Matariki Stars shine on Maori-focussed titles

Māori Language Week this week runs from 4- 10 July 2011.
Click to see new releases of Māori books for June and July.

At Benny’s Books in New Plymouth, owner Julia Phillips (pictured below) is excited. “I’ve just opened the most amazing book. It has a cover to die for! I’ll sell quite a few and I know exactly which of my customers will want them.”

Booksellers know and love that feeling when opening boxes, but what has caught Julia’s attention so strongly this time?

It’s The Pressure of Sunlight Falling, Fiona Pardington’s photographs of the detailed casts of heads taken on the third voyage of French explorer Dumont d’Urville in the Pacific and around New Zealand. The casts are part of the collection of the Musee de l’Homme in Paris.

Pardington captures the eerie beauty of the casts, which include some of her Ngai Tahu ancestors. With essays on the voyages and related topics by leading academics, the book is big, beautiful and scholarly. At $120, it is expensive, but will be treasured by customers who can see its value, Julia believes.

Benny’s Books has a big Māori section, and Māori related titles are at least 10 percent of the store’s book sales.

The stock is not all at high price points – they sell ‘heaps’ of Earth, Sea, Sky by Patricia and Waiariki Grace at $24.00. “The only pictorial book on Māori proverbs,” notes Julia.

She is also fortunate in her second in command, Gael Wells – a pakeha who is fluent in Maori and helps buy for the area.

Backlist like Dick Scott’s Ask That Mountain, books on Taranaki Wars and ‘anything by Michael King’ sell well for Benny’s. Also in demand, Nga Tama Toa about the Māori Battalion, Contested Ground by Kelvin Day and Deidre Brown’s Māori Architecture.

For kids learning Te Reo, they currently stock around 80 Māori language picture books.

On the other side of the North Island, Muirs Book Shop in Gisborne carries a major selection of Māori titles, as does McLeods in Rotorua.

These and other bookshops will be impressed by June and July releases from Huia Publishers, AUP, Otago University Press and other publishers.

Paul Diamond (pictured right), chair of judges and Te Reo Māori Advisor for the New Zealand Post Book Awards, is in awe of the number and depth of the Māori-focused titles coming on to the market this year.

“It is good news,” says Paul, historian and author of Makereti a biography of 1890’s Whakarewarewa guide Maggie Papakura.

“We are showing immense confidence in getting Maori stories out into the world.”

Paul is also aiming to take new technology to old, out of print, Māori titles. “Imagine if we could make these titles available digitally!

We’d need to sort out copyright issues, but it could be a way of making a rich resource more available.”

New Releases
HUIA

From Huia Publishers in July: My Language, My Inspiration and the Māori edition Tōku Reo, Tōku Ohooho, which explore the struggle to save the Māori language over the last forty years. Author Chris Winitana looks at the reasons for the decline of the language and charts its resurgence through initiatives such as Waitangi Tribunal claims, petitions for the Māori language and the development of the Rākau method of learning. $45.00

Earlier this year, Huia released Te Wiremu, Henry Williams: Early Years in the North by Caroline Fitzgerald, Margaret Mutu’s The State of Maori Rights and Damian Skinner’s The Passing World, The Passage of Life: John Hovell and the Art of Kōwhaiwhai.

Upcoming in September is Ngā Tini Whetū: Navigating Māori Futures by Mason Durie, a thought-provoking and accessible exploration of a life where Māori create social, economic and political futures that work with national and international changes yet retain Māori values and perspectives.

RANDOM HOUSE - poetry amid the texts
A poem is
a ripple of words
on water wind-huffed...

Hone Tuwhare poems collected in Small Holes in the Silence, Random House’s mid-July release, are a welcome lightening to the issues-related prose.

From No Ordinary Sun to poems written at the end of his life (including previously unpublished ones) it is a fine selection of Tuwhare’s best work. It also includes some of Tuwhare’s poems translated into Māori.

Random last month released Tupaia, Joan Druett’s account of the Tahiti navigator, ‘an extraordinary genius’ who sailed with Cook on the Endeavour.

AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY PRESS
Auckland University Press’ 2011 contributions include this month’s A Simple Nullity?: the Wi Parata case in New Zealand Law and History, David V Mitchell’s account of a 1877 New Zealand Supreme Court decision dismissing the Treaty of Waitangi as ‘a simple nullity’.

For Māori Language Week in July, AUP have Nga Moteatea: An Introduction He Kupu Arataki by Jane McRae and Hēni Jacob with dual text in English and Māori.

Mōteatea (sung laments) are the central strand of Māori poetry and song, a living art form and a source of knowledge about tribal history and whakapapa.

OTAGO UNIVERSITY PRESS
OUP also has a July title, Making Our Place: Exploring land-use tensions in Aotearoa New Zealand co-edited by Jacinta Ruru, Janet Stephenson and Mick Abbott.

New Zealanders from differing disciplines explore some of the stories and sites of conflict and change to be found amongst our urban and coastal landscapes. They ask: are there better ways to reconcile the tensions inherent in our struggles with the land and each other?

BACK IN THE BOOKSHOPS
David Thorp at McLeods Booksellers in Rotorua has long been a major stockist and advocate of Māori titles.

That’s as it should be for an area with a big Māori population, and Māori related books are an estimated 15 per cent of their book stock sales.

He laments the passing of the Reed Māori titles with the closure of Reed in New Zealand, and feels there is room for many of those titles to be revived.

“You can’t get tribal biographies like Elsdon Best’s book Tuhoe: Children of the Mist, or Tuwharetoa about Māori of the Taupo district by John Te H Grace, or Don Stafford’s books on Te Arawa.”

Books that do sell well for McLeods includes Nga Moteatea, Nga Pepeha a nga Tipuna: The Sayings of the Ancestors, Whaikorero and Rauru.

David is also grateful for those publishers who are moving to fill gaps in Māori publishing, mentioning Peter Dowling of Oratia Media, responsible for the biography Wiremu Pere, Te Ara and From Silence to Voice: the Rise of Maori Literature.

Over in Gisborne, Kim Pittar is fizzing about the flow on effect the big Te Matatini National Kapa Haka Festival held there earlier this year has had on sales. She says that Australian visitors to the competition literally filled suitcases from the extensive range of Māori titles Muirs Book Shop stocks, especially Nga Moteatea, AUP’s backlist of Apirana Ngata’s songs. “The impetus keeps going and we have had a huge demand,” says Kim.

“Because of our location, people always expect us to have the best and latest new titles relevant to Māori. Customers want the large important books, they are very knowledgeable and often share important background with me.”

Kim is selling Tupaia by Joan Druett especially well, and she was told by a shopper of the book’s local significance: Tupaia was an important figure during Captain Cook’s unfortunate visit to Gisborne in 1769 and is remembered in local Māori history.

Paul Diamond may be pleased with the 2011 output of titles relating to things Māori, but he has reservations.

“Things seem to be strong in certain genres – history, art, the natural world, fiction and biography. But where is the writing in Māori?”

He notes that solving this conundrum will take time, and involves supporting people with the skills to write and edit Māori text, but also making material already produced (like resources commissioned by the Education Ministry) and out of print titles (for example, He Hokinga Mahara, Hëmi Pötatau’s memoir published by Longman Paul in 1991) would be a good start.

Nonetheless, Diamond says the wealth of titles inspired by the Māori world is still cause for optimism “It is fantastic to see what is happening!”

The Dictionary Question
Booksellers New Zealand’s project manager Megan Dunn had a question she wanted put to the bookstore owners taking part in this story. When she was on the floor of Borders, people kept asking her which was the best Māori dictionary and she never knew what to suggest.

The Read put the question to Julia, David and Kim; their recommendation was unanimous: The Raupo Dictionary of Modern Māori by PM Ryan from Penguin.

More resources on Māori Language Week.

Story written by Jillian Ewart, writer for The Read.