Whales put scholar’s life on ‘whole different trajectory’
When a pod of dead whales washed up on the beach near her home in 2018, Bonita Bigham didn’t realise how they would change her life.
Six years on, she has just left her home and family in Manaia, South Taranaki, and embarked on a year-long US$40,000 Fullbright scholarship in Hawaii.
Bigham (Ngāruahine, Te Atiawa), an artist and Taranaki regional councillor, was sitting in a meeting when news arrived of whales on the beach at Kaupokunui.
“I had no idea what that meant for us, no idea what help would come, what relationships we would build, and the opportunities it would provide for all of us.”
Altogether, 12 sperm whales washed up on a five-kilometre stretch of the rough South Taranaki coast at Kaupokonui in May, 2018.
Whale strandings on the Taranaki coast happen occasionally, but they're rare and nobody in her hapū, Ngati Tu, knew how to deal with them.
Help arrived from New Zealand's acknowledged expert on whale recovery, Hori Parata, and his team from Ngātiwai in Whangarei. They led the hapū and iwi members, with Department of Conservation staff helping, through the gruelling, visceral process of harvesting the bones and parts of the whale that could be used, and burying the bodies.
Bigham says it is a time she will never forget, and had inspired her art and study since then.
“These whales put my life in a whole different trajectory, they called me and keep doing so. They’re not a separate species [to us], they’re our relatives, they’re our family,” she said. “That’s my passion, it keeps driving me forward, and it all started with the whales on the beach. Six years later, and two masters degrees later, here I am, off to Hawaii for a year.”
While there, she would work on her PHD, researching legislation and conventions which impinge on indigenous harvesting of marine mammal resources (including whale bone) for artistic purposes.
In the United States, it’s illegal for anyone to take a dead whale or dolphin, even to bury it, she said, including Kanaka Māoli ( the Hawaiian equivalent of Tangata Māori). “The Government doesn’t recognise their inherent indigenous rights.”
In 2015, native Hawaiian practitioners Roxanne Stewart and Kealoha Pisciotta were cited for an illegal “take” of the remains of a dead melon-headed whale that they removed off a beach and buried at sea.
“They were prosecuted by the American Government, the case went for three years, then the charges were dropped,” Bigham said.
In contrast, in South Taranaki hapū and iwi were very well supported by DOC staff when the 2018 whale stranding occurred, she said.
Another area where the differences in how indigenous cultural practice was apparent is the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) that is designed to prevent trade in endangered, threatened, or exploited species.
This meant Bigham had to leave her taonga carved from whalebone at home.
“Taonga make you feel safe, feel connected, share the artistry with others,” she said.
But because there’s no exemption in the law for indigenous practice, a whalebone taonga created in New Zealand would likely be confiscated at the border.
“We certainly agree with the intents and rightful application of the convention.
No one disagrees with the prohibition on elephant ivory for example, it’s the wider application... it’s the commercial overlay over cultural practice.”
After she arrives in Honolulu, she would plan how to spend the year and what she could offer the community there.
“The year is mine to design my programme as I want to.”
Her husband, Kevin Huxtable, had retired so he could accompany her. “I’m excited because it’s a new adventure, all of our children are grown, there’s really nothing stopping us from going,” she said.
While she’s away, she would attend TRC meetings and her other governance roles with the help of technology.
Bigham said she was grateful for the support of sculptor Rangi Kipa, her Massey University arts supervisor Huhana Smith and Stephen Wainwright, Creative NZ ceo, who were her referees in the rigorous application process for the scholarship, and the encouragement of her late mother, Hinewaito, and her son Te Rei, who she would miss terribly, she said.