A Paul Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling ruin upon ruin and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This is what we call progress.

Walter Benjamin
Ninth Thesis on the Philosophy of History

Director Biography:

Theatre artist Lemi Ponifasio is founder and leader of the MAU. He is a High Chief of Samoa. He holds the title Sala. His work has been called genius, powerful, frightening, beautiful and inspirational, his critical eye on our times and fearless vision continuing to provoke attention and controversy.

Ponifasio has presented his stage works at the Lincoln Center New York, Holland Festival, Venice Bienniale, Vienna Festival, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, South Bank Centre London, New Crowned Hope Festival, Adelaide Festival, Theater Der Welt, and KVS Brussels amongst others, and throughout the South Pacific region.

Without ingratiation to Western aesthetics or South Pacific cliches, Ponifasio offers a deeply challenging and powerful approach to contemporary theatre. His radical, ceremonial staging intersects and transcends conventional ideas of dance, theatre, art, ritual and civic activism.

Ponifasio established the MAU in 1995, as a vehicle for critical reflection and creativity with artists, scholars, intellectuals, and community leaders; MAU as a community action.

STATE OF EMERGENCY

A call to prayer
A dance towards the light 
Unfold those battered wings 
Set the angel a flight

SACRED MAN

I am the child of the mist
I have become a werewolf in the shadow
I have become tapu
I am human

PRAYER OF THE ANGEL

Rebirth of the maggot
Floating in the sea of blood
Rebirth of forgiveness
Only if we
Forgive the unforgivable

MANA MOTUAKE A TUHOE

Your Majesty, Queen of England
My mother is the mist; my father is the mountain,
Enquire as to where the mountain and the mist come from and I will tell you that is where I come from.

The great Ariki, Toi and Potiki give me the right to stake my claim. Tuhoe gives me my sovereignty, the right to determine my own destiny. I am standing before all, a descendant of Tuhoe. Tuhoe is my dominion that keeps chaos at bay. It is what connects me to myself.
Our great ancestors carried the desires and dreams of Tuhoe, symbolizing the Tuhoe presence. They held the mauri, the internal drive, and the courage to holdfast to their dreams and their way of life. Te Urewera our territory is our marae and every person is responsible for his or her marae. You situate yourself where your strength is, beside your ancestral house. This is your genealogy, your skeleton, and your backbone as you look across your marae; your customs and traditions become the rules of behavior, the code of conduct within the designated grounds.

Tuhoe invented philosophies so not to be enslaved by the philosophies of others. Our Mana Motuhake therefore is to maintain the continuity and the consistency by being allowed to express the Tuhoe traditions. We have however become disconnected from our philosophies and become entrapped in the philosophies of others; actions that seek to erode and disconnect us from our traditions are actions that seek to enslave us within the regulatory frameworks of others.

We are fighting for our own meta-autonomy, those practices that gave rise to our current existence within our own sovereignties, the face of our ancestors, the divinity of gods and humanity. We remain resolute in maintaining the boundaries of our marae. The marae is an example of the dominion of Tuhoe over its lands; the meetinghouse is what gives value to the origins of the mountains and the mist.

The price of the liberty that the many peoples of Tuhoe sort to maintain was then and remains to this day, the will and purposefulness of knowing, being, and protecting the integrity of who you are, and not in the explanation of ourselves to others. The earth does not explain itself to mankind. It was here first. If you want to find out who we are, my responses may not be of much help.

Tuhoe have been criticized and reprioritized in the written records of those who have sought to drag us from the Te Urewera. We have been scorned as slow in coming forward and unwilling to accept development and we have been labeled as selfish and fundamentalists. Nevertheless it is now becoming clear to others why Tuhoe have conducted themselves in the way in which they have, as it is upon this conduct that their liberty depends. I too have a dream. To be able to claim that we are free.

We are the lake
The lake is us
We are the mountain
The mountain is us
We are the forest
And the forest is us
We are the stars
There is one spirit in all creation
That is the unity of all creation
That is what our ancestors passed on

Our lands were stolen
So too were our gardens and our cultivations
Our ancestors were abducted and moved from their homes
Away from the lake
Away from our food sources
And our ancestors lived in abject poverty with little food

That is why I describe you as people who consume their own mother
You desecrated our ancestor papatuanuku
Our Earth-mother
You dug her up
You ripped up her bones
And you trampled upon our mother

When you arrived our beliefs were in insects, the rivers, the birds, and the trees
And in the creation of Tane, god of the forest and humans
They were gods among gods
You come and tell us your god is the true belief
And whats more you bring your god who is judgmental

December 25th 1869
The Christians celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ.
The time Christians proclaim peace through
out the land and good will to all people
That was the day the Christians invaded our lands
Our homes, they despoiled the land
Raped our women and children
And murdered our ancestors
Your absolute goal from the beginning
was to blunder, to confiscate
and to oppress the independence and sovereignty of Tuhoe

The genesis of this ideology is in your supreme belief that fair civilization is superior
Your laws are superior
Your institutions are superior
Your god is superior
Your language is superior
Your physical look is superior
And to this day you still believe in your superiority

I stand here before you wondering of my redemption
I look at the endless horizon
Questioning my direction
Questioning the fairness of life
Questioning justice
Dreaming of a better life for my people
I too have a dream
I too have children and a family
I too want to be free
I too will die like you
Then you and I will become the one body of Papatuanuku

Lemi Ponifasio created the text for the Mana Motuhake a Tuhoe speech from views expressed by members of Ngai Tuhoe before the Waitangi Tribunal, 2005.

Lemi Ponifasio

TRANSIT OF VENUS

The angel in laughter 
the broken commandments
The empty promises
Hallelujah

HOME

Slow dancing on the burial grounds
Wandering aimlessly in the ruins
The black shag
Towards the ancestors
The earth and sky
The everlasting continuum
The chaotic tempest of life