Waka heading towards Mana Island
Wiremu Grace, Dr Miriam Ross and Associate Professor Paul Wolffram
Wiremu Grace, senior lecturer Dr Miriam Ross, and Associate Professor Paul Wolffram

In the VR film Whakakitenga, by Wiremu Grace, Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Atiawa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Porou; senior lecturer Dr Miriam Ross; and Associate Professor Paul Wolffram, the historical world of Ngāti Toa Rangatira warrior, poet, gardener, and carver Te Rangihaeata is brought to life.

“We are encouraging our new generations to connect to the landscape and our foundational stories through new media,” says alumnus Wiremu, who co-directed the film with Miriam and Paul from the University’s Film programme.

The collaboration between Ngāti Toa Rangatira and the University began when Miriam approached Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira to discuss a VR project about colonisation. The rūnanga suggested working with one of their iwi members, director Wiremu.

“Te Rangihaeata was a figure well known to Ngāti Toa for opposing colonisation,” says Wiremu.

The film shows Te Rangihaeata travelling by waka to Mana Island, seguing into an evening scene with Te Rangihaeata being visited by a kaitiaki (guardian spirit) taking the form of a white owl, and seeing a vision of the future of the land they care for being trampled on and split up.

Whakakitenga

“Quite a bit of the process was nutting out how to get the tone right. It was that balance between the fact terrible things have happened with colonisation but this is also a story about empowerment. The vision ends with a present-day waka ama going into the future to the haka ‘Ka Mate’, providing hope to say this story doesn’t have to end badly,” says Miriam.

“Our initial idea was to attempt to recreate disappeared spaces, things that were no longer there. And Wiremu helped us to understand the stories there to be told,” says Paul. “The first step of that was Wiremu taking us up the maunga (mountain) and showing us his world in a new way. He had an overlay of history that I had no reference to. He taught us to think in different ways.”

The film was created in software program Unreal Engine, and John Strang from visual design studio Dusk used Google map data and old cartographic data to realistically recreate 1840s Mana Island and the Porirua Harbour. The voices, music, and taonga puoro (musical instruments) were provided primarily by Ngāti Toa iwi, including Wiremu’s whānau.

“When it was screened at my marae, it was amazing to see the older generation’s reactions to a new way of telling a story they already have a connection to. The younger ones had a different experience, being more interested in the VR technology. For many of the whānau who saw Whakakitenga, it was a very emotional experience,” says Wiremu.

VR headset
The team working
Modern day Waka
“When it was screened at my marae, it was amazing to see the older generation’s reactions to a new way of telling a story they already have a connection to. The younger ones had a different experience, being more interested in the VR technology. For many of the whānau who saw Whakakitenga, it was a very emotional experience.”
– Wiremu Grace

The film, recording entirely in te reo Māori, premiered in October at the world’s biggest Indigenous film festival, imagineNATIVE, as well as being shown at Māoriland Film Festival. It is also the first New Zealand VR film to be recorded on anthropologist Dr Keziah Wallis’s and Miriam’s Indigenous VR map project, fourthVR.com. The project maps how Indigenous communities around the world have engaged with VR to tell their own stories.

Wiremu says, “I think the possibilities of new technologies are huge. We need to show we can tell our own stories and provide our own narratives, because they are important to us, our connections, whakapapa, and worldview.”

mana island

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