A Pacific spin on Cook’s landing

Lala Rolls’ new documentary returns Captain Cook’s navigator Tupaia to his rightful place. Emily Brookes reports.

When film-maker Lala Rolls set out to make a film about Tahitian artist, priest, navigator and diplomat Tupaia in 2006, she never imagined it would take 14 years for it to be released. But the debut of documentary Tupaia’s

Endeavour at Wha¯ nau Ma¯ rama New Zealand International Film Festival late next month – coinciding as it does with Black Lives Matter protests and a broad movement towards rejecting colonial narratives – could not be more timely.

The story of Tupaia is that of a highly trained, aristocratic navigator, geographer, map-maker and linguist who, at first a curiosity to the crew of Endeavour, became invaluable during Captain James Cook’s first voyage of the Pacific, but then largely disappeared from the dominant narrative of New Zealand’s colonisation.

‘‘Last year was 250 years since Cook [landed in New Zealand] and we had hoped to have [the] release then,’’ said Rolls.

‘‘By that time, it had been delayed so long that we thought, ‘Great, we’re on the right year’ and then it didn’t happen. And then all this other stuff started happening and lots of that came from talk about statues and identity. Ihuma¯ tao happened, and it’s like, actually, people are ready for it now, the film is stepping into the moment.’’

One prominent participant in Tupaia’s

Endeavour is Nick Tupara, the Gisborne artist who last year erected a monument to his ancestor Te Maro. He was also instrumental in the removal of the city’s Captain Cook statue as part of the city’s commemoration of 250 years since Cook’s landing. One could almost not imagine a more relevant context for the film’s release.

Eminent historian Anne Salmond, whose 2003 book, Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas, spurred Rolls’ interest in Tupaia and who appears frequently in Tupaia’s

Endeavour, said the film was not ‘‘anti-colonial’’. ‘‘In the old narratives, Ma¯ ori or people in the Pacific kind of sat there like mute tattooed masks just watching the Europeans get on with making history. But that isn’t how it was.’’

One of Rolls’ goals for the film was to give viewers a sense of the rich and complex societies Cook met in the Pacific.

‘‘Life didn’t stop on the island of Tahiti [when Cook arrived], they weren’t like, ‘Oh my God the Great White People are here.’ They were like, ‘Right, we’re in the middle of our Matariki celebrations and so we’ll keep doing our rituals and these fullas happen to be here, so we’ll just include them.’ ’’

Rolls collaborated closely with artist Michael

Tuffery on Tupaia’s Endeavour, aiming to tell this Pacific story in a Pacific style, using art, haka, song and storytelling alongside interviews and re-enactments.

‘‘It transforms the film-making process,’’ said Salmond. ‘‘You’re going to Tahiti with Ma¯ ori actors and film-makers and people who are meeting their ancestors. That changes the whole way the filming proceeds as well.’’

There is a feeling throughout the documentary that the viewer is part of the film-making experience.

There are some pivotal discoveries that are made as cameras roll. Outrageous Fortune actor

Kirk Torrance plays Tupaia in re-enactments but researches his role through interviews that are featured in the finished film. Tuffery creates works throughout as a response to what the film-makers learn.

The research for the film is, in a way, what the film is. That’s fitting given it is directed by Rolls, who grew up in Fiji but is Pa¯ keha¯ .

‘‘I identify strongly as a Pacific person, but I know I’m not brown,’’ she said.

‘‘When I do films that are Pacific and Ma¯ ori, I really collaborate with people I work with and try to be a conduit for their voices.’’

The climax of the documentary comes when Cook arrives at Teoneroa, now known as

Tu¯ ranganui-a-Kiwa or Poverty Bay.

Although the journey there would have been ‘‘extremely difficult’’ without Tupaia, according to Salmond, Tupaia himself did not disembark with the Endeavour crew, possibly because he was on the outs with Cook.

In his absence, Cook’s men, unable to communicate either culturally or linguistically with the Ma¯ ori who approached the ship, shot dead Te Maro, a local leader. They then violated tapu by approaching and examining his body, further enraging his compatriots.

The following day, Tupaia was brought ashore – luckily for the Endeavour crew, as local Ma¯ ori had

returned in much larger force and were looking for blood. Despite Tupaia’s diplomacy, a prominent chief was killed and word travelled up New Zealand that the Europeans were not to be trusted.

Rolls and Salmond agree that incident had ongoing ramifications for modern New Zealand. Had Tupaia been there, they argue, his knowledge of local language and customs would almost certainly have meant violence was avoided.

‘‘If the violence hadn’t happened, Ma¯ ori wouldn’t have gone ahead in waka telling people what was coming and warning them, so maybe all the relationships would have worked better,’’ said Rolls.

‘‘That one moment could change everything.’’ When Cook returned to New Zealand in 1773, local Ma¯ ori approached his ship yelling, ‘‘Tupaia! Tupaia!’’

Cook noted: ‘‘The Name of Tupia (sic) was at that time so popular among them that it would be no wonder if at this time it is known over the great part of New Zealand.’’

At that time, perhaps. But today, Tupaia has largely disappeared from the narrative of Cook’s first voyage of the Pacific.

Tupaia’s Endeavour hopes to change that.

The Wha¯ nau Ma¯ rama New Zealand International Film Festival runs from July 24 – August 2.