|
|
|
|
|
Meri Hohepa: Mother Aubert and the Maori- by Jessie Munro This essay was first published in New Zealand in 'The French and the Maori' (Chapter 5) 1992. It was edited by John Dunmore. © the Fédération des Alliances Françaises de Nouvelle-Zélande. Published by The Heritage Press Ltd, Waikanae. It was re-edited by Jessie Munro, in 2001, for publication (with permission) on www.hoc.org.nz & www.compassion.org.nz
Suzanne Aubert was eighty-one years old when she wrote these words in a letter from Rome to Sister de Sales, and the little pen-sketch of her landing in New Zealand, traced fifty-six years after the event, had lost touch with contemporary realities. Back in December 1860, there were already many pakeha in the capital of the twenty-year-old colony. Neither could the wharf of this growing port have been poor and miserable except in a comparable sense. But the essence of her statement is what counted for her––a Maori hand was the first held out to her. Whether or not this was true cannot be verified, nor does it really matter. It is safe to say that even if twenty hands were stretched out to help her on shore, she would make sure she seized the Maori hand! Suzanne Aubert was never a passive onlooker in the creating of her life story and she had come to New Zealand to live and work with the Maori. Suzanne Aubert was first and foremost a missionary. She grew up in Lyon, in an atmosphere of devotion, good works and not the least, enthusiasm for the foreign missions. Lyon was the home ground of the Society of Mary, which provided the early missionaries for much of Oceania. She said that as a child she had met Bishop Pompallier on his earlier trip back to France; and that as a young woman she had trained herself in nursing and medicine for mission work. When Pompallier returned in 1860 she eagerly joined him with three other Frenchwomen to come to New Zealand as missionaries to the Maori. When she arrived in New Zealand, however, it was not so straightforward to be a missionary to the Maori. The very early missionaries had of course ministered almost exclusively to them. There were very few settlers. But by the time the Catholic Church was established in 1838, the wave of European settlement was just about to break and surge on New Zealand’s shores. In building up his young church, Pompallier was increasingly caring for Irish immigrants as much as converting Maori. And by late 1860, war had already begun between Maori and the colonising power. This, then, was a setback to her vision. She found herself at first living and working with the Sisters of Mercy, part of whose work from 1854 certainly covered the care and education of Maori girls. An increasing part of their work, however, was the education of the daughters of white settler families. Suzanne Aubert was equipped with a background admirably suited for this: she could give lessons in French, in embroidery, sewing, piano and singing. But she chafed at this and before long, according to her own memory of events, she informed Pompallier that she was not there to educate young Auckland ladies. If she was not going to be a missionary to the Maori, she would go back to France. This may have been what motivated Pompallier to put the French sisters in charge of the Maori pupils. Commonsense would also have prevailed. They were newly arrived, only just mastering Maori and English and probably less suited to teach English-speaking pupils than were the Sisters of Mercy. In 1862 Pompallier set up the small religious community called the Congregation of the Holy Family, and established the Nazareth Institution, at Mount St Mary in Ponsonby, solely for the care and education of Maori girls. He wrote a Rule for the little community; they wore blue habits with white coifs, took simple, yearly vows and were headed by his niece, Lucie Pompallier, as Mother Mary Baptist. Suzanne Aubert was known as Sister Mary Joseph. There were also two Maori: Peata and Ateraita, the first Maori nuns. Ateraita was from the Whakatane area and had been converted by the Catholic wife of a Danish settler, Hans Falk. She was baptised by Pompallier and named for Princess Adélaïde, daughter of King Louis Philippe and a supporter of Pompallier’s mission. Ateraita did not play a large part in the Nazareth Institution for shortly after she left and returned to her own people. Peata, however, is the woman who, probably more than anyone else, helped Suzanne Aubert lay the foundations of knowledge and understanding of Maori language and culture that brought her the respect of Maori wherever she went. Throughout her life she acknowledged Peata’s contribution. What is recorded of Peata’s story indicates a woman of high standing, knowledge, dedication, courage, action, loyalty and perseverance: all qualities that would have fired the imagination and zeal of the future Mother Mary Joseph Aubert. Early records gave Peata’s Maori name as Hoki and state that she was a niece of the great Nga Puhi chief, Rewa. She is said to have been widowed at the age of twenty-two. She was baptised during the very early days of the Catholic mission. Pompallier gave her the name of Peata, from the Latin Beata, meaning Blessed. (This baptismal name would presumably have been originally for a specific person venerated in Catholic tradition.) Hoki’s little daughter was christened Emeretiana in one account, Avotia in another. When the bishop’s residence was moved to Auckland, Peata went too. At the time the Wellington diocese was set up in 1850, she accompanied Bishop Viard down to Wellington and she figures in Wellington’s earliest baptismal records, standing godmother to the first female Catholic baptisms. Two letters from this time show the depth of respect and affection Pompallier had for Peata. He wrote to Viard on 26 January, 1851: “Beata writes to me that she wants to come back and asks me to obtain a passage for her on the Victoria. I cannot refuse anything to this dear convert; she is one of the first daughters of Jesus Christ at the Bay of Islands….If the brig Victoria is at Port Nicholson I would be very grateful if you would get a passage on her booked for Beata to Auckland from the captain or whoever deals with that sort of thing. If the ship were here I would make this request myself.” And two days later, again in his own handwriting, a letter in Maori (not without a few errors) goes to Peata:
This, the full text of the letter except for the last line which is illegible, is an important document as it shows the regard he had for her. It pays her the courtesy of a personal letter, not just a message conveyed by Viard, and gives details of practical arrangements as well as reassurances of affection. He greets her, blesses her, says he has received the books she sent, reassures her that her message and thoughts have been understood and conveyed to the others, pays tribute to her as one of the first converts, sends love from himself and the nuns, tells her arrangements have been made for her to live with the nuns back in Auckland and that he has written to Viard arranging her passage back. He is waiting for her return. The fact that she was one of the first converts and worked so loyally and so long for the church was not the only reason for the bond between Pompallier and Peata. The second reason was a debt of gratitude for an act of courage which would also be likely to cement a bond between her and the spirited Suzanne Aubert. A long letter written from Rome in February 1860 by Father Walter McDonald on behalf of Pompallier records in detail how, three weeks after the sacking of Kororareka in1845, Peata stood alone on the shore and held back with brave taunts and the strength of her mana a party of six war canoes threatening to attack the bishop’s residence. In sending this full report to the Propagation of the Faith in France, Pompallier was acknowledging and recording for posterity her act of heroism of fifteen years previously. The 1860 date of this letter indicates that the incident was still vividly remembered at the same time Suzanne Aubert met Peata. It is quite possible to imagine Pompallier telling the story to the French women before they met the Maori woman they would be working with. This then was the background of Sister Mary Joseph’s constant companion for a decade. Giving full recognition here to the role Peata played in the story of her work among Maori is not to ignore the contribution that many other Maori people must have made in these ten formative Auckland years, nor to downplay Suzanne Aubert’s own wholehearted commitment to learn about all things Maori. But she herself placed Peata at the top of seventeen Maori Catholics she especially acknowledged and respected. Peata was undoubtedly a catalyst for change which enabled Suzanne Aubert to become also Meri Hohepa, fluent in Maori, well-versed in tikanga and expert in Maori medicinal knowledge. Nevertheless, by 1870, ten years after her arrival in New Zealand, her life as a missionary among the Maori seemed to be crumbling around her. Pompallier had gone back to France in 1868 taking with him Lucie Pompallier, his niece and Suzanne’s co-worker and superior, and leaving behind him a diocese hampered by debt and a mission in disarray. Not that Pompallier was responsible for much of this; the combination of time and place had not been auspicious for mission work. The New Zealand wars had eroded Maori trust, Auckland was the capital for the first part of the decade and hence the symbol of conquest, while the influx of settlers into the diocese effectively diverted more and more missionaries and more of the overstretched church budget into pakeha parish work. The Nazareth Institution had started well, attractively housed in buildings subsidised by Government funds for native education. Inspector’s reports indicated a happy and productive environment, although no great academic achievement in conventional terms. Isa Outhwaite, a friend of Sister Mary Joseph, remembered how she would come into the Outhwaite garden with a frying pan, and sit on the ground to soak and eat pipi with her pupils. Yet the institution too was affected by the same forces that defeated Pompallier. By 1868 Suzanne Aubert was beginning to realise that, to continue working among the Maori, she would have to leave Auckland. A report by the Inspector in 1868 shows this:
