Review: Kua Tau, by Tainui Stephens

I remember listening to Tainui Stephens (Te Rarawa) many years ago at a talk where he told a story about the importance, in a particular instance, of taking a bottle of whisky to a meeting with a kaumātua he wanted to engage with for a project. I wondered if I would see it in Kua Tau: A Life in Stories, as it made a significant impression on me as a journalist, considering the importance of building and maintaining relationships. And I was not disappointed; it did appear in the book – just as he had described it.

Remembering this particular moment from a lifetime of them and putting it on the page is a powerful example of storytelling, with Stephens allowing the past to surface. The moment and the person are brought back to life in the mind’s eye of the reader as a recollection worth sharing.

It is one of many moments Stephens charts through this book, which chronicles his five decades working in film, broadcasting, cultural advocacy and writing. Nothing is off limits. From relations and relationships, pets and people, action and songs, sex, drugs and rock n roll, love and loss, whānau and friends, aunts and uncles, life and death, it’s all there without shame and wonderfully candid.

Readers wanting insight into Stephens’ life as a filmmaker and producer will find plenty of material about his work and his influence across the industry. However, the real richness in this book is in the many moments, chapter after chapter, where he recounts conversations, places and times with the myriad raft of people he has encountered on the way.

The relationship between his mixed race parents and their difficulties is poignant.  One can only imagine the pressure felt by them decades ago and subsequently how that affected him, his siblings and their relationships with each other. 

Stephens takes us to Australia to catch up with his father who has left the family for another life. ‘We became close and I would live in Sydney for long stretches.’ It is through this rekindled relationship he learned of the racist treatment his father had received as a Māori businessman in the 1960s, in particular ‘bank managers who would deny him a seat at meetings, and make him stand.’  It’s a searing picture of the institutional racism that still exists in many forms, though I hope any banker would desist from such behaviour today.

His relationship with his mother Adrienne also has its ups and downs, but the chapter where he writes about making friends with her is moving; he acknowledges the challenges facing her as half of a ‘biracial’ couple. At times this is funny as he talks of his ability to manage her through ‘the noble art of diversion’; then bittersweet when, in hospice care, she asks ‘Where are my babies?’ Stephens’ siblings are of course right there, taking care of her in her last moments. He notes: ‘to know the life story of your mother or father is to learn of their character and who they have to be as fellow human beings. It’s one route to friendship.’

Stephens never places any story ahead of another, but the book is circularity. People circle through his world, and he circles the planet sharing stories that form circles in themselves. The details of spending time in Europe with members of the Māori Battalion are equally as important as visiting his family members in Auckland, his daughter headed to school, the Māoriland Film Festival, being at a tangi in Northland or meeting Dame Whina Cooper in Mangere. 

Each chapter stands on its own as an episode, but also allows reflection as part of the circule before leading to the next moment. He writes of the taniwha and allows this to come into its own as more than a mythological identity found in a waterway.

‘There is a rhythm to the journey of our awakening. It beats with the rise and fall of every faculty and talent we have, and swings between what we can and can’t do. It seems to me that taniwha exist to give us direction.’

This seems to me the primary message of the beautifully rendered chapters in this book: Stephens has shown us how it is to be truly comfortable in the moment, and to have the presence, courage and audacity to share it.