In this hemisphere, most people probably haven't given much thought to the Maori nation until recently when its queen made the news by dying.

The Maori took over New Zealand a thousand years ago, plus or minus, depending on where you get your information. In 1642 the first European sea captain to visit New Zealand saw his advance landing party eaten by the inhabitants. Later arrivals reported ceremonial copulation, phallus worship, and enough other exotic customs to satisfy any anthropologist (and if you don't believe that, look up "beam biting").

The various Maori tribes had fought each other incessantly and enslaved whatever unlucky captives they could lay hands on. In the 1700s, Captain Cook claimed parts of the land for England, and before long the Maori were succumbing to strange diseases brought in by the invaders. When the whites introduced firearms into the societal equation, the tribes were able to kill each other more efficiency, and the trading of treasured artifacts, and even food, for more guns contributed to the reduction of the native population and the downfall of its culture.

In 1840, the British Empire got serious about claiming the whole country, and drew up a treaty that reserved certain rights to the Maori and the pakeha, or whites. The Treaty of Waitangi is the most important document in New Zealand history, and its interpretation and enforcement provide employment for politicians and bureaucrats to this day.

In the 1960s, political activism gained some payback for confiscated lands. The endangered Maori language began to be taught in schools and achieved parity with English in law and government circles. Now there is even a mainly Maori TV station. The Maori population, which the last census put at 15%, is growing faster than the white sector.

The country has experienced plenty of excitement - volcanic eruptions, a gold rush, the discovery of oil, a history of cannibalism… It was the first country in the world to give women the vote, and more recently it recognized civil unions between gay couples.

Politically, New Zealand has stood up to both the U.S. and Israel, the former by declaring itself a nuclear-free zone, and the latter by kicking out spies. Good on you, ballsy little Kiwi nation!

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A lot of interesting people have originated in New Zealand. As both a writer and a person, Katherine Mansfield captured the devotion of no less a literary light than Virginia Woolf, which is a credential to be respected. The operatic soprano Kiri Te Kanawa was born there, and so was Edmund Hillary the climber of Mt. Everest. And of course, Lord of the Rings was filmed there.

Another famous New Zealander was one of the world-class Queens of Crime in the golden age when Britannic mysteries ruled the waves. Ngaio Marsh published more than 30 detective novels, four of which were set in her native land and made use of Maori culture. One fictitious victim was dispatched via a pool of boiling mud, a feature of the local landscape.

Ngaio is a Maori word that means competent. Or, going by another source, clever. Which are not always the same thing. Or maybe it means home. Or a small insect. According to one biographer, it means reflections on water. Also, it's the name of a tree whose crushed leaves were used as insect repellent by the old-time natives.

When the ancient Maori regarded the moon, they saw in the dark areas a ngaio tree and a woman carrying a water vessel. What was her name, Mommy? Her name was Rona, and she was unwise enough to disrespect the moon goddess, who grabbed her and tried to carry her up to the moon. On the way up, Rona clutched desperately at the top branches of a ngaio tree, but the moon goddess was too strong and the tree ripped out by the roots. Now all three of them, woman, tree, and water vessel, are up there, their gray shadows partially eclipsing the white moon.

However her name originated, Dame Marsh was an interesting lady. She was also an easel painter and a playwright, and during the war she drove a hospital ambulance. Though much of her creative lifetime was spent in England, she went back home to help out in the final years of failing health that took first her mother, then her father. An uncredited reviewer pinpoints this author's forte as the "capacity for amused observation of the undercurrents beneath ordinary social intercourse," which is always a plus, no matter what the occasion.

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Like many other indigenous peoples in developed nations, the Maori make a poor showing in education, health, and wealth statistics, with concomitant crowding of unemployment ranks and prisons.

Now there's a scientific theory to explain their propensity for violence. Research is said to show that Maori men have a gene for aggression, which has something to do with a biochemical called monoamine oxidase, whose nickname is, by strange coincidence, MAO. (There is a class of pharmaceuticals called MAO inhibitors, described, because of undesireable side effects, as the "antidepressant of last resort.")

Familial violence has a place in Maori mythology. One tale is about a man who beat up his woman. She went home to her father, who happened to live in the underworld. Like the more widely-known Orpheus, the repentant man went after her, overcoming fierce obstacles. Finally he arrived, and when not busy begging his woman to come home, he learned from her father the art of the tattoo.

