Mana
Māori term: the prestige, authority, and power of a person or group. Every Māori is born with a share of *mana* inherited from their ancestors (*mana tipuna*), proportionate to the rank and deeds of their parents. But according to Hirini Moko Mead, of all attributes, *mana* is the most open to growth: it increases through one’s own actions, by elevating the *mana* of the entire group—this is the creative and dynamic force that drives one to do better. *Mana* is not a power of domination taken over others: it is a social quality that requires others to recognize your merits and grant you respect.
Mana is much more open to extension than any other attribute.
Every Māori, writes Hirini Moko Mead—himself Ngāti Awa—is born with a share of mana. This inheritance depends on what their parents have achieved, their rank, the esteem in which they are held, and what they have done for the tribe. Those with mana “draw their prestige and power from their ancestors”: mana tipuna, the mana passed down from forebears, socially rooted in the kinship group. One child may thus begin life richly endowed, another disadvantaged.
Yet mana is not endured like a fate. “Mana is much more open to extension than any other attribute”: of all qualities, it is the most expandable. One builds upon their share through their deeds, through their ability to elevate the mana of the entire group—being selected for the All Blacks, Mead notes, raises the tribe’s mana. Mana is the creative and dynamic force that drives one to surpass others; the reward is an increase in mana and recognition from one’s own. Praise, he says, rather than shame. It was and remains possible to rise above the limits of whakapapa.
This growth, however, remains contingent on the gaze of others: mana is always a social quality that requires others to acknowledge your achievements and grant you respect. It rises with personal tapu, from which it is inseparable.
Mana, then, is not power as understood in the Western sense—domination, a force seized and wielded over others, even against them. Mana is not taken; it is bestowed. It grows from what one does for the group and collapses under the scorn inflicted upon it. It is an authority that endures only so long as it is recognized.