Shorter’s problem with Barclay is the weasel phrase “spiritual guardianship” which appears in the book as a translation of Barclay’s key phrase “Mana Tūturu.” Shorter is rightly concerned about the ways translation misconstrues an Indigenous life world – his blurb says he has a professional interest in the matter – and here he catches Barclay out: the problem is when “we start using Cartesian notions of the world to make sense of Indigenous lifeways.” In his use of “spiritual guardianship” Barclay appears unaware of the “colonial baggage” that comes with talking about things of the spirit. Apart from this re-colonising element, the book offers a “rigorous, indigenously informed lens.” But Shorter’s problem obviously makes Barclay’s indigeneity less than rigorous. Scholarship is wheeled in to help, such as knowing about Descartes and western-derived binaries, though Barclay, whom I know personally, is a learned man. This is not the first time Indigenous peoples have mistakenly taken Western ideas about themselves to be their own.

While Barclay talks much of injury and hurt, and is extremely attentive to the use and abuse of Māori words – such words in “free fall” in his own country as tapu and wairua and taniwha – it would seem that he has not thought through the colonizing consequences of the English language. Hence Barclay’s failure to explain what he means by “spirits” in his book; are these “bodiless beings” or “souls,” asks Shorter in a “waggish” but actually serious way. This rhetorical and academic question self-consciously misrepresents what’s at stake in Barclay’s book. Shorter fully grasps the major problem that burgeoning intellectual property rights law misconceives the living relationships of indigenous things it would protect, and he states this tectonic shift in Indigenous thinking very clearly. But the scholar of religion knows more. Shorter says that the issue of spirituality pervades the entire book – and so it is centrally misleading – “starting with the title.” Except, um, the book’s title does not say “spiritual guardianship.” It says “Mana Tūturu: Māori Treasures and Intellectual Property Rights”. Mana Tūturu is a Maori phrase, not an English one, with manifold implications. According to H.W. Williams’ Dictionary of the Māori Language (reprint, 1992) tūturu means “upright, permanent” – so mana tūturu means something like mana that will always be. Thinking about a “sort of spiritual guardianship,” Barclay arrives at the phrase mana tūturu which he finds Maori speakers using to mean “prerogative” (the right to choose), “the right thing,” or “what’s right” (pp.112-113).

Shorter understands well the problem of circumscribing indigenous life-worlds with the legal and ethical frameworks of intellectual property rights, but not the elusive movement of the Māori taniwha, a threatening spirit – oops –creature, often associated with tricky river-bends and unwelcome portents. The take-up by Māori of Christianity in the 19th century, which would have taniwha and such-like done away with, means that Māori may well talk of spirits, even in the most binary Augustinian way (a better reference than Descartes). Yet Māori can still feel, as Barclay says, the “interconnectedness between the animate and inanimate, the born and the yet to be born” (p.87), and are no less indigenous for their Christianity. Alas, Barclay is not sufficiently “organically Māori” for this anthropologist-reviewer.

Nor, it seems, are many other Māori. The index of Hirini Moko Mead’s important guide to things “Māori, Tikanga Māori [Māori law]: Living by Maori Values” (2003) , has many entries under “spirit” (notably “wairua”). Mead’s book helps the reader to grasp the “spirit” or import of Māori values in a Maori world, though even the most well-chosen English word for a Māori one may not do that (for there is no equivalent to the Māori reality). Barclay’s real concern is not that words should be translated correctly, but that matters of Māori import should be heard in a forum in which Māori principles (again, mana, tapu, wairua) are properly understood, which can only happen if the forum itself is shaped by them. The practical “stewardship” of such a forum reflects a different mode of relating to Māori things than simply legal ownership, though Māori values now intrude upon settler-invader law, and it isn’t quite like being in church.

Professor Shorter’s concern for the Cartesian overtones of “spiritual guardianship,” in the context of a local history of injury and hurt, is strictly academic. The really weaselly phrase is not “spiritual guardianship,” but “ethnographic research.” Anyone reading this book might ask, and is in fact forced to ask by the manner in which Barclay’s story unfolds, whether “ethnographic research” is what Barclay is “contributing to.” Shorter’s waggishness really does, as he says, have “serious consequences.” His questions are the concerns of an ethnographer of religion, but not any indigenous person’s. And why should they be Barry Barclay’s? The problem is not Descartes but a research agenda which bears little relation to the lived world of its “subject” – in this case an Indigenous world. Perhaps Shorter might come to New Zealand at Barclay’s invitation, and attend a hui (meeting) at a local marae (meeting house). This is the “proper forum” for addressing Māori issues so central to Barclay’s book. A hui is a palpable expression, for everyone present, of a place, the people of it, and the relations among them. A hui, dare I say it, fully embodies the spirit of those present. But there, questions about “bodiless beings” and “souls” might seem pretty odd. For this is a place of Māori common sense, Māori business – plain as day. Well then, is Māori-ness disembodied, a soul-like thing, the incarnation of a higher being, or beings? Barclay imagines folk at the hui, in a typical screenplay, worrying about a creek that has overflowed the road, turning back the mailtruck (p.241). Given his other problem with Barclay’s concept of Mana Tūturu, its questionable “practical usage,” Barclay’s recent documentary “The Kaipara Affair” shows how settler law in New Zealand is being tested by what Barclay calls decision-in-community, and how addressing people in community, in terms of their own understanding of who and where they are, can work for those people.

What a wonderful review. Thank you for the way you embrace the material so warmly. Thank you for speaking up in blunt language against the phrase Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights – IIPR. And thank you also for drawing our attention to the dangers inherent in making free with a phrase like ‘Maori spiritual guardianship’. We all need a life after IIPR. We felt we might be gaining that by adopting the Maori phrase mana tuturu. In the fora of the Indigenous world in these parts, this phrase has a rich tradition. There will be similarly powerful phrases in the local languages of other Indigenous Peoples, plus proper native fora in which to weigh the whys and wherefores under those phrases. As we sought to navigate our way through the various traditions at play here, ‘spiritual guardianship’ served as a flag of convenience, a gesture to the outside world in signage once familiar there. But anybody would be crackers to hang a good outcome in the Maori world on such a phrase. Meantime, we have phrases of our own that go back hundreds of years. We also have traditional fora in which these matters are settled and support and guidance given. So it troubles me to read that what I have proposed might “prove problematic in terms of widespread practical usage”. What might be more widespread and practical than an arrangement whereby all Indigenous cultures feel free to protect and share their treasures in ways true to their traditional understandings and sayings? How cruel it would be to remove that hope, especially in these times when complete strangers may appear on the doorstep to tell us our laws don’t add up to much any more and we are just going to have to accept some new dispensation, not a protective one, as it turns out, but one facilitating acquisition by others.

Naku noa, Professor; and may you come down this way soon to enjoy our warmest hospitality and more conversation on these important topics.

Barry Barclay; Hokianga; Aotearoa/New Zealand