'...words in which the consonants have disappeared by a process of decay...'
S Percy Smith 'Notes on the Geographical knowledge of Polynesians 1898
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This slim volume, this greenstone coloured outcrop of the Journal of the Polynesian Society, is a surprisingly modest container for both the stated aims of its author, Stephenson Percy Smith, and the multitude of intersections and transactions recorded by its pages. The work spills over into four editions, each one markedly different in content, context and technologies utilised. The first edition of 'Hawaiki: The Whence of the Maori' printed by Whitcombe and Tombs in 1898, can be seen as a central point in the diffusion of Smith's work, not so much a locating beacon as a now submerged Motu of ethnographic theory. The modern planographic impression leaves barely a trace of its production. There are no glorious compositor slippages or erosions to lend a story. What there is though is time and depth; in the Toanga of the genealogical lineages, the arc of the journeys, the intellect of the network of colleagues and the personal time of those journeys. |
The banner at the top of this page is taken from a Journal of the Polynesian Society article, 'Governor King's Visit to New Zealand, 1793' by F.R. Chapman. It is indicative of the headpieces found throughout JPS publications. 'Hawaiki: The Whence of the Maori' only sports one of these ornamental pieces that not only sound an echo of earlier artisanal etchwork 'repurposed' via planographic techniques but also display thematic concerns. This image of the net has a resonant connection with S Percy Smith's work. Smith takes evidence given by native informants that tells of the origins of nets, being given to Maori by spiritual beings known as Patuparehe. Smith with his scientific knowledge, reasons that such stories are, as product of the primitive mind, indicate concrete evidence of some kind of transaction between Maori and a light skinned people.
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While Smith is on an exploratory ethnographic mission, it is clear that his selection and processing of information is guided by his own cultural constructs. In his speech 'Notes on the Geographical Knowledge of Polynesians' (1898) he states:
'like all savage peoples, their perceptions of the signs of nature, whether on the land, the sea or in the air, were far keener than civilised beings' Aside from the questionable language of his statement, what is inferred is a loss of connection with nature in the civilised being. Taking Henri Lefebvre's notion of the construction of socail spaces, and extending the materiality of the book to include the technological and temporal aspects of the journey and the network of correspondance that underpinned the stopping off points of that journey we might be led to state that S Percy Smiths project was a means of seperating the information he gathered from nature. |