Pania of the Reef Statue

The “Pania of the Reef” statue on Napier’s Marine Parade is one of the key tourist attractions of the area. The statue itself was created in 1954 and was modelled on a local woman, Mei Irihapiti Robin. It depicts a young maiden sitting side straddle, with her long hair flowing down her back, and her eyes gazing towards the sea. Legend has it that Pania was a sea-maiden who, in ancient times, lived in the coastal seas of Napier. Every evening, Pania would swim upriver inland and lay in the flax bushes, but she would always return to her sea people before dawn.
One night, a chief’s son, Karitoki, came to drink from the steam near the flax bushes Pania was hiding in, and upon seeing her fell in love with her. They were wed and she bore him one son, but before dawn every morning she would return to her sea-people. Frustrated, Karitoki placed a piece of food in her mouth as she slept, believing that upon swallowing it Pania would be unable to return to the sea. Pania awoke and, horrified, ran back to the sea where she stayed from then onwards. She never came onto land again.

This riveting local legend has recently been altered and retold by upcoming Wellington poet Tayi Tibble. Tibble positions “Pania: as an escort worker in Sydney, who has been separated from her culture and her land by the need to financially support herself. Traditional Maori society largely revolved around self-sustaining tribes which made economic exchange unnecessary, so when Pania finds herself in a capitalist society, she uses her beauty to survive. When men ask her what she wants to do with her life, she tells them that she wants to study marine biology so that she can return to the sea. As in the myth, Pania has swum away from home and hopes to return before it is too late.

One of Pania’s main clients in Sydney falls in love with her. Like Karitoki, this man wants Pania to stay with him as his romantic partner, but she lies and says that she has to return to Napier to see her dying Grandmother. She thinks of the warning her Grandmother gave her:to never turn her back on the ocean because one never knows what the tide is bringing in, and decides to leave Sydney. However, Pania’s client follows Karitoki’s footsteps and tries to sever her connection with home. He contacts her family online with inappropriate material, and they promptly stop speaking to Pania. She has lost her path back to the ocean.
This is where the two stories diverge: while in the original myth, Pania returns to the sea,

Tibble’s modern day rendering of the story demonstrates that things have changed. Through the changes of culture and introduction of a money-based economy, Pania has lost the power to return home. In Sydney, Pania thinks of the ocean and the things the tide brought in. At first, she had thought of stingrays and sharks and tidal waves, and now she thinks of a horizon filled with white sails.