HIRINI KAA

Life, death and religion

Religion is often sidelined in the New Zealand story, which ironically paints Godzone as a largely secular land of enlightened progress, or a social laboratory free of superstition. That’s generally a Pa¯ keha¯ story too.

Hirini Kaa comes at the story from a different direction. He is both a historian and an Anglican minister, who has expanded his PhD thesis into a new book, Te Ha¯ hi Mihinare – The Ma¯ ori Anglican Church.

He calls the book an insider account, which will be immediately obvious to anyone who recognises the surname. His father was Hone Kaa, the former Archdeacon of Ta¯ maki Makaurau and an outspoken advocate for social justice and child welfare. Go back another generation and his grandfather was also a man of the church.

Did Kaa, who is now 48, ever have a choice? He was ordained in 2005 ‘‘but it’s been part of my whakapapa forever and part of my identity growing up. I was Nga¯ ti Porou and Mihinare, it’s just who I was’’.

Was it an individual calling or a collective expectation? In a way, that’s the wrong question.

‘‘This idea of faith belonging to an individual, being about individual choices, I don’t know if that’s necessarily been us as Ma¯ ori. I do this mahi. I was the one who was going to do this in my generation. You have this particular role, this calling.’’

There is a similar approach to the idea of being an author.

‘‘As Ma¯ ori, our whakapapa is everything. We inherit our views, our traditions, and also the obligations and responsibilities of our wha¯ nau. I told the publisher it’s really strange to see my name on the front of this book, because I don’t view it as mine but as a collective wha¯ nau effort. My father informed my work, my aunties, my uncles. It is that collective knowledge, hopefully, that I’m sharing.’’

Here is another example of how that works. Back in 2013, Kaa fronted a Ma¯ ori Television series titled The Prophets, a role he took over when his father became ill. The series was about such famous, sometimes notorious, spiritual leaders as Rua Ke¯ nana, Te Whiti, Ra¯ tana and so on. In many cases these opponents to British settlement were inspired by the religion the colonists brought with them.

The history remains powerful. It was entirely coincidental, but we were talking on November 5, the anniversary of the 1881 invasion of Parihaka, a site of peaceful resistance led by Te Whiti.

But the stories of those prophets, told so well by the likes of historian Judith Binney, have overshadowed another story.

‘‘The vast majority of Ma¯ ori were actually Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians and Salvation Army. They were also expressions of keeping our culture alive and of mana motuhake. It’s just that our story isn’t sexy. We weren’t the beret-wearing, Che Guevara crowd.’’

Incidentally, where would Kaa put Brian Tamaki’s Destiny Church in this story of Ma¯ ori Christianity?

On some levels, Destiny’s work is ‘‘objectionable’’, Kaa says, especially the homophobia that is ‘‘unacceptable from a Ma¯ ori perspective’’.

But on the other hand, the criticism from the Pa¯ keha¯ world is partly because Destiny is ‘‘seen as impeding Ma¯ ori progress towards the great white middle-class assimilation’’. And they do good work with ‘‘the marginalised, the ex-gang members no-one else wants to touch with a stick’’.

As for tradition, though, Destiny’s is an inherited, modern US one, not the Ma¯ ori tradition that has been here for 200 years.

Which brings us back to the Anglicans. The secular view often sees Christianity as something imposed, a colonial weapon. That’s the fatal impact model of one culture overpowering another.

But actually, as Kaa shows in the book, there is a two-way street. Ma¯ ori gained from the arrival of missionaries and their institutions, and created their own spaces in the church, adapting it to their needs. (The word ‘‘mihinare’’ is a translation of missionary.)

‘‘The genius of the early missionaries was that they came here knowing the power and importance of the language. Ma¯ ori orthography came from the missionaries. The Church Missionary Society in England kind of believed in mana motuhake, that culture was valid. The Treaty of Waitangi comes out of this theological thinking that Ma¯ ori social structures were valid in themselves.

‘‘These institutions weren’t only homogenous oppressors, but were also enabling, protective spaces. The Ma¯ ori language survived in our marae and in our churches. All these things are food for thought about our history as a country.’’

‘‘This idea of faith belonging to an individual, being about individual choices, I don’t know if that’s necessarily been us as Ma¯ ori.’’

Kaa now works as kaia¯ rahi in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Auckland. The role means he is a kind of guide or mentor who ‘‘shapes Ma¯ ori and Pacific approaches, policies and content within the faculty’’.

He is also a reliable and respected commentator, especially in Ma¯ ori media. He was sought out for his opinions when the country prepared to vote on cannabis legalisation and euthanasia; both issues have a Ma¯ ori dimension and one of them has an obvious religious dimension.

He ticked no to both.

‘‘On both of these issues I kept getting asked, ‘Is this because you’re a minister? Is this informed by your religion?’ Absolutely, but not necessarily in the way people think.

‘‘It’s not necessarily a question of personal morality or approving of cannabis. It’s about structural injustice, systemic racism. Jesus talked a lot more about economic harm than about who slept with whom. We get these misperceptions around what Christianity is and what it does. America doesn’t help that because, like Destiny, the right-wing dominates the discourse.’’

First, cannabis. Yes, he agreed with ‘‘a lot of the drivers of the referendum’’. He agreed with moving to a health approach. He agreed there is systemic racism in the criminal justice system and in the way the Misuse of Drugs Act is policed. But?

‘‘Unfortunately I’ve also seen, and all Ma¯ ori have, I think, if we’re being honest, the huge damage that cannabis does in our wha¯ nau and our communities. The long-term damage. And I say this as an academic myself, but it’s not necessarily that well expressed in the research, and so it’s kind of anecdotal, but any Ma¯ ori will tell you about its insidiousness.

‘‘The sad thing is I believe there would have been an increase in access to cannabis and an increase in legitimisation, particularly by young people. I didn’t believe it would be mitigated nearly enough by what was being offered. On balance, I had to say no.’’

He didn’t really believe in the ‘‘promised land’’ of health responses and treatment that was supposed to follow legalisation. Also, he says, referendums are a terrible way to make big decisions. ‘‘You’ve either got a yes or a no. There’s no room for nuance.’’

But he hopes that Labour’s Ma¯ ori MPs ‘‘use their clout’’ to find ways of addressing those issues in the justice system and health system.

As for euthanasia, Kaa’s concerns were over the vulnerable and the disabled community. ‘‘Poor people don’t have the same amount of choice as white middle-class people do, the ones who were pushing for this. I absolutely believe in people’s dignity, but we don’t look after the disabled in our communities.

‘‘We don’t offer good palliative care. That’s the kind of dignity I’d rather have in the first place, rather than tidying up the messiness of death.

‘‘In some ways, this was one of the last great middle-class challenges. Death’s so messy. There’s so much pain, emotional, spiritual and sometimes physical, but people want to be able to switch away from that. I have a lot of care for people who have watched their loved ones die. I’ve done it myself. My father, my wha¯ nau, people I’ve been ministering to. We have to grapple with grief and as Ma¯ ori, we certainly understand that. Tears are gifts for us.

‘‘They were looking for a solution to something that I think was the wrong kind of question in some ways, which sounds harsh but I think has consequences for us as a society.’’

He was disappointed the referendum passed, but not surprised. ‘‘I do think it was selfishness. People want the ability to purchase their death, the ultimate consumer decision.’’