Myth, Culture, and Family in Whale Rider

Niki Caro’s acclaimed film, Whale Rider, is an aspiring story of a young Maori girl’s pursuit to prove herself to her grandfather and to undertake her destiny as the tribal leader. Her grandfather, Chief of Whangara has old-fashioned attitudes that blind him to his granddaughter’s potential as his successor. It is only when tragedy strikes that Pai can prove to her grandfather that her community’s link with the spiritual world of the Maori lives on. The emphasis on Maori culture and myth allow us to classify Whale Rider as a film that shows the protagonist, Pai, being unable "go home" and to understand it through a connection between myth, culture, and family.

Myth:

Myth comes from the Greek word mythos, meaning story or word, which explains the way the world is. In this context, Whale Rider depicts the world of the Maorians. Maorians myth is of Paikea, an ancestor of the Maori community who rode into Aotearoa on the back of a whale. According to the traditional myth, when the ancient ancestor Paikea was lost at sea and fell from his canoe, he rode on a whale which brought him to a coastal area of New Zealand. This myth is narrated by Pai in the beginning of the film:

My name is Paikea Apirana. And I come from a long line of chiefs, stretching all the way back to Hawaiki, where our ancient ones are, the ones that first heard the land crying and sent a man. His name was also Paikea and I am his most recent descendant… But I was not the leader my grandfather was expecting. And by being born, I broke the line back to the ancient ones. . . . “In the old days, the land felt a great emptiness. It was waiting: waiting to be filled up; waiting for someone to love it; waiting for a leader. And he came on the back of a whale—a man to lead...

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...nd understand of the culture is halted because Koro will not allow it. Even after the boys fail to achieving the whale tooth necklace, the chief’s emblem of leadership. Koro entirely gives up on his hope of finding the successor. He overlooks the one who can do it. Pai needs to "go home", in a spiritual "home", but she is powerless against her grandfather.

Works Cited

Bernard Beck (2004) The Sea Around Us: Social Climbing in Seabiscuit, Whale Rider, and Finding Nemo, Multicultural Perspectives, 6:2, 24-27.

Butler, Judith. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge, 2006

Women Warriors: The Environmet of Myth

J. Donald Hughes

Environment History, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Apr., 2007), pp. 316-318

Published by: Forest History Society and American Society for Environmental History

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25473078