Two more years were to pass, though, before Bishop Croke, Pompallier’s successor, terminated her work in Auckland, sending the few remaining pupils back to their people. Peata, now blind, was transferred back to the Sisters of Mercy. Sister Mary Joseph refused to take up Bishop Croke’s suggestion that she return to France. As her vows had been yearly only, she was no longer technically a religious. She could defy him. In a letter to Father Yardin in France in 1870, she wrote a dramatic dialogue of her confrontation with Bishop Croke, in which one of her lines was: “I came here for the Maori; I will die in their midst.” Croke, who was to leave New Zealand after only three years, inadvertently galvanised her into the action that she had foreseen two years earlier––but it was to the south, not the north, that she took her new direction. Father Reignier, the tireless Maori missioner in Hawke’s Bay, saw the chance to recruit a keen worker and invited Sister Mary Joseph to join him. It did not take her long to feel at home in Hawke’s Bay, with the French Marist fathers encouraging her and the Maori open to her education and healing. In 1871, the same year she arrived, she could write back to her friends the Outhwaites: “I think that I can do more good among the Maori in my present situation than I could do in my school in Auckland. I’m now quite regularly visiting six or seven pa and the chiefs, who at first looked at me disapprovingly, now actually welcome me warmly.” NP In the twelve very productive years she spent in Hawke’s Bay, she taught Maori children (Sir James Carroll being one of her pupils) and was Maori missioner in the absence of a mission priest in the Pakipaki area. In fact she spent years writing to church authorities pressuring them to send a new missioner, until Father Soulas finally arrived in 1879. But it was in medical work that her presence became invaluable. There were only two doctors in the Napier area and the need for more medical care was great. She knew botany and had undergone some training in medicine, chemistry and nursing in France in preparation for her life’s work. Her ability in diagnosis, treatment, bonesetting and especially in the preparation and dispensing of medicines had patients soon flocking to the dispensary at Meeanee and had her trekking over the countryside to tend to the sick. For example, in the year 1873 she is recorded as having treated 1,353 people. Nobody was charged for these services which she saw as part of her mission work, her main priority. Her ability to combine Maori medicinal plants and western chemistry was advantageous to Maori and pakeha alike. Later notes of recommendtion from influential chiefs Renata Kawepo and Paoro Kaiwhata, whose sick wives and children had been sent to Meri Hohepa for treatment, show the utmost trust they had in her skills. She is referred to as the “doctor of doctors”. She was given an initial grant of £40 from the Minister for Native Affairs, Sir Donald McLean, for medicines for Maori patients. Through her Hawke’s Bay years, she was often seen, alone or with a companion, wandering over the hills collecting roots, plants and leaves for her medicines. This continued from Jerusalem, on the Whanganui River, on a much larger scale, with the help of the sisters. They would roam through the bush behind the farm she bought, where she built a large two-storeyed drying shed, and the sisters would sleep up there when collecting and drying the herbs. She went further afield as well in the Whanganui valley, on her collecting trips. This intensive work resulted from a venture into patent medicines which she began in the early 1890s to finance the work of her Jerusalem orphanage and mission. The use of patent medicines was important at a time when doctors were few and expensive. These rongoa were sold first through Kempthorne and Prosser and then through Sharlands. Each had a Maori name and advertisements reinforced the “hidden good qualities contained in the vegetation of the colony” brought to the public by “Mother Mary Joseph Aubert who has spent most of her life among the Maoris and has, in that time, discovered the most valuable remedies”. There was Paramo, for the liver and kidneys, Marupa, for asthma and bronchitis, Natana for vomiting and Karana as a general tonic, especially recommended to help the body recover after alcohol abuse, a common complaint of the time! After some years this venture lapsed, with so many other schemes demanding her time. The recipes also unfortunately were later lost. Nevertheless, it proved that the public could be not only receptive to but enthusiastic about bicultural health treatment. At the same time as her skill in medicine was gaining recognition, her ability as a linguist was not being wasted. 