The Taniwha: The Water Guardians of Maori Tradition
In the year 2002, work on a major New Zealand highway was halted, redesigned, and rerouted after local Māori elders testified that the planned route disturbed the lair of a taniwha —a one-eyed guardian named Karutahi who dwelt in the swamps beside the Waikato River. The newspapers of the world smirked; New Zealand, on the whole, did not, because New Zealand has learned what the smirking missed: the taniwha was doing exactly what taniwha have done for a thousand years, which is to mark, with a monster's authority, the places where water and land must not be carelessly touched —and the swamp in question flooded, as swamps do. The taniwha are the great water-beings of Māori tradition: dwellers in the deep river bends, the sea caves, the dangerous channels and dark pools; immense, most often reptilian—like the great lizards grown past all nature, or whale-like at sea, or taking the forms of sharks, of logs that swim against the current, of sunken trees that move—and their nature refu...