>>1985123>find a great spot to camp at the edge of the clifftop with a view down the valley, clear out the scrub and pitch camp >it is mid-afternoon by now, but we are all fairly hot and knackered so we pitch our tarps and take off our shoes and relax
>the fantails get more and more curious at this activity, and perch on the tarp-strings, and even sit in our boots to enjoy the warmth
>at this time I am starting to get a bit uneasy about staying up here, now knowing that this place is an historic site – maori iwi are notoriously possessive with their land, and if someone sees our car and figures that we are out here we might walk out of here in the morning to get jumped, esp. cus the nearby town is noted for gang activity
>on 1News tonight, a trio of far-right terrorists are apprehended by peaceful iwi members after desecrating tapu site
Small disclosure; tapu is a concept in maori culture that is kind of hard to put a finger on. Basically, all things have mana, a kind of spiritual honour / prestige. Mana can be gained in honourable actions or taken away through shame. If something has really powerful mana then it is tapu, and to degrade the tapu means that you make it lose mana, which will incur utu, or a vengeance to re-balance the scales. This can happen on a human scale, and also on a cosmic scale. My fear was that the iwi would perceive that we desecrated the tapu of the site and would incur utu on us. I gave no thought to there being an utu of the other kind.
