Manawa Toa/Heart Warrior

Rating:
Summary: Heart Warrior of the Pacific
Review: MANAWA TOA: HEART WARRIOR
SPINIFEX PRESS
CATHIE DUNSFORD

Manawa Toa: Heart Warrior takes the reader on a powerful journey of dreams, discovery action and awareness as indigenous tangata whenua [people of the land] join a Peace Flotilla to protest nuclear testing in the Pacific. Rich in imagery, dreams, and talkstory, this novel evokes the magic powers Booker Award winner Keri Hulme describes in Dunsford's novels : "Throughout Aotearoa you find caves, and in the caves you find marvellous drawings. Once you have a cave that has been inscribed, it becomes alive, touched by the human spirit. You all have a special treat in store in reading this book." Manawa Toa is such a cave inscribed with indigenous Pacific talkstory from the pen of an accomplished award winning fiction writer from Aotearoa. Buy this book, for you have, as Keri Hulme says, a special treat in store reading it. Dive into a luscious treat of vivid language and imagery laced with ancient Maori proverbs, and savour the powerful atmosphere. This is the novel as haka.

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Rating:
Summary: Heart Warrior- A Pacific Novel
Review: Review of Manawa Toa: Heart Warrior - Cathie Dunsford
Spinifex Press, Australia, New Zealand, USA, UK, Canada, 2000.
Meriel Watts
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As a long time community/environmental activist I have always keenly devoured any novel I can find that incorporates activist issues. Sometimes the fictional approach appears to trivialise the issues, and the plot becomes over-dramatised. But not so with Manawa Toa: Heart Warrior. Cathie Dunsford always manages the process of fictionalising political issues supremely well, and her latest book is a joy to the heart of an activist, especially a lesbian environmentalist. She has a happy knack of blending the fictional characters of Te Kotuku Marae on the Hokianga Harbour with the real life activists such as Stephanie Mills of Greenpeace, Oscar Temaru of the Tahitian Independence Movement, and even gay New Zealand politician Chris Carter. She takes us right into the hard core of an issue, in this case the rape and pillage of so-called 'French Polynesia' under the guise of colonization and through the medium of testing nuclear bombs far from the coloniser's own back yard. She broadens the simple fact of the blasting apart of Moruroa Atoll beyond that of environmental devastation to encompass the wider issue of indigenous peoples' rights.
As one who has sailed on the Rainbow Warrior, for many the symbol of opposition to nuclear testing, and has been touched by the mystique of that ship, I can find pride in this book.
And pleasure - for Dunsford also wraps the pain of our Pacific neighbour's problems with mouth-watering descriptions of luscious foods and lesbian love. She also never lets us forget the colonization of New Zealand by the English, but she sets the fresh from home Brit amongst the Maori wahine, the wild women of Te Kotuku Marae, in a way that warms the heart and lightens the spirit. Our hero, Cowrie, has an irrepressible twinkle in her eye.
Set against the backdrop of the sand dunes of the dramatic north west coast of New Zealand, Dunsford takes the reader through the initial planning stages of an activist's mission to the final celebrations when the adventures are over. On the way there are many twists and turns that keep the reader guessing. Not all is as it seems. We pass through riots, become entangled with the French gendarmes, taste fear, and share the camaraderie of activists and independence fighters. We feel the pain of suffering, the anger at the arrogance of colonisers and the despair of mothers who need to find uncontaminated food to feed their families. We share the loss of those who have given theirs lives for such causes.
But this is not a tale of despair, for Dunsford touches the warrior spirit within us all with her characterisation of Cowrie. She lifts us above the pain with her artful blending of the political issues and pleasure. She seamlessly blends together white and indigenous cultures, the New Zealand pakeha and Maori, not only through characterization but also through images of the fishing trawler and the waka, the mighty carved war canoe working together at Moruroa to support the rights of all peoples to self-determination. It is a manifesto for overcoming the racism that tears our world apart.
She matches the art of simple living in tune with the environment around us against the military apparatus of despoliation and rape: the cup of manuka tea brewed from the bush beside the office door, ancient Maori herbal remedies, and catching fish with simple material growing wild beside the beach take power over the blasting apart of the coral reefs that are the homeland of the Tahitian peoples. The dolphins that accompany the activists rise above the bloated bodies of poisoned fish.
Dunsford takes us on flights of imagination - gazing at the star filled Pacific sky from a hammock on the deck of Manawa Toa as the boat slowly ploughs her way through the vast ocean. But in her blending of the natural and spirit worlds, she never lets us forget the plight of those who "have signed treaties in good faith and been used as military or economic targets in return".
Tena koe Cathie, thanks for this gift, this taonga, it will give heart to activists the world over and lead many women to find their own warrior spirit.

Meriel Watts is director of Soil and Health NZ and author of Poisons in Paradise [Greenpeace], The Poisoning of New Zealand [AIT Press] and several other books.

Rating:
Summary: Manawa Toa: Heart Warrior - Pacific Peace Protest Novel.
Review: This is a stunning book about a group of activists who fight nuclear bomb tests in the South Pacific. It is witty, full of humour, powerful , empowering and it teaches all if us that it is possible to fight the adults and believe in justice for all. I learned a lot about the Maori people and about other Pacific Islanders and their struggles from this book as well as enjoying the luscious food and rejoicing in the subversive energy of the main characters. I have shared it with so many others and it is always the birthday gift I most like to give to alert others that it is possible to change the world and live from a heart place. This book changed my life. It made me want to join Greenpeace and fight for a better world. I keep it with me always so I can feel the strength of the characters and live inside them as they live inside me. I hope everyone will buy this book and rejoice in it as I and my freinds have done. The mythology and landscape/seascape take you into another world. Highly recommended. - P.A.