Honoured for service to Maori art, culture
A Taranaki kaumatua has been honoured for his ongoing efforts to strengthen Maori language and culture.
On Saturday Ronald ‘Rocky’ Hudson, of Ngati Ruanui, Ngaruahine and Whakatohea, was one of five people to receive the Te Tohu a Ta Kingi Ihaka award, which recognises a life long contribution to Maori art and culture.
The gong was given out at this year’s Te Waka Toi National Maori Art Awards, held at Te Papa in Wellington. The event, which is hosted by Creative New Zealand, is the only one of its kind to specifically honour excellence and achievement in Maori art.
Hudson’s accolade comes after decades of ongoing involvement in a range of initiatives related to the development and enhancement of Te Reo Maori in the Taranaki region.
Known for his expertise in history, tikanga and Te Reo Maori, Hudson assisted Te Reo o Taranaki to compile text to be used by the Maori Language Commission in its national Maori language dictionary project.
He has also spent many years being involved in activities designed to benefit his people, including the improvement of health and welfare services, along with the negotiation of two Treaty of Waitangi settlement claims.
Hudson has been in a kaumatua role for various health services, including the Mid Central District Health Board.
He is an inaugural member of Te Rau Matatini, which is a strategic advisory group which focuses on indigenous health and wellbeing. In the past, Hudson was a radio presenter and has also written waiata and haka.
In 2015, Hudson was awarded the Queen’s Service Medal for services to Maori. Suzanne Ellison, who chairs the New Zealand Arts Council’s Maori committee, said the award winners had made an ‘‘outstanding’’ contribution to the arts. In total, 11 people were honoured at this year’s event.
‘‘Their work represents the rich diversity of Nga Toi Maori and plays an important role in enriching and reflecting the lives of tangata whenua,’’ Ellison said.
Te Waka Toi National Maori Art Awards have been running since 1986 and celebrate a range of different art forms, including theatre, literature, film, photography, sculpture and visual arts.
This year’s supreme award winner was Fred Graham, a renowned sculptor based in Waiuku.
Edwin Wright was in New Plymouth not so long ago with the play Everest Untold, in which he played New Zealand climber George Lowe, looking back on the heroic achievement that put his name in the history books.
Wright returned to Taranaki with a very different play about a very different man, one whose name will go down in the history books for all the wrong reasons.
Anders Breivik killed 77 of his fellow Norwegians and wounded more than 200 more in a bomb and gun attack on July 22, 2011. It shocked the world and left everyone asking the same question: why? Before embarking on his murderous spree, Breivik emailed a 1500 page, mostly cut and paste manifesto to more than 1000 recipients.
Actor Olaf Højgaard (Wright) is to play Breivik and has got hold of a copy of the manifesto. We watch as he tells us of his research into the killer, and how he is trying to get inside his head, to understand him, to know him. And as he does so Højgaard changes in front of our eyes. When he first comes on stage he is cheery and friendly, encouraging the audience to sit together as he sets out his story.
But as the performance goes on his trainers are exchanged for military boots, his shirt is removed to reveal a black militarystyle top, and slowly Højgaard’s manner becomes chillier as he listens to a tape recording of Breivik’s words from his trial.
Slowly, Højgaard becomes Breivik.
Manifesto 2083 is a controversial play and it throws up all sorts of questions about censorship, politics, and the world around us. Wright is an astonishing actor who fully inhabits his characters in this one-man play.
Wright shows where Breivik’s ideas were coming from, his worldview, but showing is not the same as sympathising. And people like him, from whatever side of the political/religious spectrum, cannot be ignored in the hope that they will simply go away. What’s more chilling is the warning within the play, that Breivik’s warped ideals are growing in popularity in parts of Europe.