Latest news from Moana...

Taiwan Rocks (15 Jul)
As we suspected, our time in Taiwan was our absolute highlight of the tour - in fact, the band feedback is it rates right up the top of the list of the many wonderful places we have visited since our inception in 2002. It is AWESOME.

Shanghai was fun and we did enjoy working with the wonderful Footnote Dance Company, our lovely new mate Aivale Cole and the NZ Trio. All the artists in the Expo production were wonderful and hopefully, we will run into them again. There were a few blips on the day - but you just have to go with the flow, which we all did. Anyway, it seemed to go off okay.

We liked the city of Shanghai but unfortunately, didn't get to meet any locals - unless you count people who were serving or massaging us so that was a big disappointment. In the end, we were just tourists like everyone else.

Have to say that what we were told to expect and what eventuated were entirely different! The expo venue was spotless, the people were so helpful and lovely, the kai was awesome, everything was well organised. Well, except our departure from Shanghai which was delayed by about 6 hours meaning we missed a connecting train ride to Hualien in Taiwan - meaning we had a 5 hour bus trip ahead of us at night after hours of sitting around in the Shanghai airport.

Well, Ngawini, Sophie and Joyce - our hosts in Taiwan - are second to none. Our coach ride was long but utterly delightful. We talked and laughed and watched movies and were served local tea and stopped for the first of our most amazing meals - a Taiwanese seafood restaurant.

Our schedule was impeccably organised, excellent production, great audiences (including a live TV hour long broadcast of us playing songs and being interviewed) but the highlight was actually hanging out with the locals. Ngawini Keelan who organised our time here, bought in her local Taiwanese collegues, members of the Council for Indigenous Peoples, Taiwan Indigenous TV - and took us to meet 3 different iwi groups. At the same time, she organised some major networking functions pulling together Taiwanese and NZ business interests, NGOs and government groups.

The hospitality has been second to none and I think even outweighed the mightly Italians! At my instigation, we performed a live number on television, fusing Amay (local tribe) waiata performed by a young singer - with our ad libbed vocals and taonga puoro. The start of something new....!

We also collaborated once again with the wonderful NZ Trio, whose talent and company we adore. Last night we played to a packed NZ Taiwan Gala Dinner - could have heard a pin drop for most of the night.

The proof in the pudding? Yesterday, we were invited to return in less than 5 weeks time - hows that then?

Watch this space....

(3 Jul)
We have been rehearsing full on for the special NZ showcase at the World Expo, as we fly out to Shanghai on Monday with our collegues in arms - NZ Trio, Aivale Cole and Footnote - a wonderful group of talented artists. I think its quite a stunning showcase; classical, dance, opera and us as well as great visuals. It is a bit dark in tone, but I'm kind of into 'dark' myself. I just totally mellow out when I listen to the Trio, Aivale and watch the dancers so I'm in the perfect space for Peace Song.

We perform three times in Shanghai on the official 'NZ Day' at the Expo - two to public audiences. It's said they don't clap over there - a bit like the odd gang pad I sung in earlier on in my career.

The Expo is packed to the rafters.

I had visions of mooching along to the Italian Pavilion to check out their Prada uniforms and get some decent coffee - but no, lines are said to be almost 9 hours long. It only takes 10 hours to fly there! Apparently the Chinese pavilion is spectacular and I can believe that. China does big and spectacular very well. Unfortunately, that pavillion will probably have the biggest lines so it will be unlikely that we will brave the thousands to queue up - unless a backstage pass has any clout!

Big security at the Expo, too. I guess with all the world leaders, millions and millions of attendees and the spotlight never far away from the occupation in Tibet, the red tape will be stretched tighter than ever.

Speaking of touchy, we are heading off to Taiwan after Shanghai which we are really looking forward to - particularly as we will be meeting with the indigenous peoples of that country. What a treat. Apparently there is a genelogical link between Maori and Taiwanese.

It will be great to perform in China - the last time I was there I got up for an impromptu karaoke number in a restaurant. If I remember rightly, they almost offered me a job on the spot - tragic though I was at singing! Come to think of it, the diners all clapped that night....

Radda Radda (23 Jun)
Go the All Whites (our national football team) - the real underdogs who have drawn on both their games, made NZ history and made us all very proud. Don't you just love it when the great masses write you off at the start without giving you a chance - it must spur them on. Sorta like the Jamaican bobsled team!!!

As for the Japanese and their insistence on hunting whale, its sickening. The rationale about it being a cultural tradition is no rationale for me; a Maori - whose people previously hunted kereru. I have never tasted it because kereru became so rare, they were put on the endangered list. And thats fine with me. I'd rather it survives and thrives. No one in my generation is particularly deprived - its not like we don't have a choice of meats to consume in this modern world.

What we need are the young people of Japan to stand up and protest.

(23 Jun)

Taonga (18 Jun)
Last night, I attended an art auction for the very first time. A collection of 'artifacts' from the Zanesville Museum in the USA was offered through Webbs to collectors and art lovers. A friend of mine who goes to auctions showed me the brochure otherwise I would have been none the wiser.

There were many taonga in there as well as some kitchy stuff and others that I recognised as generic tourism type stuff. Anyway, I went along out of curiosity. I alerted my mates with Moriori connections to the fact that some of their taonga was up on the lot - if they could come up with the required 20k to pick it up - yeah right! There were beautiful tiki, toki and mere up.

