The Thought

 “Whakapapa has had a major part to play in the resilience of Māori and their ability to spring back up. It is to do with that sense of being essentially at one with nature and our environment, rather than at odds with it. As tangata whenua we are people of the land – who have grown out of the land, Papatūānuku, our Earth Mother. Having knowledge of whakapapa helps ground us to the earth. We have a sense of belonging here, a sense of purpose, a raison d’etre which extends beyond the sense of merely existing on this planet.”

Joseph Selwyn Te Rito From Whakapapa: A framework for understanding identity

 

Storytellers have captured the imaginations of audiences since time immemorial. Their stories shape and create our world, give places meaning and remind us of heroes long past. Stories are the backbone of oral traditions and work to keep the history of ages past.

 

Entertainment, classroom, map, and history book all at once– the traditions of storytelling in the Pacific Islands are as diverse as the islands themselves. Some stories between the islands are connected through the characters, like Maui the Demi-God, and yet in each telling the shifts and is shaped by the community and the individuals that tell them. Other stories tell of mountains, lakes, coral beds and beaches close to the community that were once touched by monsters or mythic heroes. Stories have the ability to create framework to the world around and ground the listener to the places around them. For example, the tradition of keeping one’s lineage and the ability to recount the stories of your ancestors, called Whakapapa for the Maori in Aotearoa (New Zealand), keeps the listener tied to their island as their families began at the start of Aotearoa itself.

 

Through the following resources, we hope that your students understand that these stories create meaning between the people and their homes as well as listen to the wisdom recounted in these tales. The activity from the Pacific Worlds’ Curriculum was included in our resource list to challenge the students to learn about their own neighborhoods and to learn the stories that tie them to their land and place.

 

Student Objectives

  • Learn about the importance of stories to place making
  • Explore the different traditions of storytelling within the islands and learn about other modes, arts/song/dance, to tell stories.

Resources on Pacific Island Storytelling:

      Hawaii:

 

Aotearoa

 

  • Whakapapa Tradition: Article about the importance of genealogy of both families and of nature. By passing on the lineage and the stories of ancestors it connects and grounds future generations to their roots and the Maori to the land. http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/whakapapa-genealogy
  • Academic Article on Whakapapa: Great article by Joseph Selwyn Te Rito about how whakapapa works in historic and contemporary maori society to link different generation together. http://www.review.mai.ac.nz/index.php/MR/article/download/56/55
  • Storytelling around Matariki (Maori New Year): Video clip developed by Te Papa, New Zealand’s history museum, about the celebration of Matariki and the tradition of telling stories around the New Year—clips of storytellers discussing their background and snippets of their performances at last year Te Papa Matariki celebration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40Gu4517Kyg

Samoa

  • Fagogo Storytelling Introduction and story portal: Great resource on Samoan Storytelling traditions or Fagogo. The page leads to different favorite stories spoken and written in Samoan with side-by-side translations in English. http://www.fagogo.auckland.ac.nz/about.html

 

Stories

(All of the books found in this resource list were checked out through the Seattle Public Library.)

      Origin Stories:

  • Aotearoa –Maui and the Great Fish (Story in Book): Kiri Te grew up hearing her family recite Maori stories and she compiled this series of stories from her memory. Beautiful watercolors accompany the stories by Michael Forman. The stories are written with students in mind but deals with subjects like death and some images have partial nudity. This tale tells how the demi-god Maui fished the island of Aotearoa out of the oceans.

 Kanawa, Kiri Te. “Maui and the Great Fish.” Land of the Long White Cloud: Maori Myths, Tales, and Legends. Arcade Publishing, 1989. Page 17-22.

  • Aotearoa—Kupe’s Discovery of Aotearoa (Story in Book): This tale begins with a navigator splitting off from his community and setting off on his own with his family to find a new home. During their sea voyage they encounter a monstrous octopus and their battle creates the landscape of Aoteroa.

 

Kanawa, Kiri Te. “Kupe’s Discovery of Aotearoa.” Land of the Long White Cloud: Maori Myths, Tales, and Legends. Arcade Publishing, 1989. Page 17-22.

 

  • Creation Story of Guam: Much of the original religion and stories of Guam were stifled and silenced by the Spanish colonizers in the 1600s as was much of the culture of the Chamorro people . Few stories remain but the ones that have been carried on through the generations give us glimpses into what the community was like. This story is how Guam came to be. http://www.pacificworlds.com/guam/arrival/ancients.cfm

 

 

 

Origins of Crops:

Breadfruit: Breadfruit was one of the original crops that is understood to have travelled by canoe with the ancient explorers. It is a crop that is a staple food for many Pacific Island nations. It is interesting to see the similarities between the stories and the importance of the crop during famine.

  • (Hawaiian)The Gift of Ku http://www.carenloebelfried.com/read.html
  • (Micronesian) The Tree that Bled Fish(Story in Book): Flood, Bo. “The Tree that Bled Fish.” From the Mouth of the Monster Eel. Fulcrum Kids, 1996. Page25-31.

Stories on Celebrations

 

 

Activity 1:

This activity was created by the Pacific Worlds Project that interviews Pacific Island indigenous elders about their home. Many of the place names in their surrounding communities are imbued with historical meaning and stories.

 To make connections between the Pacific Worlds project and our Seattle home, students can look to the original Duwamish place names and geography of this area. The names tell of the original use by the Duwamish. Students can also be encouraged to look at the street names of their surrounding neighborhood and research the origin to the name—for example Spring Street in Downtown Seattle was a fresh water spring that was known by the Duwamish. For younger students, they could be encouraged to create their own meaning story behind their area’s street names.

Location of Pacific World’s Curriculum

http://www.pacificworlds.com/homepage/education/curric.cfm

Resources on Original Seattle Place Names

Burke Museum Waterlines Project: The project has collected the original Duwamish place names (translated as well) of the Puget Sound Coastal Regions.  Their work has been arranged into a graphic poster map and pinpoints each place name. (Classroom Sets of these maps are available)

http://www.burkemuseum.org/static/waterlines/project_map.html

Burke Museum Video “Djidjila’letch to Pioneer Square: From Native village to Seattle Metropolis”

Video that is a period-by-period map of Seattle which highlights important places of interest and their names. It also includes timelines on settlement and changes to landscape. Key historical figures and their developments, like Yesler, Boren and Denny are touched upon as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5z2q2mxRnns

 

Activity 2: A Native Place

Overview: Pacific Worlds shows that there are layers to the landscape.  The very place where you stand, or where your school is located, reveals layers of history going back to ancient times.  In the last lesson, we investigated what can be learned about the most ancient layer.  In this lesson, we look at features from your culture about which the histories are still known.

The purpose of the “Native Place” chapter is to show that whatever modern layers of the built environment exist, underneath it there is still a landscape of indigenous culture, where the ancestors lived, and worked, and prayed, and died. The emphasis is that culture manifests on the land, that the landscape as a “humanized environment” is itself a history book, and holds markers that are references to the history of indigenous culture in your area.

This lesson looks at the distinct landscape features of your culture that appear in your area.  These are the human-made features that define your area as a “native place,” a place where your culture manifests in distinct and visible forms that have histories and meanings.  These features become tools for teaching such topics as the traditional leadership structure, beliefs, cultural practices, and more.

Clearly there must be a lot of leeway in determining what sorts of features are distinctly indigenous.  In some places, traditional landscape features are readily apparent.  However, in areas where colonization has been severe, one may need to look at indigenous influences on more contemporary structures.  Indigenous cultures, as we know, do  not end with Western contact; they merely take new forms.

 

Lesson at a glance: Students will use sources on mythology, oral tradition, cultural sites, and other literature to learn about tradition and special sites pertaining to their area.  Use and structure of particular features  may be examined and compared to similar features in other locations.

Key Concepts: “built environment,”  cultural landscape features including religious structures such as temple platforms, shrines, fishponds, meeting houses and birthing stones; the traditional leadership structure of your culture.

Lesson Outcomes: The students will:

  1. Identify local cultural sites and learn their significance

Tools: 

The references needed for these exercises will vary with each island entity.  They would include books or other information on

–traditional architecture

–traditional social and political structure

–traditional beliefs

A Good discussion of Place Names can be found in the Appendix of Pukui, Elbert & Mo‘okini’s Place Names of Hawai‘i (University of Hawai‘i Press)

 

Notes:

This lesson focuses on the traditional culture of your society, particularly the structure of a community and a village, and the nature and structure of the home or home compound.

Note also that there may be “storied places” in the landscape that are not human-produced sites.  These include, for example, “natural” rock formations about which there is a legend or myth.  Such sites are part of a later lesson.  Here, our focus is on places created by people of the past.

 

 Exercise :  Place Names

Place names represent one of the key ways in which a natural landscape becomes “humanized.”  They are markers from the past, that tell of events, or observations, or activities, or ways of seeing.

–Compile a list of place names for your area.  To the extent possible, find the meaning of each place name.  Some place names come from so far back in the past that they have no contemporary meaning.

–Try to determine how the place names are arranged: are there names for larger regions, and then for sub-regions?  How small a place can still have a name?

–What are the common words associated with place names, if any?  For example, place names often contain words meaning “water, “ “hill”, and so on. Try to categorize these names into groups, for example:

  • Names that simply describe, like “Big Hill”
  • Names that are associated with a legend or legendary being or event
  • Names that refer to human activities, such as “Hunting Ground,”  or “House of ~”
  • Names that refer to plants or wildlife
  • New names, bearing the marks of other cultures

–Discuss with your students what these names say about how the people of your island saw the land.