In the Māori language of te reo Māori, pakeha means a white New Zealander, as opposed to a Māori person. It is sometimes used as a noun and sometimes as an adjective. In “Journey,” the narrator uses the term often to describe white New Zealanders and their culture, as when he mentions the “pakeha kehuas,” or white people’s ghosts.
Pakeha Quotes in Journey
The Journey quotes below are all either spoken by Pakeha or refer to Pakeha. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Journey
Quotes
Funny people these pakehas, had to chop up everything. Couldn’t talk to a hill or a tree these people, couldn’t give the trees or the hills a name and make them special and leave them. Couldn’t go round, only through. Couldn’t give life, only death.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Journey LitChart as a printable PDF.
Pakeha Term Timeline in Journey
The timeline below shows where the term Pakeha appears in Journey. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Journey
...making him feel more like an old man than he wants. While he thinks a “pakeha” (the Māori word for “white person”) may have died in this coat because it was...
(full context)
...be sea, where the narrator remembers harvesting pipis. He can’t harvest here anymore because the pakeha filled this area of the ocean with land and rerouted the train over it, in...
(full context)
...this area is full of new development: there are new houses, buildings, and roads; the pakeha have filled another piece of harbor to make more land to build on. The “lunatic...
(full context)
...each tunnel, construction machines are building roads through the hills. The narrator bitterly laments this pakeha tendency to destroy the natural world, as well as Māori complicity in these construction projects,...
(full context)