Traditional Maori body art was not simply decorative, but served as a low-tech precursor of the imbedded microchip that features so prominently in the dreams of fascists everywhere. The facial tattoo or moko was a complex pattern, each of whose parts had a purpose - like a bar code, only fancier. The markings in 8 different areas of the face reflected exactly the man's ancestral background, marital situation, job, and rank in the community. This outward and visible sign would instantly reveal who, and how important, he was.

It's likely that in the earliest times, paint was used, but being prone to disarrangement by sweat, dirt, and all the hardships of life, the temporary method was given up in favor of the lasting convenience of permanent marks. The technique was brutal. A chisel with teeth was used to cut grooves in the skin, and the dye was rubbed in - a mixture of soot, fat, and a secret ingredient that affected the healing process so the scars would not form normally, but in a much more aesthetically pleasing way.

All of which suggests that some cultural mores really do need to be left behind. Ethnic pride is all well and good, but institutionalized violence, mutilation, etc. just aren't welcome in contemporary life, and that makes assimilation particularly hard for cultures where such things were commonplace in the old days.

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A lot of great art has come out of New Zealand concerning the Maori, and two of the most powerful and widely-known works of fiction both concern domestic abuse. The film Once Were Warriors is noted for its disturbingly realistic brutality, mainly between husband and wife, and Katherine Hulme's novel The Bone People features a violent foster father.

Once Were Warriors (1994, directed by Lee Tamahori) is about a marriage with a complicated dynamic. Jake Heke is one of those old-fashioned macho men who would kill to protect or avenge his family, but more out of possessiveness than love, because he also reserves the right to hurt or kill them himself. His wife Beth may be operating on the assumption that even painful attention is better than no attention at all.

Jake does suffer from alcohol-enhanced attention deficit disorder when it comes to his family responsibilities. On the way to an event that's important for one of the kids, he parks them outside the roadhouse, goes in for a quick one, and forgets all about them. It's no wonder the oldest boy has switched his allegiance from the family to a gang and another son is taken into social services custody. The 13-year-old daughter is raped by a family "friend" and kills herself.

Industrialization, and especially urbanization, have damaged the Maori as much as their counterparts the Australian aborigines, the Aleuts and Inuits of North America, and many similar groups who are ill at ease with the gap between their yesterday and our tomorrow. The themes of Once Were Warriors resonated with similarly oppressed peoples, and it took a slew of awards worldwide. The effect of poverty and prejudice on families looks exactly the same in Los Angeles, Sydney, and Johannesburg. It makes you realize that the most easily transportable profession is that of social worker, because anywhere you go, people are doing the same old stuff. The true unity of humankind lies in its members' ability to bring misery to their own lives and the lives of their loved ones in pretty much the same stupid ways, regardless of place or circumstance. It's uncanny, when you think of it.

Unlikely as it might seem, Once Were Warriors was also made into a musical. According to the director, this was possible because the story has so much passion. And why not? West Side Story made a great musical.

The Bone People, appropriately for a book that has a cult following, came to me from an Australian friend who took the trouble and expense to send me a copy from all those thousands of miles away. The novel is not what you'd call accessible, being difficult to enter, but once you get a foothold, it's captivating. Its author states that in her homeland, "an awful lot of people have been brought up in a very damaged and damaging way." Fictitious treatments of the Maori are not all violent. In the 2002 film Whale Rider, an eleven-year-old girl is better chieftain material than any of the boys who are being considered. She is, in other words, He rei nga niho, he paraoa nga kauae - like a whale's tooth in a whale's jaw, an eminently qualified person for a particular niche.

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In real life, Dame Te Ata, as the recently deceased queen was affectionately known, was the first female monarch. The various Maori tribes were traditionally sovereign unto themselves, and didn't pick a king until 1858, five years after the idea was first proposed, apparently as a political expedient. Dame Te Ata set a good modern example by refusing an arranged marriage and choosing her partner for love. Her queenship was pretty much a ceremonial thing, but she functioned superbly as a figurehead, uniting the Maori people and advancing their interests, and was much loved. Queen Elizabeth II is the actual queen of New Zealand, a constitutional monarchy with a parliamentary democracy.

Over the years, the Maori population has produced legendary prophets and resistance leaders. The way in which the ruler Titokowaru handled challenges to his supremacy is Maori statecraft at its finest, and I don't say this facetiously. Here's where we get into the cultural relativity. When his will was opposed, Titokowaru would put potatoes on the head of the dissenter. Because it was forbidden for food to touch a man's head, this showed such a devastating measure of disrespect that the challenger immediately lost all personal credibility, public face, and political clout.

