Forwarding 4 outputs for Saipan Tribune this week. The usual caveat; curious, you are welcome, not, see you at the next bend. Jaime Whangara’s whalerider I did not make it to Whangara when my second wife and Idrove around the North and South Islands of New Zealand one half-a-month azillion years back. My second daughterwith my primal spouse spent her last year in High School in a town in the SouthIsland near the ferry town of Nelson in the 90s, and I recently visited herfamily (Irish husband and two boys) in Concord CA by the Diablo mountain whereshe let me watch her copy of the movie, the WhaleRider, set in the novel, and filmed, in Whangara, North Island, New Zealand. I recently celebrated the bonne femme of colleagues who gathered in Bonham, Texas a few weeksback as we recognized once more that we are as a specie way behind in walkingour talk on gender equality. For thoseof us who benefit from the shadows of patriarchy, we can never be confessionalenough about our active participation in ignoring the Chinese sage’s wisdom thatdeclares: “women hold half of the sky” (funu neng ding ban bian tian). The movie. The main character, played by a young Aussie girlKeisha Castle-Hughes who three years later showed up in Star Wars III, and ayear later, Mary in Nativity, isnamed Paikea “Pai” Apirana. In themovie, she is the daughter of a young Maori father Porourangi, whose wife, andson, a twin to “Pai”, die at childbirth. Porourangi is strained from his father, the chief warrior of hiscommunity; he refuses to follow after his father’s footsteps, and will notallow his father to “use” him again to sire another child. Thefather, Paikea’s grandpa, is Koro, dye-in-the-wool stuck in the maleprerogative to lead the Maori. But notjust male prerogative; he must be the first son, for his second son is just asable but he refuses to bestow on him the privilege to train as the new chiefwarrior. While he was emotionally closeto first born granddaughter Paikea, he resisted letting “Pai” grow up to leadthe community, although she was willing and able to play the role. Koroprepares the male kids to be warriors; Pai learns how to be one on the side,including the ability to utter traditional Maori chants without grandpa’sassistance, in spite of grandpa’s disdain for her progressive assertiveness. TheMaori of Koro’s chants claim to have come from the island of Havai’i, whichwould be in Tahiti of French Polynesia, previously from Sava’i in Samoa. From Havai’i, legend had it that a warriorrode a whale to lead the Maori to the island. Thus, the whale rider. Korotakes his students to the ocean and drops the chief’s main symbol of a whalebone into the deep water, admonishing the students that whoever brings it backup gets to be the new chief. Two boys cannotlocate it, another two fight over it, subsequently dropping it on the way upfor air. Koro’s #2 son who was with the groupwhen the whalebone was dropped takes Pia to the site, and, of course, she comesup with it, alongside with a live lobster for the pot for good measure! I amgoing in details here because this story, more than a decade old, is couched inthe metaphor of a Polynesian culture that may easily be dismissed as a relic ofthe past. In reality, the ascendancy ofthe female of the specie to be at par with the social status of their malecounterpart is clearly non-existent even in supposedly enlightened civilsociety like the United States. Worst,females getting beaten up globally seemed to have gotten more prominence in thereporting of late. Backto the movie. A pod of whales strandthemselves on the sand of Whangara to die, resistant of any attempt by theMaori to get them back into the water. Pia decides to ride the biggest one, and ride she does, holding herbreath under water as the rest of the herd heads out to the open sea. Koro meanwhile gets his whalebone backinformed that it was retrieved by the granddaughter! A melodramatictale, it is. Controversial issues areoften better dealt with in metaphors rather than objective logicaldiscourse. My life has been surroundedwith feminine presence throughout my existence so far, and partly matriarchalin my upbringing since Dad went to graduate school in another country when Iwas but ten, the matrilineal line of our Pacific culture (as opposed to theSpanish patrilineal bent) got accented. That’s probably why I have sensitivity to my own contribution in thedastardly affair of reflexive cultural machismo. What has becomeclear, like any liberation movement of note, is that the outsider cannot holdthe fort. The insiders will have to plottheir own assertiveness to succeed. Butlike the Caucasians and non-Africans during the U.S. civil rights movement, wewere but a useful fodder to assault the “guilt” of the dominant white society;it took the blood, flesh, and broken bones of descendants of former Africanslaves in the South to finally get the point across. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the U.S. was costly. With an African-American President, Obamacrowns a journey that was costly. As tothe bonne femme, Pia notwithstanding,I’d be lying if I say, you’ve come a long way, baby! j'aime la vie pinoypanda2031@aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!