All Aboard for Mururoa Manawa Toa: Heart Warrior. By Cathie Dunsford. Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1999. Reviewed by Meriel Watts. As a long time community/environmental activist I have always keenly devoured any novel I can find that incorporates activist issues. Sometimes the fictional approach appears to trivialise the issues, and the plot becomes over-dramatised. But not so with Manawa Toa: Heart Warrior. Cathie Dunsford always manages the process of fictionalising political issues supremely well, and her latest book is a joy to the heart of an activist, especially a lesbian environmentalist. She has a happy knack of blending the fictional characters of Te Kotuku Marae on the Hokianga Harbour with the real life activists such as Stephanie Mills of Greenpeace, Oscar Temaru of the Tahitian Independence Movement, and, even, gay New Zealand politician Chris Carter. She takes us right into the hard core of an issue, in this case the rape and pillage of so-called 'French Polynesia' under the guise of colonization and through the medium of testing nuclear bombs far from the coloniser's own back yard. She broadens the simple fact of the blasting apart of Moruroa Atoll beyond that of environmental devastation to encompass the wider issue of indigenous peoples' rights. As one who has sailed on the Rainbow Warrior, for many the symbol of opposition to nuclear testing, and has been touched by the mystique of that ship, I can find pride in this book. And pleasure - for Dunsford also wraps the pain of our Pacific neighbour's problems with mouth-watering descriptions of luscious foods and lesbian love. She also never lets us forget the colonization of New Zealand by the English, but she sets the fresh from home Brit amongst the Maori wahine, the wild women of Te Kotuku Marae, in a way that warms the heart and lightens the spirit. Our hero, Cowrie, has an irrepressible twinkle in her eye. Set against the backdrop of the sand dunes of the dramatic north west coast of New Zealand, Dunsford takes the reader through the initial planning stages of an activist's mission to the final celebrations when the adventures are over. On the way there are many twists and turns that keep the reader guessing. Not all is as it seems. We pass through riots, become entangled with the French gendarmes, taste fear, and share the camaraderie of activists and independence fighters. We feel the pain of suffering, the anger at the arrogance of colonisers and the despair of mothers who need to find uncontaminated food to feed their families. We share the loss of those who have given theirs lives for such causes. But this is not a tale of despair, for Dunsford touches the warrior spirit within us all with her characterisation of Cowrie. She lifts us above the pain with her artful blending of the political issues and pleasure. She seamlessly blends together white and indigenous cultures, the New Zealand pakeha and Maori, not only through characterization but also through images of the fishing trawler and the waka, the mighty carved war canoe working together at Moruroa to support the rights of all peoples to self-determination. It is a manifesto for overcoming the racism that tears our world apart. She matches the art of simple living in tune with the environment around us against the military apparatus of despoliation and rape: the cup of manuka tea brewed from the bush beside the office door, ancient Maori herbal remedies, and catching fish with simple material growing wild beside the beach take power over the blasting apart of the coral reefs that are the homeland of the Tahitian peoples. The dolphins that accompany the activists rise above the bloated bodies of poisoned fish. Dunsford takes us on flights of imagination - gazing at the star filled Pacific sky from a hammock on the deck of Manawa Toa as the boat slowly ploughs her way through the vast ocean. But in her blending of the natural and spirit worlds, she never lets us forget the plight of those who "have signed treaties in good faith and been used as military or economic targets in return". Tena koe Cathie, thanks for this gift, this taonga, it will give heart to activists the world over and lead many women to find their own warrior spirit. Dr Meriel Watts is the director of Soil and Health, NZ; Organics NZ, an eco-activist and author of The Poisoning of New Zealand: Poisons in Paradise (Greenpeace) and several other books.