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Landfall Review Online: Aotearoa New Zealand books in review

Prating in Alien Tongues 

April 1, 2022 Leave a Comment

Erik Kennedy

ināianei/now by Vaughan Rapatahana (Cyberwit, 2021), 170pp, $25; Formica by Maggie Rainey-Smith (The Cuba Press, 2022), 86pp, $25

Among those who care about poetry in Aotearoa, Vaughan Rapatahana should be known particularly for two things. First, he is the most daring poet we have when it comes to seasoning his work with sesquipedalian lingo (that is, million-dollar words). Second, he has a more developed practice than anyone else when it comes to writing translingual poems in te reo Māori and English. His new collection, ināianei/now, offers plenty of examples of both modes, in poems that explore our fractured geopolitics, the dispossession and cultural losses of Māori, and the experience of dividing a life between different countries, as Rapatahana does. [Read more…]

Filed Under: maori and pacific, poetry

Stories to Outlive Us

July 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

Emma Espiner 

Ngā Kete Mātauranga: Māori scholars at the research interface by Jacinta Ruru & Linda Waimarie Nikora (eds) (Otago University Press, 2021), 340pp., $60

Ngā Kete Mātauranga, a collection of stories from twenty-four leading Māori researchers, creates a virtual community for tauira, academics and whānau to experience whakawhanaungatanga with a constellation of scholars who speak to us in their own words. Edited by Jacinta Ruru and Linda Waimarie Nikora, this repository of knowledge is the result of a partnership initiative between Ngā Pae o te Maramatanga and the Royal Society Te Apārangi and was published this year by the Otago University Press.

It is moving to encounter so many Māori researchers in one place. Indigenous scholars are thinly spread, often isolated in institutions with little support or recognition, and the contributors to this book relate their personal experience of this lonely reality. In the kōrero whakamutunga which closes the book, the editors remark: ‘We would confidently guess that most university departments today employ maybe one fully tenured Māori academic staff member at best.’ We know from the published work of researchers Tara McAllister, Sereana Naepi, Joanna Kidman, Reremoana Theodore and Olivia Rowley that Māori make up only five percent of academics in our universities.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: maori and pacific, politics, social sciences

Gardens for the People! 

May 1, 2021 Leave a Comment

James Beattie 

Common Ground: Garden histories of Aotearoa by Matt Morris (Otago University Press, 2020), 284 pp., $45

In Common Ground: Garden histories of Aotearoa, Matt Morris writes affectionately of our love affair with gardens through time. In it, expect to find stories of your uncle and aunty digging spuds or planting kūmara in the back garden, rather than details of the wealthy real estate developer and her husband quaffing cocktails on their mansion’s manicured lawn. Morris draws from wide-ranging archival and published sources, as well as interviews. The result is a fine-grained and touching history of our relationship with gardens. [Read more…]

Filed Under: environment, history, maori and pacific

The Slow Wheels of Justice 

October 1, 2020 Leave a Comment

Gerry Te Kapa Coates

Justice & Race: Campaigns against racism and abuse in Aotearoa New Zealand by Oliver Sutherland (Steele Roberts, 2020), 288pp., $34.99

Professor Emeritus David Williams, in his foreword to this important book, says it ‘is not an easy read’. The book deals with issues around systemic racism in the justice and policing jurisdictions from 1969 to 1986. Heavy topics, yes, but the book, thanks to Oliver Sutherland’s masterful handling of the material, reads like a thriller, peppered with well-known names and events highlighted by newspaper clippings and photographs.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: history, law, maori and pacific, politics

A Tool of Hope

August 1, 2020 Leave a Comment

Jessica Thompson Carr

Protest Tautohetohe: Objects of resistance, persistence and defiance by Stephanie Gibson, Matariki Williams and Puawai Cairns (Te Papa Press, 2019), 416 pp., $70

The survival of the objects in these pages has depended on many factors—some exist because of their careful owners, others through luck. – Preface

Growing up, I didn’t have much access to my Māori taonga. Most of the treasures of our whānau were either lost or had disintegrated in the bush, or are now kept in a museum. We learned what we could, and our connection was limited to our mum returning from trips up north with Ngāpuhi T-shirts and bumper stickers. Those were my taonga. [Read more…]

Filed Under: history, maori and pacific

He kura kāinga e hokia: he kura tangata e kore e hokia. The treasure of land will persist: human possessions will not

June 1, 2020 Leave a Comment

Gerry Te Kapa Coates

Rebuilding the Kāinga: Lessons from te ao hurihuri by Jade Kake (BWB Texts, 2019), 155 pp., $15; #NoFly: Walking the talk on climate change by Shaun Hendy (BWB Texts ,2019), 130 pp., $15

Jade Kake was raised in Australia by a Māori mother and a Dutch father, and after gaining a Bachelor of Architectural Design from Queensland she moved back to Aotearoa in 2012, where she made contact with her whanaunga Rau Hoskin, a leader in the field of Māori architecture. He encouraged her to do a master’s degree at Auckland University of Technology on papakāinga—a literal embodiment of earth (papa) and kainga (home)—as a model for regeneration of communities in Aotearoa.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: journalism, maori and pacific, politics, social sciences

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