Miriama Aoake
On Monday afternoon in Aotearoa, Taika Waititi (Te Wha¯ nau-a¯ -Apanui) collected the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay, for Jojo Rabbit. There he stood, tall as a to¯ tara, as the room fell silent.
He joked that he had lost his mum, Robin Cohen, in the crowd ‘‘hours ago’’ before thanking her, author Christine Leunens and producers Chelsea Winstanley (Nga¯ ti Ranginui, Nga¯ i Te Rangi) and Carthew Neal.
There were many other people he wanted to thank, but couldn’t remember. ‘‘That’s it,’’ he said, before dedicating the award ‘‘. . . to all the indigenous kids in the world who want to do art, and dance, and write stories – we are the original storytellers, and we can make it here. Thank you, kia ora!’’
Man, did we all bloody weep. My phone flashed – a text message from my dad that broke my tears with a smile. ‘‘TAIKA – TU MUCH!’’
Tayi Tibble (Te Wha¯ nau-a¯ -Apanui, Nga¯ ti Porou) articulated it beautifully in real time. Without romanticising the moment, she said, there was a distinctive thing about Taika standing on that stage which is terribly difficult to express.
It’s a feeling – pa¯ whakawairua – that welled in Taika’s eyes, anchored his words and pierced through every screen of those watching. It is more than pride, relief, or joy; it was the coalescence of ihi, wehi, mauri and wairua – a language with no parallel.
It is, however, strung together with threads of deliberate humour that makes processing things that are hard, scary, overwhelming or serious somehow bearable.
Taika is ensconced in a localised, storytelling whakapapa which, as Herepi Mita (Nga¯ i Te Rangi, Nga¯ ti Pikiao) observes, has grown from ‘‘union picket lines and land marches to the red carpet of the Oscars’’.
Indigenous stories – the stories we tell, retell, memorise and reimagine – are woven together with an intimacy that oscillates between tragedy and laughter. The pain and trauma is made tolerable if we find the humour in things that might otherwise destroy the wairua. Without it, everything is reduced to a onedimensional caricature of life – a revolving door of kicks to the gut.
This week, Taika took to