Note: I’m writing this only because I haven’t seen anyone else touch on these specific points. I’m not Māori, so my understanding may be mistaken; if so I would be very grateful for correction and elaboration from tangata whenua. (And I’ve only read Nona once so far, and we all know that’s a scratch upon the surface of it.)
Tazmuir has received fandom flack for saying in interviews that Gideon and Harrow are both Māori without mentioning it in the text — which understandably reminds sf/f readers of a certain other author’s tendency to dispose of the difficult bits outside the actual work. I think it is clear by now that the reason it wasn’t dealt with explicitly earlier on is that Tazmuir sticks religiously (ahem) to the flawed and limited knowledge of her point-of-view characters, and in the Nine Houses they have no concept of pre-Resurrection races and ethnicities, because Jod has not allowed them knowledge of any world but his. (Besides, explaining Gideon’s lineage in a Doylist aside would have been rather tricky without revealing, before their proper time in the narrative, juicy details about Jod himself.)
My prediction is that we will find out Anastasia was also Māori. Maybe, probably, from the same iwi as Jod and/or G1deon.
Which makes Harrow, her last descendent, Māori as well.
No matter how many generations separate them. No matter how much other blood.
“Mixed Māori” or “[percentage] Māori” is kind of a pākehā concept. The more important question is, do you whakapapa? Do you know who you are? Do you know where you come from? All it takes is one verified ancestor and you’re in the club, no matter how long it’s been or what brand of egg carton your skin looks like on the book cover. I think Harrow is descended not just from a line of Tomb-keepers but a line of kaitiaki, guardians of the land, who through Anastasia’s private pact with Alecto are sworn to protect her — Papatūānuku, the earth mother born from salt water — and who have been holding on for ten thousand years to right Jod’s wrongs. We know salt water is sacred to the line of the Ninth House; we know that Alecto was called “the saltwater creature”; we know that it’s Nona’s natural element, which calms and renews her; all this links Alecto/Earth specifically with Māori creation myths, more than any others. And we know that preserving the ancient bloodline of the Ninth, Anastasia’s bloodline, in Harrow’s own improbable and desperately yearned-for person (that Alecto can recognise at a taste), was the goal Pelleamena and Priamhark pursued at the cost of the Ninth House’s entire future.
Yes, this series is portraying an indigenous man as the destroyer of Earth. We know that Earth chose him as her saviour and he betrayed her, imprisoned her, set himself up as master of an empire that was her antithesis, then imprisoned her again — arguably worse sins for someone who was born into that special relationship with the land, whom the Earth loved and trusted so much and still loves even now because love past understanding is her gift.
But here’s the answer to that. Here’s his opposite number. Harrow, who fell in love at first sight with the Earth, who found in that love her reason and her drive to continue living and to hold to her goals through intolerable trauma, who has a unique combination of bloodline and genius and Jod-and-Alecto-derived power (through her Lyctorhood with Kiriona Gaia, wherever that ends up going) with which to fulfill this sacred pact entered into by her tipuna Anastasia.
Harrow being Māori is not a trendy convenient afterthought. It’s an integral point.
Harrow knows who she is. She knows where she comes from. She knows where she’s going: Hell itself, to get to the bottom of all this shit. So I think we will be hearing more along these lines.
