A beautiful day has been loaned to us. Your arrival makes it great.
Oketv semvnvckosen pom pvlhoyes. Momen pom vlakeckat heretos.
From far you have come and we say thank you. Your great work we value.
Hopiyen vlvkeckat mvto cekices. Cem vtotketv vcake tomekv, ecerakkueces.
You honor us and we honor you.
Ceme porakkuececkat, matvpomen ece rakkueces.
We have lots of love/respect for you.
Vnokeckv sulken cemoces.
E te rangatira, tena koe. Nga mihi aroha. Ka nui te aroha kei waenganui i a tatou.
This means, “Greetings to you, esteemed leader. Greetings of love. There is much love between us all [gathered here].”
We were all created by a story. Each and every one of us, walked, swam, flew, crawled, or otherwise emerged from the story. It is terrible and magnificent being, this story. Each of us has a part. Each thought, dream, word, and action of every one of us continues to feed the story. We have to tend the story to encourage it. It will in turn take care of us as we spiral through the sky.
Every once in a while a storyteller emerges who brings forth provocative, compassionate, and beautiful tales, the exact story-food the people need to carry them through tough transformative times. Patricia Grace of the Maori people is one of these storytellers given to the people of Aotearoa, and now to the world as she is honored as the twentieth laureate of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
What distinguishes Grace’s storytelling in the novel, short story, and children’s book form is her ability to reach back to the ancestors and the oldest knowledge and to pull it forward and weave it together with forward-seeing vision, to create what is needed to bring the living story forward. She uses the tools of grace, humor, humbleness, and wisdom to make the design. The design is not extravagant or show-off; it is exactly cut and crafted to fit the shape of Maori culture and ideals. In Patricia Grace’s stories everyone has a voice. In her stories, there is no separation between the land, the water, the sky, and the will of the people. Those relationships are honored.
If we have gathered the materials to make a structure with rapt attention and songs, and have followed a protocol of respect, then as we construct the story it will want to come and fill that place; it will endure and inspire. And we will endure and be inspired. Grace’s stories make a shining and enduring place formed of the brilliant weave of Maori oral storytelling and contained within the shape of contemporary Western forms. We are welcomed in and when we get up to leave, we have been well fed, we have made friends and family, and we are bound to understanding and knowledge of each other. We become each other in the moment of the story. We understand that we have all been colonized, challenged by the immense story we struggle within. We are attempting to reconstruct ourselves with the broken parts. Patricia Grace’s stories lead us back towards wholeness, to a renewal of integrity. This is the power of story. This is the power of Patricia Grace’s gift to the Maori people, to indigenous people and the world.
Last year as I prepared to present Patricia Grace’s legacy to an esteemed panel of jurors from all over the world I called together an informal meeting of Pacific Islander writers in Hawai‘i. We sat at a table in Manoa, over home-cooked food and refreshing drinks. I had researched everything I could through books and the Internet and wanted to know what Grace’s own people, what other writers from the Pacific had to say about her and her writing. I heard many things that afternoon. I was told of her extensive help in mentoring young writers, that she writes from within a Maori community, she always went beyond as she published a substantial and continual solid body of literature and raised her seven children. . . . We talked about how there’s a Maori level and an English literal level and how each story contains a storehouse of wisdom and knowing .... “It’s about time an indigenous person finds their way into these kinds of circle” said one. “She’s an ambassador for Maori women.” Her novel Cousins restores women to the story of history. “Her range of Maori voices is unparalleled ... she has exposed the Maori world to the rest of the world, showing that Maori people are as diverse as any other.” All the stories at the table as we talked about Patricia Grace kept spiraling back to respect, love, and accomplishment in these times of immense difficulty in our indigenous communities.
Finally, as I got up to leave, everyone wished me well in the presentation, but agreed that with such competition from world-known writers, Grace wouldn’t have much of a chance. “We know her and love her in the Pacific,” they said. “She’s one of our treasures. She isn’t known far outside the Pacific. At least the jurors will come to read her and her work might find a way through them.” We now know the ending to this story and we are here to celebrate. I must acknowledge the panel of jurors who were enthusiastically supportive of Grace. I did not have to do much convincing at all.
Joining me in celebration here tonight with their words are a few of Grace’s Maori colleagues.
Kia ora taatou.
I send my greetings and my family’s aroha to Patricia Grace for her Neustadt laureateship. The distinguished jury chose eminently well. Patricia Grace has mentored and encouraged many younger writers through her work with the Maori writers’ organization, Te Ha (which means the breath), and through the example she has set being an ambassador for Maori writing and culture internationally. I have always looked up to her with admiration for this generosity, given all that she has achieved in literature. Her children’s books have represented to New Zealand children all their wonderful possibilities from a Maori perspective, and have become classics in our nation’s literature. Her novels similarly engage Maori artistic potential, and bring us to the same literary table as New Zealand’s most successful women writers, Janet Frame and Katherine Mansfield, and all of our brothers and sisters who are renowned for their literary prowess from our Pacific region, and elsewhere. Patricia is our first Neustadt laureate, and also the first Maori woman to publish a literary collection. I thank you for choosing so wisely this author who is of our country’s community of writers, and of her tribal people. She is a national taonga, that is, highly prized by those who respect great writing. Patricia is our rangatira, our leader. She is an important compassionate voice, an immensely patient and nuanced voice, who shares Maori values and thus furthers our community. Arohanui to you, Patricia. Your writing brings Mauri Ora, the well-being of life’s energy, to us all.
—Robert Sullivan, poet (Nga Puhi, Ngati Raukawa, Kai Tahu, Galway Irish)
Pat’s work is such an inspiration to all indigenous people, to indigenous women, and especially, to Maori. We are very proud of her and gratified to see her honored by this very distinguished organization for her considerable contribution to the world of literature. Without writers such as Patricia Grace the world would know little, or nothing, of the enormous struggle Maori and other indigenous people all over the world have had, and continue to have, to survive, and hopefully, to thrive. Patricia Grace gives us a voice, she tells our stories, she shows in very human and personal ways the damaging effects of colonization and how we continue to exist and to prosper in spite of those. Her stories remind us that we are connected, to our past from which we draw wisdom and courage, and to others in similar situations around the world. As a Maori woman and a teacher of literature I am especially grateful that Patricia Grace continues to write us into the wider world picture, adding our experiences to those of human beings everywhere.
—Reina Whaitiri
Mvto, mvto, Patricia Grace, for taking care of your gift and sharing with us.