The Odyssey of Tā Apirana Ngata
The Odyssey is a new movie by Christopher Nolan currently in theatres. Here are some thoughts by Dr Hirini Kaa.
I grew up around story tellers in my whānau. Some were great stories of the deeds of our tīpuna. Some were kauwhau, reflections on the Paipera. Some were funny everyday stories, telling of recent or historical events. There wasn’t always a moral. Some of the gift of the stories was in the art of the telling – the journey, not the destination, was the story.
And my whānau were pretty agnostic about where the story came from, just that it was good.
One of the greatest influences on my whānau was Tā Apirana Ngata. From farming to whakairo; from education to faith: he helped shape our worldview. At Te Aute College under the influence of John Thornton, Ngata and others studied amongst other things, the classics. This meant the Latin language, often along with Greek. This in turn meant not only the study of the language but of their literary texts. Ngata would have studied Julius Caesar's De Bello Gallico (Gallic War) and Cicero's orations, followed by Poetry by authors such as Virgil and Ovid.
Thornton was visionary in that he expected his tauira to gain matriculation (University Entrance) and go on to study at university where Latin was compulsory. This, when there were no Māori students at universities. And yes, Ngata became the first graduate (with a BA in classics) and first law graduate. If you think universities are difficult spaces now, try being Him in the 1890s.
By making these subjects compulsory there was of course a colonising dimension, determining what constituted “classic” texts and centring the European worldview and intellectual and cultural heritage. It would be half a century before te reo would be taught in universities, and a century before our mātauranga was accepted. This was education as a contested space.
However, this form of education was no impediment to Ngata. He utilised the skills he learned to launch a new wave of mātauranga into the world. He started collecting our stories from around the motu, utilising the resources and disciplines of the new fields of ethnography and anthropology, which he published (with the help of Pei Te Hurinui Jones) as Ngā Mōteatea. These four volumes are our greatest stories, collected and curated to be saved and shared for generations to come.
Similarly to the Latin and Greek texts, Shakespeare was also given a prominent place in Western education. My grandfather could quote large parts of the Bard’s texts; my Uncle Wi Kuki Kaa was in his plays; and my Aunty Arapera Blank-Kaa used Shakespeare to show the power of our own pūrākau. And if you’ve ever read King Lear, you can see how his themes and words appealed to us as a people. When Pei Te Hurinui Jones translated the plays Julius Caesar and Othello into te reo it was far more than an act of cultural influence – it was the attraction of great stories.
Of course, it’s a bit surreal in 2026 how Americans still centre English and European works as “the classics”, when they have a huge corpus of Indigenous, African American and Hispanic works to draw on. And so, when Christopher Nolan went to make his next movie, he described The Odyssey as “a classic” that needed to be put on film. He’s not necessarily wrong, but it shows how Americans still think today.
But a good story is a good story, and when I went to watch it, I went looking for good storytelling, rather than a political subtext or a moral. As a movie I saw it at the Imax theatre which I would highly recommend. As always with Nolan nowadays, it was a cinematic and sensorial experience. There were too many Hollywood “stars” for my liking, many of whom have terrible Southern California accents: “duuuuude, that’s my Mom!” I liked the sense of antiquity though. While there is some critique of his introducing a Christian ethic into the plot it still comes across as an ancient story.
Which brings me back to Ngata. In an age of AI, I suspect our storytelling will be more important than ever. Ngata and Nolan have in common that they both show us how to save and share our cultural legacy. In different ways but keeping the story alive.
Dr Hirini Kaa is Aukaha – Rangahau in Te Manawahoukura
Further Reading:
The Polynesian Society: Reading the two versions of “Ngā Mōteatea” | National Library of New Zealand
Christopher Nolan's Finest Trick | The Ezra Klein Show: https://youtu.be/livIbni7x7o?si=92CCqTTJABp4g3K2