kaitiaki

This is an artistic (non documentary) rendition of Niki, a Maori, regarded as a man-child (who in Western thought was considered schizophrenic but in contrast, Maori belief was considered close to the spiritual realm) and his encounter with a kaitiaki a (spiritual guardian). It was told to me when I went looking for Niki many years after he and his mother Puhi had passed away. 

This video artwork like the story captures concepts of guardianship, tupuna (ancestry) and kin. 

Niki at 43 years old, was a large man weighing in at 240 pounds. When he was near people Niki would duck his head down, shielding his face with one hand and when no one was watching covertly peer out from behind his fingers. His other arm dropped like a pendulum down his side to a half hidden hand shaking spasmodically. His extreme shyness meant that unless he was accompanied by his 84-year old mother, Niki seldom approached people, preferring the safety of his three friends: his mother, the cat and most strikingly a wild white stallion that locals were afraid of and that only Niki could approach. 

When his mother died he strayed away from his home in the tiny valley hamlet of Matahi and went further afield, along the claustrophobic tracks, deeper into the Urewera ranges. There he would pitch camp, preferring to live alone in the bush. Or sometimes when closer to town he would dwell in a bivouac that he had built under a bridge. On the rare occasions when he was overcome by the need for company he would walk the many miles to the local pub, slaking his shyness and tiredness with booze. Drunk, he would start a fight. One local, a social worker told of how: “he was beaten up in a pub brawl and left lying naked and bleeding in the middle of the street, where the white horse found him.” 

Many of the 80 largely local people who appeared in the film about him and his mother, felt that the horse visiting him on that country street, carried the wairua (spirit) of his dead mother, come to watch over him - a guardian (kaitiaki) from beyond the veil. 

Niki died, and they laid his open coffin out near the veranda of the meeting house. A neighbour spoke of the same horse: “one night, breaking through the gate into the (marae) meeting grounds.” 

The horse wild eyed, in some sort of state galloped back and forth in front of where Niki was lying. It was widely believed by the mourners that it was inhabited by his mother Puhi coming to take him over to the other side.

Vincent Ward.