1879 saw the publication of her revision of the Maori Prayer Book: Ko te Ako me te Karakia o te Hai Katorika Romana, which was used over a long period of time by the Maori Catholics of the southern dioceses. It was commissioned by Bishop Redwood and underwritten in the first instance by the Marist farm at Meeanee. It was a major undertaking yet the Ledger and Memorandum Book for the farm indicates that the loan had been paid off by October, 1881. The original Marist Maori Prayer Book had been printed in 1847 at Kororareka and there were some deficiencies in the Maori; in addition it gave several terms derived from Latin where Maori words were already in existence from an English source. In her revision, Sister Mary Joseph used more genuinely Maori words, such as “rongo pai” for gospel, and brought the Catholic terminology more in line with the Protestant. So Pompallier’s “epikopo” for bishop (also used in his letter to Peata), which derived from Latin “episcopus”, became “pihopa”, developed at the arrival of Anglican Bishop Selwyn. “Rehina” for queen (from Latin “regina”, changed to the established “kuini”. She compromised between the 1847 Hehu Kerito and the Protestant Ihu Karaiti to settle on Hehu Karaiti for Jesus Christ. Suzanne Aubert never did anything by halves. She threw herself into the task, writing in June 1879 to Marist Father Poupinel in France: “The reprint of the Maori book is taking up all my time”. Her urgency was to have it ready for the new missioner priest Father Soulas as he set out to revive the Maori Mission. But not even the urgency held her back from including more material. For in her enthusiasm, not only did she revise the contents of the prayer book, but she almost doubled it, adding Sunday and festal epistles and gospels based on Bible Society translations, and almost 100 pages of Old Testament stories including the Book of Maccabees. Always known to work into the night, she must have spent many a candlelit hour poring over her sources and writing her text. The book was certainly more definitive, but its length and relative expense resulted in a prompt printing in 1880 of an abridged version of forty-five pages: Ko etahi Ako me etahi Karakia o te Hahi Katorika Romana, which would be accessible to more people. In 1909, at an important hui at Pukekaraka, it was decided to produce a prayer book which would use a unified style of Maori and resolve the linguistic differences between the Mill Hill northern version and the Marist southern version. Tribal variations, however, and a reluctance to depart from long-established usage meant that this proved difficult to accomplish. Northern Maori usage is still based on the Mill Hill version and southern Maori on the Aubert version. The printing of the revised prayer book had been carried out mainly in anticipation of a stronger, revived Maori Mission once a new missioner was found. Sister Mary Joseph’s tenacity in the cause of gaining this new Maori missioner was finally rewarded in 1879 with the arrival from France of Father Soulas. One of his first tasks was of course to learn Maori as quickly as possible. To help him in this, she prepared a manual of Maori phrases with their French equivalents. There are touching and amusing passages about torn clothes, hot sun, and much about dogs, which must have reflected the hard life of the priests moving around the countryside:
As well as this manuscript, she prepared a French-Maori dictionary for Father Soulas, but this was later lost. Although the Maori-French phrase book remained unfinished and in manuscript form, the project gave her the inspiration to publish in 1885 a similar Maori-English phrase book, her New and Complete Manual of Maori Conversation, published under her own initials, S. A. She did this for very practical reasons––to fund the work at Jerusalem. In 1883, Father Soulas and Sister Mary Joseph had been transferred from the gentler landscape of Hawke’s Bay to the rugged Whanganui River valley, to refound the Hiruharama (Jerusalem) mission which had lapsed at the time of the Pai Marire (Hauhau) uprising. It was during her time at Jerusalem that her work expanded to encompass social welfare projects that would eventually lead her down to Wellington. Initially, however, continuing the Maori mission was her major preoccupation, and the book was to help finance it. This made clear in a letter she wrote in French to Sir George Grey in May 1884, asking if she could include some of his work on Maori mythology in her book. “The main aim of this publication is to facilitate among the Maori people the work of the Sisters of the Third Order of Mary that Monsignor Redwood has just charged me with founding at Hiruharama.” This manual of 197 pages was a selection of lively, communicative phrases on a wide variety of topics, which she saw as being useful to both races. Her direct, almost chatty introduction makes this clear: “[We] have endeavoured to make this little book useful to Maoris as well as to Europeans, and have therefor [sic] used expressions and written on subjects which may appear out of place in an ordinary book of conversation. We have a special chapter on New Zealand and the Maoris that may interest strangers or newcomers, who wish to know something about this country. We give a few general rules of grammar to gratify the reader’s curiosity.” The book was to have an interesting future. The original publishers, Lyon and Blair, were bought out by Whitcombe and Tombs who, in 1906, issued a new edition without her knowledge or consent. Her initials have disappeared from the title page and there is no reference to the original authorship. Sir Apirana Ngata edited this, and the grammar section benefits from his scholarship. Although her introduction makes it quite clear that she gave the “few general rules of grammar” incidentally, almost