When you think of it, this is no different from the methods adopted by the Pie Man and his followers. When a member of the obnoxious elite needs taking down, you get through the security and nail him with a cream pie in the face.

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The important thing to know about traditional Maori art is that there wasn't any. The language didn't have a word for "art" - because it was taken for granted that all objects would be beautifully made. The various components of houses and meeting centers were carved, and so were the war canoes. Aesthetic pleasure, utility, and ceremony all flowed together.

Myriad smaller objects - combs, sinkers, bailers, pigment pots, war clubs, weaving pegs - were created not only from wood but from bone, whale teeth, greenstone (jade), and other materials. Handsome knives with a row of inset shark teeth were made especially for slicing through human flesh. There was a thing called a godstick, a foot and half long, carved of course, that would be stuck into the ground and the god invited to inhabit it for a while, so the priest or chief could address him.

Mostly, the things the warrior-craftsmen made were necessary adjuncts to the metaphysics they lived by. For instance, an ornately decorated feeding funnel was a religious requirement, because it was forbidden for food to come anywhere near unhealed tattoos. Anything that touched a chief's head was sacred, so when he wasn't wearing his combs and feathers they were kept in box suspended from the rafters, elaborately carved on its underside, because that was the part that showed. Then there were burial chests. A corpse would be exposed to nature and the elements for a while, then the bones would be scraped and painted, and stored in a gorgeously worked wooden box. When objects were painted with designs, the colors were red, white, and black.

A priest was allowed to make and fly a kite, which might have a wingspan of 12 feet, and is now one of the rarest objects in the world of cultural anthropology. When a flaxen cloak wore out, it would be given a respectful burial. Hand-crafted objects were given personal names, which doesn't seem such an outlandish custom when you consider how many "civilized" persons will do goofy stuff like name a car or a body part.

Just as a Haitian voudoun dancer is possessed to become a god's "horse," the Maori craftsman was not just an artisan using tools, but was himself a tool, taken over by the gods who wished to express themselves in the material world. The maker of a thing would be in an exalted state that didn't allow for such distractions as eating. The chips of wood that fell away from the carver's chisel were not thrown away or used for such a lowly purpose as cooking. In The Bone People, one character says, "One of the old prohibitions was, while engaged in a carving, you did not lie with a woman or spend your seed … It wasn't that sex was bad, but because all the energy was tied up…."

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The Maori word mana means something like essence. The mana of a person would encompass his abilities, strengths, and skills, along with such intangibles as general intelligence and spiritual awareness and knowledge. Another term, rangatiratanga, sums up the totality of chieftan-ness: not only his powers and privileges, but his personal mana.

Here's the thing about Maori tradition that impresses the hell out of me. In the old days, a chief wasn't a chief just because of heredity, or even because of his ferociousness and cunning in battle. A vital part of what the people expected to see in a leader's mana was the ability to do something in the real world: construct a war canoe, carve a doorpost, make a fishhook or a flute. In the old days, if a man wanted to be a chief, his ability to do these things was as important as his ability to make war. Not only competency, but excellence, at some craft was expected. Because otherwise, it meant the gods weren't with him. And that's not the kind of leadership we want. Modern, sophisticated, technically hip Western nations could borrow a clue from the Maori.

Look at our senators and congressmen. The vast preponderance of them come from law and business. Some people will tell you the only good lawyer is a dead lawyer, but I won't go that far. There are two kinds of lawyers I'm in favor of: honest prosecutors and dedicated defense counsel. Of all the lawyers in government, a very small percentage have either of those qualifications. No, we have a bunch of estate planners and tax shelter specialists. Then there are the legislators whose former profession is given as mayor; governor; state legislator; congressional staffer; deputy administrator of this, that, or the other thing - which all boils down to: politician or bureaucrat. That's who makes the laws the rest of us have to live by.

What I want to know is, how many of them have ever been anything besides government functionaries? How many of them can hang a door, make a brioche, grow a zucchini, or rebuild a carburetor? In short, how many of them can do anything besides talk on the phone and do lunch? Let's have some competence, people. Even Miss America hopefuls must demonstrate an ability to do something other than walk and smile at the same time. Why do we expect less from our elected officials? How many of these jokers actually know anything about the real world, the place where the rest of us live? Wouldn't it be great if we borrowed an idea from the old Maori ways, and made it a prerequisite for holding office that the candidate should at least know how to carve a doorpost?