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World Tale: Who Gave you Permission? (Maori/New Zealand)
A young man acts without regard for those around him. The stories: Tent; Boxes and Boxes; and Grant Proposal; explore taking action without permission.
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 I was 17, a returning counselor to the camp I’d worked at the year before. Last year I was kind, caring, popular with campers, adept at taking on duties for which I’d had no training. This year I was miserable with boyfriend troubles, often critical, sometimes mean. I did not like myself yet I seemed unable to change my behavior. I chastised campers for not finishing breakfast, moving too slowly to get to the next activity . . . After hearing so many bad stories about my interaction with campers, the camp director chose not to fire me; I was still good at leading drama and puppetry activities. Instead, she took me out of the bunk and told me to live by myself in a small tent on the periphery of the camp.
 In 1958, a few months after I started teaching health and physical education at a junior high school, I walked into the faculty room to eat lunch and overheard one of the teachers say, “I can’t believe it’s a year since Rosie died.”
“Who’s Rosie?” I asked. The pained looks of the faculty made me wonder about their reaction. No one responded. My curiosity lingered. A woman who taught English took me aside and reluctantly answered. “Rosie was 13. Pregnant. The boy was 14. Their parents made them marry. He ran away. She killed herself.” I waited to hear more but she left the room. Suddenly everyone was busy eating lunch, making coffee, engaging in small talk. Why was the staff still talking about this a year later when no one seemed to be doing anything to provide girls with information about their bodies?  After being kicked out of the Theatre Department and the College of Arts and Science by the Dean of the College for speaking out against her candidate for Chair of the Theatre Department, I lost the ability to apply for grants from the Department and College. Any proposal I wanted to submit would now have to be approved by the provost.
Before working on my application, I asked colleagues about the provost’s responses to grant requests. I heard a lot about how he looked for creativity and for thoroughly thought-out proposals. Some talked about how he’d grilled them, asking questions they had difficulty answering. Several people commented he did not approve many.  Ratu needed a tree to make a new canoe so he went to the forest and picked out the tallest and straightest tree he could find. With his sharpened axe, he chopped down the tree and went home to rest before cutting it into smaller pieces. When he returned, the tree was standing as tall and straight as it was before he chopped it down. Astonished, he cut the tree down once more and this time, he chopped off the branches. The next morning when he went to cut the trunk into pieces for his canoe, once again the tree was standing straight and tall. He was so determined to use this tree to make his canoe he cut it down for a third time. This time, he not only chopped off all the branches, he cut the trunk in pieces that were the right size for his canoe. Too tired to continue, he decided to return at sunrise to finish. Just before dawn, as he approached the tree, he heard fluttering and buzzing and chirping and droning. He hid behind thick bushes and watched. All the birds and animals and insects that lived in the tree were putting it back together branch by branch, leaf by leaf, fitting the bark together as if it were a puzzle. Ratu’s anger grew as he watched the spirits of the forest pull the tree upright. He rushed toward them and yelled, “Stop! This is my tree. I need it to make my canoe.” The creatures gathered behind the spirits and with one voice they asked, “ Who gave you permission to kill one of our trees?” |
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May 2025
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Nancy King is a widely published author and a professor emerita at the University of Delaware, where she has taught theater, drama, playwriting, creative writing, and multidisciplinary studies with an emphasis on world literature. She has published seven previous works of nonfiction and five novels. Her new memoir, Breaking the Silence, explores the power of stories in healing from trauma and abuse. Her career has emphasized the use of her own experience in being silenced to encourage students to find their voices and to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with authenticity, as a way to add meaning to their lives.
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