Now, I don't know one Maori who would actually purchase a patu or mere or tiki that they weren't geneologically connected to. Surrounded by an an ostensibly pakeha audience, I watched as taonga described as artifacts, devoid of context, identify, connection to the carver (in the main) or the 'owner' were sold for thousands and thousands of dollars to people who saw them as art investments.

It was hard to get my head around. There is no way I would take a tiki of unknown origin into my home, let alone a mere. No sweat to the collectors. I went along out of curiosity and thinking I might buy a humble huia feather; priced in the hundreds - it sold for over 7k. It was surreal and actually, disgusting. Greed mixed with money.

In the end, I purchased a generic carving, not noted as an 'artifact, not old - in fact there was only one other bidder. It looked like something I've seen around the government gardens in Rotorua. It felt benign, and okay for me - to bring this pou home; into my home - to give it a home where everytime I looked at it/him/them, I would smile and mihi to them as if a whanaunga. I mihi to this whakairo and I mihi to its maker - and I feel okay about that; like I have given it a home where it will be respected, not as a piece of art or an investment, but as a special taonga. I won't sell it. I didn't buy him to sell him.

Is that how the collectors feel who bought the feather for thousands of dollars, the toki for nearly 20k? Do they look at the feather and mihi to the bird and think of its origins or do they wonder how much the feather will raise at the next auction?

I also purchased a shotgun with a carved barrel on behalf of my partner. That wasn't identified as an artifact either - it was to me devoid of any wairua that the majority of the collection represented to me. I think you can feel these things...

The whole thing was wierd and horrible when I look back at it. When I saw NZers buying Papua New Guinea war shields and weapons, that felt just as bizzare. There is a total disconnection - the taonga is viewed simply as a piece of art that may appreciate over time, not as something imbued with a wairua; the wairua of its owner or its maker.

Who knows how these taonga ended up in the museum in the US. Were they sold their by Maori? Were they taken from Maori? Were they traded? Did other collectors offload them? Should they have been in any museum or in any arthouse auction? Should they have been reclaimed by the iwi that they were associated with - there was a Ngati Tarawhai taonga, hoe from the Whanganui, Moriori - should those iwi have been approached to have them repatriated? No Maori would ever buy these taonga - it just wouldn't be right. Sure these taonga are back in the country but in whose hands and for what reason?

So, that was my surreal, wierd experience last night. Fascinating, uncomfortable, disgusting, mesmerising.

Taonga (18 Jun)
Last night, I attended an art auction for the very first time. A collection of 'artifacts' from the Zanesville Museum in the USA was offered through Webbs to collectors and art lovers. A friend of mine who goes to auctions showed me the brochure otherwise I would have been none the wiser.

There were many taonga in there as well as some kitchy stuff and others that I recognised as generic tourism type stuff. Anyway, I went along out of curiosity. I alerted my mates with Moriori connections to the fact that some of their taonga was up on the lot - if they could come up with the required 20k to pick it up - yeah right! There were beautiful tiki, toki and mere up.

Now, I don't know one Maori who would actually purchase a patu or mere or tiki that they weren't geneologically connected to. Surrounded by an an ostensibly pakeha audience, I watched as taonga described as artifacts, devoid of context, identify, connection to the carver (in the main) or the 'owner' were sold for thousands and thousands of dollars to people who saw them as art investments.

It was hard to get my head around. There is no way I would take a tiki of unknown origin into my home, let alone a mere. No sweat to the collectors. I went along out of curiosity and thinking I might buy a humble huia feather; priced in the hundreds - it sold for over 7k. It was surreal and actually, disgusting. Greed mixed with money.

In the end, I purchased a generic carving, not noted as an 'artifact, not old - in fact there was only one other bidder. It looked like something I've seen around the government gardens in Rotorua. It felt benign, and okay for me - to bring this pou home; into my home - to give it a home where everytime I looked at it/him/them, I would smile and mihi to them as if a whanaunga. I mihi to this whakairo and I mihi to its maker - and I feel okay about that; like I have given it a home where it will be respected, not as a piece of art or an investment, but as a special taonga. Is that how the collectors feel who bought the feather for thousands of dollars, the toki for nearly 20k? Do they look at the feather and mihi to the bird and think of its origins or do they wonder how much the feather will raise at the next auction?

I also purchased a shotgun with a carved barrel on behalf of my partner. That wasn't identified as an artifact either - it was to me devoid of any wairua that the majority of the collection represented to me. The whole thing was wierd and horrible when I look back at it. When I saw NZers buying Papua New Guinea war shields and weapons, that felt just as bizzare. There is a total disconnection - the taonga is viewed simply as a piece of art that may appreciate over time, not as something imbued with a wairua; the wairua of its owner or its maker.

Who knows how these taonga ended up in the museum in the US. Were they sold their by Maori? Were they taken from Maori? Were they traded? Did other collectors offload them? Should they have been in any museum or in any arthouse auction? Should they have been reclaimed by the iwi that they were associated with - there was a Ngati Tarawhai taonga, hoe from the Whanganui, Moriori - should those iwi have been approached to have them repatriated? No Maori would ever buy these taonga - it just wouldn't be right. Sure these taonga are back in the country but in whose hands and for what reason?

So, that was my surreal, wierd experience last night.