Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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material, as well as to find the possible elder that the film would centre around”. He
stayed with Eva Rickard for several weeks and found her very helpful in explaining
what he needed to know and in introducing her to people who might be suitable as the
subject of the film. Ward was interested in the spiritual aspect of Maori culture,
particularly, “planting by the moon and associated rituals, Kai te aki: spiritual guardians
manifested in the form of animals, prayer as efficacy (protection) and dreams, visions
and ancestry (Te Matakite)”. As the research progressed, however, Ward realised that
the spiritual aspect would need to be restricted to those aspects relevant to the person
being filmed, “in order to maintain a style that was largely visual in form”, and that
many things would not be able to be shown since he would be restricted to depicting
only the physical manifestation of spiritual matters. 464
He felt that the choice of central person would be “critical”, and from the beginning, set
out to find a Maori elder living with one dependent, preferably someone who lived in
relative isolation and spoke predominantly Maori since: “It seemed more likely
someone in this situation would have preserved more of a way of living that existed in
the past”. His initial meetings with kuia in the Urewera district were unsuccessful in
that none of the old women he met “could express that world of spirits and ancestry in a
way that I was able to grasp”. 465 There was one old woman, however, whom his
contact refused to visit, saying that Ward would not want to meet her and referring to
her as “the burdened one”. Ward was naturally intrigued, and was eventually taken to
meet her. His account of their first meeting expresses his frustration at his inability to
communicate with her. “The old lady had a friendly, worn face, but to me, she was
closed like a book in a foreign tongue. She felt uncomfortable stumbling through the
little English she knew and so we sat in embarrassed silence […]. I felt so much like an
alien in the Maori world, and useless because my inability to communicate made my
visit seem pointless. I left after a few minutes, not wanting to intrude on her further”. 466
Despite the unpromising nature of the first visit, and Ward’s feeling that after three
months of searching, he had almost given up on the idea of finding a suitable subject for
the film, he continued to visit Puhi, taking her gifts of spring potatoes and fishheads,
which she liked. On these visits, he was never invited inside her house, possibly, he
464 Ward, “A Documented Account of the Making of In Spring One Plants Alone,” Section on Aims.
465 Ward, Edge of the Earth: Stories and Images from the Antipodes 6.
466 Ward, Edge of the Earth: Stories and Images from the Antipodes 7.