Claire Harvey: Pa Wars deliver the goods

"How can we get more good stories about brown people out there in the media?" That was the question posed by a Communications student at Manukau Institute of Technology a few months ago, when the class invited me to talk about life as a working journalist.

It is the toughest type of question - straight and simple but nearly impossible to answer in a satisfactory way. Standing at the front of the class, stammering for an answer that didn't sound like apologism or defensiveness, I could only be thankful to the gods of golf that Michael Campbell's smiling brown face was all over that day's papers, celebrating his win in the US Open.

It was pretty shabby evidence for the media's willingness to share good news about Maori - there's only one Michael Campbell, and he says he has succeeded only after overcoming the laziness which he claims is innate in many Maori.

If the answer to that student's question was, "Sorry, no chance - there's a vast conspiracy involving journalists, editors and the Ministry of Internal Affairs to keep all happy stories away from the reading public", it would at least be simple.

But the truth is that media outlets do tell happy stories. They're in the paper every day. But we also have a responsibility to tell the sad stories; injustices, crimes, problems.

Newspapers like this one often run stories that paint a depressing picture of Maori or Pacific people, but we run plenty of depressing stories about everyone else as well.

Happy stories are not ignored, they're just not always considered as important as the serious ones - and maybe that's where the problem lies. We do need more good stories, not just about brown people but about everyone.

Here's one.

In the early days of each New Year, one of the most delightful festivals of New Zealand life takes place in the East Coast of the North Island. Known as Pa Wars, it is a Ngati Porou celebration of whanau and summer and kids and sport.

This year, 3000 people gathered in Ruatoria to spend a hot Tuesday playing in the sun. It was a full day of inter-marae events, ranging from board-games to fierce, sweaty athleticism.

The cool, fit young people were playing touch football and basketball, or belting karaoke tunes across the park. Their grandmas were playing euchre. The littlies were squealing around the running track in bare feet.

The master equestrians were racing their horses up and down in potato races, a kind of raw version of polo, in which horse and rider rush across a paddock to a marker pole, where the animal skids to a halt and twists itself in a sharp u-turn to race back to the start line. Along the way, the rider must use a long, sharp spike to impale potatoes lying on the ground, remaining firmly in the saddle at all times and avoiding the other competitors and their spikes.

It is mesmerising, a mix of equine power and human skill, all the more impressive because some of the competitors ride bareback.

Earlier, they had shown off more traditional clip-clopping dressage events, but the unpretentious brilliance of potato racing was a perfect illustration of the spirit of the day. It was great to see, especially for an Australian; happy, high-spirited indigenous people doing their own successful thing and loving it.

A St John Ambulance vehicle was parked on one of the lawns, conveniently close to the karaoke stage, where the ambulance officers sat enjoying the music, interrupted by only one medical emergency, when a young man approached with his elbow held tenderly aloft. The ambulance officer put a sticking-plaster on it, and the patient wandered off, smiling.

"Attention whanau," came the constant public-address crackle of announcers marshalling the crowds with familial bossiness, "we have a little boy at the announcers' table waiting for his mum to come and pick him up, he's wearing blue shorts and a green T-shirt ... Ah, a very beautiful lady has come to collect him, thank you whanau ...

"Seniors' trivial pursuit is starting at 12 sharp in the school marae, it will start without you if you don't make your way there now ... "

At the event two years ago there were a famous series of announcements about Nanny Teri's lost jandals; "They have gone missing from outside the hall, come on whanau, she's very old and she'll have to walk home barefoot on the hot tarseal if we don't find them ... Someone's picked them up by accident, where are they, whanau? come on ... "

Last year brought an update: "Nanny Teri is here again this year whanau, and she's wearing lace-ups, and she's not going to take them off."

The Pa Wars, celebrating their 10th anniversary this year, do get media coverage - this year, the Gisborne Herald, the New Zealand Herald and Maori Television were all there, and no doubt they'll all be back next year, hopefully with the commercial news bulletins and the current affairs programmes.

I'm looking forward to hearing about Nanny Teri's footwear.