Ngā Mihi: Acknowledgments

A few years ago, I asked my Nana for a specific book, and she gave me the family copy of Te Rangihiroa’s The Coming of the Maori instead. I wonder now if this gift was a challenge or prophecy. My whānau has always been my strength, inspiration, and accountability: Nana and Grandad, Mum and Dad, Auntie Jill and Uncle Mike, Daniel, Amy, Rose, the uncles and aunties, the Te Punga cousins, Loraine and John, Betty Finlayson, the broader connections of hapū and iwi, with special mention of Terese. Ko Te Ātiawa te iwi, ko Waiwhetū te marae. I am compelled to offer a special tribute to Auntie Nanie for the chance to reconnect and to my sister Megan and nephew Matiu for everything.

This project has been supported by a range of institutions and people: major funding for the research was provided by the Royal Society of New Zealand through a Marsden Fast-Start Grant (2006). At Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa New Zealand (VUW), I received financial support for this project from pro-vice chancellor (Māori) professor Piri Sciascia, the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, a New Researcher Grant, and the University Research Fund. This joins funding and institutional support from Fulbright, Cornell University, and the University of Hawai‘i–Mānoa over the course of my doctoral studies. I have enjoyed collegial and institutional support from VUW, Cornell University, and the University of Hawai‘i–Mānoa in the United States and from the Warawara Department of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University in Australia. Chris Dean from the VUW research office encouraged and supported my Marsden application and so was the first person to hear me describe this project and also the first to believe in it. I am especially grateful to the support and aroha from Te Kawa a Māui and Te Whānau o Te Herenga Waka at VUW.

Other institutional support has come from various archives and libraries and their magnificent staff: VUW, especially Nicola at the Beaglehole Room; the National Library; the Alexander Turnbull Library; the University of Auckland; Auckland Public Libraries, Hutt Libraries, and the Auckland City Council Archives; the State Library of NSW; the ANU library; the National Library of Australia; University of Hawai‘i’s Hawai‘i-Pacific collection; Kamehameha Schools library and archives; the Bishop Museum Archives; the Mission Houses Archive; the Yale University archive; and the special collections at the University of Birmingham. To Ngāti Mutunga, for permission to conduct research about Te Rangihiroa, ngā mihi.

I have received a great deal of enthusiasm and inspiration from my students, especially the 2008–2011 classes of Pacific Literature at VUW and postgraduate students with whom I have had the pleasure to explore the amazing world of Māori literature. I was supported with practical research assistance from Arini Loader, Gemma Browne, Megan Pakau, and Ronnie Pakau; each is a promising researcher in his or her own right, and I look forward to hearing more from all of them.

Thank you to my academic supervisors and mentors at Cornell University during my doctoral studies (Biodun Jeyifo, Angela Gonzales, Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Laura Brown) and at the University of Auckland, where I wrote my master’s thesis (Terry Sturm) and where I first fell in love with English (Witi Ihimaera, Albert Wendt, Michael Neill). I can only hope that your combined influence is visible in these pages—it is certainly felt and appreciated. Special tribute goes to the late Professor Terry Sturm, whose guidance, wisdom, high expectations, and generous aspirations secured me on this path. I wish I had thanked you kanohi ki te kanohi when I had the chance.

I owe a great debt to friends, peers, and mentors and their respective whānau, who have provided a wide and deep layer of warmth and support—intellectual, emotional, and physical. Ngā mihi nunui: Alyssa Mt. Pleasant, Andy Mackenzie, AnnaMarie Christiansen, April Henderson, Aroha Harris, Brandy Nālani MacDougall, Brendan Hokowhitu, Cecilia Tuiomanufili, Chad Allen, Chris Andersen, Dominique Eugene, Erina Potter, Hokulani Aikau, Hugh Karena, Jacob Tamaiparea, Jeani O’Brien, Jo Mossop, Jo Smith, Jolisa Gracewood and Richard Easther, Joost de Bruin, Ka’imipono Kahumoku Ka’iwi and Walter Kahumoku, Karin Speedy, Kate Hunter, Keith Camacho, Ku’ualoha Ho’omanawanui, Lehua Yim, Lisa Brooks, Lydia Wevers, Maria Bargh, Marie Cocker, Meegan Hall and Peter Adds, Michelle Elleray and Anne Lyden, Michelle Trudgett and Ness Garcia, Nadine Attewell, Noelani Arista, Ocean Mercier, Pala Molisa, Paul Meredith, Rachael Barrett, Rawinia Higgins, Robert Warrior, Robert Sullivan, Selina Tusitala Marsh, Sophie Druett, Tasha Williams, Te Ripowai Higgins, Teresia Teaiwa, Tim Groves, Vince Diaz, Vernice Wineera. My writing groups, Agraphia, the Toihuarewa Write-on-Site team, and Writers Block, kept me on the job, and the members of the “Let’s kick ATPS’s butt until she publishes her book!” Facebook group provided a supportive and mortifying final push near the end.

Many of the ideas in this book have been shared at conferences, symposia, and other venues, and I have relished the feedback people have generously provided: University of Utah; NAISA at Oklahoma, Georgia, Minnesota, and Tucson; the University of Hawai‘i and East West Center; ACRAWSA in Adelaide; SPACLALS in Sāmoa; the Pacific History Association in Dunedin and Fiji; BYU-Hawai‘i; the MELUS, ACLA, and MLA conferences; AIS and English at Cornell University; Te Tumu at University of Otago; Manu Ao; Te Pouhere Kōrero and He Rau Tumu Kōrero hui for Māori historians; Ohio State University; Harvard University; UCLA; Pacific Studies and the Stout Centre at VUW; and the University of Auckland French Department.

Huge thanks go to the University of Minnesota Press, especially Jason Weidemann and Danielle Kasprzak. Your decision to take a risk on a book by a Māori scholar from the other end of the world, and the encouragement and skill you have applied to its production, means that this book will have the opportunity to travel like an oceangoing waka: as sturdily as possible and with navigators and maps already well aligned. Special thanks go to Mum, Rose Heinrich, Arini Loader, Jo Smith, Rawinia Higgins, and April Henderson, who helped with the manuscript in the last week before the deadline.

Finally, I acknowledge Māori writers who write in English. In some ways, this first book is a feathered korowai, assembled row on row on row. Any beauty in this cloak is because of the feathers you have contributed, and any gaps or unevenness or bits of loose stitching are entirely my own fault, a humble and always-learning weaver of such things.

This book is dedicated to some rangatahi and an island.