known as Depot Takirua, is the third edition of this work, and focuses mainly on the electronic media. At 204 pages, it is as substantial a work as any of its companion volumes in this collection, and for those studying film and television in New Zealand, it would be indispensible. This most certainly ought to be a prescribed text for all media students. The portrayal of Maori in film and television comes in for close scrutiny here, and Cleave seizes on several deficiencies and stereotypes in the way culture is presented in popular culture. The chapter on Jane Campion’s The Piano is one of the outstanding portions of this book, and as all the other chapters, offers insights that hitherto have not been available to readers interested in these areas of study. Some of the essays in this work date back to the 1990s, but have been revised where appropriate to maintain their currency.

Iwi Station: A Discussion of Print, Radio, Television, and the Internet in Aotearoa/ New Zealand also has a string media focus, as the title suggests. However, in keeping with the general approach of the other volumes in this collection, Cleave has added elements of history, sociology, and anthropology into the mix. And instead of merely being descriptive about the topics he has chosen, Cleave continually probes and questions to elicit deeper meanings behind them. This is most certainly a text that should be compulsory reading for every journalist and person involved in the media in New Zealand. In particular, it lifts the lid on the sorts of conceptual developments in thought that have led to the status the media currently has in New Zealand.

This collection, coming out as a single set, is unique in New Zealand academic writing. But the format and quantity side, the lasting value of these works is in the ideas they express and the changes in perception that they will bring about for the reader. Cleave deserves full praise for the contribution he has made in these works to the intellectual conversation about New Zealandness.

Paul Moon is Professor of History at Te Ara Poutama, the faculty of Maori Development at AUT University.

There are ten books in the basic Campus Press set. All of these are 200 pages or more in length. Terms of Trade are that the books are available from Campus Press for 57.00 NZD as individual titles or for 400.00 NZD for the Collection.

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Titles and ISBN numbers are below;

978-1-877229-35-0 Aotearoa, papers of contest, Third Edition

978-1-877229-32-9 Maori Unpacked Second Edition

978-1-877229-37-4 Iwi Station Second Edition

978-1-877229-39-8 Papers on Language Third Edition

978-1-877229-42-8 Papers on Social Work Third Edition

978-1-877229-43-5 Rangahau pae iti kahurangi Third Edition

978-1-877229-44-2 What do we know about the mark on the wall Third Edition

978-1-877229-43-5 Te Pu Tapere- the Impulse to perform, formerly titled, From the Depot Takirua, Third Edition

978-1-877229-41-1 Papers to conference Fourth Edition

978-1-877229-38-1 Starting Points


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