Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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my van pull up. Niki had thrown her clothes out into the rain and broken her ladder. As
we squatted outside with the camera rolling, she hid a tomahawk behind her back and as
I spoke with her, she kept glancing nervously over her shoulder to check if Niki was
approaching”. She told Ward that she was frightened of Niki because he had hit her on
one occasion, and the police had been called. 559 Her response to the violence of the
situation is particularly poignant, and illustrates what Ward was trying to achieve in
portraying the complexity of her relationship with Niki and their interdependence.
“When he do that I told you I run off. I won’t stay here. When I see you here, that’s
why I won’t run away. He can’t touch me when he see that three men are here […].
You know Vincent, I like to go away. I like to go away but I know he can’t cook the
kai. That’s why I stay here”. 560
Alun Bollinger suggests that some Maori could have a negative reaction to the film
because “this elderly woman was effectively left to fend for herself with a handicapped
boy […]. She could have done with looking after. There were some other kuia up and
down the valley who sort of kept an eye on her, but they didn’t get close […]. There
was generally nobody else there for her”. 561 This is borne out by the local minister, Eric
Caton, formerly of the Waimana Presbyterian church, who made similar comments. 562
Turei Heke, of the Ngaphi tribe, after watching the film, makes the point, in a letter to
Jillian White, who accompanied me to Waimana: “Those old people taught us things
that we could never do. Look after our own no matter what. Values that we do not live
up to. No doubt part of the reason why the whanau of the old lady were upset was
because the truth does hurt”. 563
Clearly, Ward’s knowledge of this community was not the superficial one that some of
his critics have assumed. He had initially envisaged that the filming of the documentary
would take about six weeks, but it dragged on for over two years, during which period
he and his small crew lived in the community for weeks at a time. When I interviewed
members of the local community who remembered the filming of the documentary, they
stressed that Ward’s presence in the community had been very unobtrusive and that he
559 Ward, Edge of the Earth: Stories and Images from the Antipodes 24-25.
560 Martin, "In Spring One Plants Alone: A Matter of Seeing It," 12.
561 Lynette Read, interview with Alun Bollinger, 3 December 1998.
562 Lynette Read, interview with Eric Caton, 16 April 2000.
563 Turei Heke, letter to Jillian White, 2000. Alun Bollinger thought that Puhi was not Tuhoe herself, but
Ngati Porou, and that she had married into Tuhoe and was living in Tuhoe country. Her son was Tuhoe,
but his disability caused embarrassment. Lynette Read, interview with Alun Bollinger, 3 December 1998.