as an afterthought, his changes, either by supplying more detail, giving examples, or elaborating on more difficult points, have made this a fuller and more useful section. For example, she made no mention of the fact that adjectives in Maori come after the noun; as a French speaker, this would have posed no problem to her when learning Maori. But Ngata added and explained the position of adjectives as this would be a new and more difficult concept to an English speaker. She did not mention that Maori nouns do not normally change in the plural; he made this clear. Ngata’s preface was much briefer, and a judgemental tone had crept in, even if the point it made was valid. He wrote: “There is a special chapter on New Zealand and the Maoris that should interest tourists and newcomers, and even colonists, among whom there is frequently a lamentable ignorance of the ways of thought, and the traditions of our fine race.” But apart from this altered, much briefer introduction and the expanded, improved grammar section, the book is otherwise a direct reprint of the work of Suzanne Aubert. This edition was revised twice more, first by W. Bird, then by Winiata Smiler in 1964. In the 1964 edition the judgemental note has been deleted, but some unintentional rewriting of history has occurred with the passage of time: “The book was originally prepared under the guidance of the late Sir Apirana Ngata, the notable Maori scholar, who edited the text.” In spite of this controversial re-editing, the book is listed in H.W.Williams, A Bibliography of Printed Maori to 1900 and in the Turnbull Catalogue as being the work of Suzanne Aubert. In giving his imprimatur, as it were, to her work, Sir Apirana Ngata acknowledged the level of her scholarship in Maori. Her life changed momentously at the turn of the century. To her Maori mission work and her healing she added a whole array of social welfare projects which would bring her and her newly founded Congregation of the Daughters of Our Lady of Compassion into prominence in Wellington. Meri Hohepa became the well-known Mother Aubert. Almost inevitably this took her away from constant direct contact with the Maori people. Nevertheless, at no point did she contemplate closing down the work of the Congregation up the Whanganui River, and letters and records bear witness to the constant journeying between Wellington and Jerusalem. The work with the Maori was essential to her vision. In 1901 she wrote to the Sisters based at Jerusalem:
Photographs of Maori men, women and children are interspersed in Suzanne Aubert’s own personal album with photographs of her own family. Her association with the Maori was not just that of a missionary ministering to the natives; Maori people were among her friends and mentors. In Auckland there was especially Peata; in Hawke’s Bay she was known to Airini Karauria (whose married name was Donnelly, or Tonere), a niece of Renata Kawepo. When she left in 1883 to go to Jerusalem, Airini sent her a gift and this note: “He tohu aroha maharatanga mo te nui o ona arohatanga ki au me aku Iwi.” Sir James Carroll, also from the Hawke’s Bay years, was present at the opening of the Home of Compassion and visited her to pay his last respects when she was old and ill. A loyal close friend and helper in both Jerusalem and Wellington was Te Manihera Keremeneta, or Rure as he was affectionately known. During the time of the construction of the Home of Compassion, Rure features in several letters. He seems to have been frequently down in Wellington helping with the project and at the grand opening in front of all the dignitaries leading the way, clearing a path through the crowd. Rure’s opinions counted, as this cheerful letter of 17 November 1907 shows: We are still very busy at Island Bay. People are coming to help nearly every day. Yesterday afternoon we had a very large party of workers, nearly 400 men and women for three hours, they shifted about 1,200 tons of shingle for three hours. The Maire [sic] and his wife [were] at the head of them. They all looked contented and happy. Rure is delighted about the work. Rure, openly showing his grief, would take his place as one of the pallbearers at her funeral. To gain independence for her Congregation from diocesan authority, Suzanne Aubert went to Rome in 1913. She was to remain there for six years. Her letters show her homesickness for New Zealand. To Sister de Sales she wrote: “It seems to me that my bones could rest in peace in no other land than Maoriland.” The simplest of incidents mentioned in passing in a letter from London on 17 September 1919 speaks volumes: “An official of the N.Z. office shook hands with me with a hearty “Tena Koe” which shook my very heart. I had known the man…in Wanganui, and he recognised me at once.” In the middle of London, Mother Aubert is greeted in Maori, and it is that which shakes her to the heart. The essence of Suzanne Aubert’s contribution is that it was never just a matter of intellectual commitment or religious dedication; it was a gift from the heart. Back in 1883 Airini Tonere had already clearly realised this because in English her farewell message read: “This is a memorial of love for the labour of love given to me and my people.” |
|
|
|||