Tane

In the account most widely told, Ranginui the sky father and Papatuanuku the earth mother lay pressed together, and their children were held between them in darkness with no room to stand. The children debated what to do. Tumatauenga argued for killing the parents. Tane argued for separating them, so that the parents would remain and the children would have light, and that counsel prevailed. Several of the brothers tried and failed. Tane braced his shoulders against his mother and his feet against his father and pushed until the two came apart, and the world of light, te ao marama, opened between them.

Tawhirimatea, the wind, did not agree, and has warred against his brothers ever since. The parents grieve: the mist rising from the earth and the rain falling from the sky are named as their longing for each other, which gives the account a cost rather than a clean victory.

This is not a single fixed text. Different iwi and hapu tell it with different brothers taking the decisive part, with different names, and with different consequences following, and those tellings belong to the groups that hold them rather than to a general Maori mythology. Nineteenth century written versions, above all the material set down by Te Rangikaheke, shaped what later became the standard printed account, and that standardising is itself part of the history of how the account has been transmitted.

Tane holds the forest and everything in it. Trees are spoken of as his children, and so are the birds and the insects, which places the whole standing world of Aotearoa inside one set of relationships rather than treating it as scenery. In many accounts he clothes his mother, first with plants set the wrong way up and then, correcting himself, with trees rooted in the earth and reaching toward his father. Customary practice around felling a tree, taking timber for a canoe or a meeting house, and taking birds is spoken of in those terms, and the tikanga governing it is held and applied by the communities concerned rather than set out in a reference entry.

He is also credited with ascending to the highest heaven and returning with nga kete e toru, the three baskets of knowledge, which are named differently across accounts and which brought knowledge into the world below. In another strand he forms the first woman, Hineahuone, from the earth at Kurawaka, and from her descends Hinetitama, who becomes Hinenuitepo.

He is a present figure and not a closed chapter. The great kauri in the Waipoua Forest in Northland carries the name Tane Mahuta, is among the largest living trees in the country, and stands within the rohe of Te Roroa. The response to kauri dieback, including the closures and the washing stations on the tracks, has been argued and administered in exactly those terms, as care owed to a living ancestor.