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Tau Koka‘anga Faka-Nu‘u Sila supports the following units from Faufaua!
Schools, ECE centres and education providers can order the set of six Faufaua! Tongan Pasifika storybooks from Down the back of the chair. Enter item number MOE11626 into the search box.
The language features of this story include:
The cultural features in this story include:
In lea faka-Tonga, ngatu is the name for a decorative cloth made from the bark of the hiapo (paper-mulberry tree). Tapa is the English term for bark cloth and is a name adapted from the Tahitian and the Cook Islands Māori term. In gagana Sāmoa, the same cloth is called siapo, and in the Niue language, it is called hiapo.
Ngatu are of great social importance to Tongan people and are often presented as gifts to mark special occasions.
To make ngatu, bark is pulled from the hiapo tree in strips that are about a hand span wide and can be as tall as a person. Once the outer bark is scraped off, the inner bark (called tutu or loututu) is dried in the sun before being soaked.
The tutu is then beaten with wooden mallets (called ike) into thin sheets about 25 centimetres wide. This phase of the work is called tutu or tutua. The ike are smooth on one side and have coarse and fine grooves on the other sides. The workers start by beating the tutu with the coarse side of the ike, then swap to using the smooth side when the tutu has become thinner. They beat the ike in a steady rhythm that often becomes a rhythmic concert.
When the tutu is thin enough, several strips are beaten together to form a large sheet in a process called ‘opo‘opo. Glue (called tou), made from starch from the kumala (sweet potato) or manioke (tapioca), may be used to help the strips stick together better.
Once two large sheets have been made, one sheet is laid out lengthwise and the second sheet is laid crosswise on top and glued in place. Such double layering makes the cloth very strong. At this stage, the cloth is called feta‘aki. The two layers have their own names: the top layer is called lau‘olunga, and the bottom layer is known as laulalo. Any rough edges from the two layers are trimmed away with a knife or mutu (sharp shell).
The feta‘aki becomes ngatu once the central area is painted (a strip along the outer edge of each side is left unpainted). In Tonga, the workers lay the feta‘aki over a wooden drum that is covered with carvings of patterned stencils called kupesi. Then they rub brown paint over the feta‘aki. This process is called ata‘i. When one section has been painted, the workers lift the feta‘aki and lay the next blank section over the kupesi for painting. When the whole feta‘aki has been painted, the workers spread it over the ground to complete final touch-up paintwork with brushes. They usually use brown paint (koka); black is not traditionally associated with ngatu in Tonga.
The blank outer edge on each side of the ngatu is known as the tapa. This area is used for recording the number of sections completed in the ngatu. The distance between each section of ngatu is called the langanga, and each langanga will be between 45 and 60 centimetres (1 to 2 feet) long. A length of 4 to 7 langanga is called a fola‘osi; a length of 8 to 10 langanga is called fātuua; and a length of 50 langanga is called a launima. A completed ngatu will be at least 50 langanga long (at least 15 metres) and can be about 3 metres wide.
Size is a key element in ngatu and relates to status – the larger the ngatu, the higher the status of the person to whom the ngatu is being presented.
In Tonga, often the women of a whole village work together to make a huge sheet of ngatu to gift to the church or their chief at an important occasion. By contrast, in New Zealand, men also may work on all stages of creating the ngatu.
The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa has a good collection of ngatu complete with information on their origins. See also Pacific Tapa by Roger Neich and Mick Pendergrast (2004, Auckland: David Bateman Books) for more details on making ngatu.
Reading and working with Tau Koka‘anga Faka-Nu‘u Sila could help students develop key competencies set out in the New Zealand Curriculum: Key Competencies.
The story illustrates many values that relate to the New Zealand Curriculum: Values and are fundamental to Tongan culture, including the importance of community, faka‘apa‘apa (respect), fevahevahe‘aki (sharing), and fetokoni‘aki (helping one another).
Learners who are working at levels 1–2 in lea faka-Tonga may be working at higher curriculum levels in other learning areas. You will need to consider this in order to make effective cross-curricular links. Here are two examples of cross-curricular achievement objectives that could be linked to this story:
Technology, level 3
Technological products
Students will:
Characteristics of technology
Students will:
Social sciences, level 4
Students will gain knowledge, skills, and experience to:
Students will:
(Communication strand, relating to selected linguistic and sociocultural contexts)
(Language Knowledge strand)
(Cultural Knowledge strand)
Students should be able to:
Below are some possible learning outcomes for reading this story. Select from and adapt these to meet the needs of your students and share the outcomes with them.
After reading and working with this story, I will be able to: