Shifting Indigenous Identities Through the Lens of Witi Ihimaera

The last 40 years of struggle for Maori representation defined and gave life to the indigenous culture of New Zealand. The fight for recognition has not been easy — yet it revived Maori culture, in a period deemed Maori Renaissance
Almost every sector, such as language, health, government, education, etc., saw improvement. Along with the resurgence of activism came a new wave of indigenous literature which struggled and morphed as different political, economic, and cultural forces changed the landscape of New Zealand.
One author represents this change better than any other — Witi Ihimaera. He is the most published Maori author, and his works span from this Renaissance to his most recent publication in 2011.

Ihimaera was born in 1944 near Gisborne, New Zealand and left his rural home to live in the capital, Wellington where he would study English and eventually begin working as a diplomat in 1973, the same year he published his first novel. He was the first Maori author to publish both a collection of short stories and a novel. His most internationally well-known book is The Whale Rider, which also had international success as a film by the same title.
There’s a lot of information about the cultural changes of New Zealand in his stories. Many scholars have studied that — I was more interested in how he spoke about the pressures he felt as an artist firsthand.
I began looking at interviews he’s given in the last 50 years to analyze how he defined himself outside of his works. What I found was a man situated between numerous responsibilities, audiences, and priorities.
His journey as an author is an excellent case study for understanding the different pressures an indigenous authors face throughout their careers. He reflects the tension between representing a minority culture, addressing a white majority, and staying authentic to personal, modern experiences.
A theorists I draw from is Michaela Moura-Kocoglu. She recently published a book focusing on the shift of Maori texts into a more modern arena. She specifically points out three periods of Maori literature that I use to categorize the interviews of Witi Ihimaera.
They are what she calls, Narratives of (Be)Longing, Narratives of (Un)Belonging, and Transcultural. Hers is just one of the ways of approaching this indigenous tradition, though it lends itself nicely to studying Ihimaera because of the length of time considered in her theory.
So what does Ihimaeara say in the interviews?
Narratives of (Be)Longing
Witi Ihimaera has always been articulate and outspoken about his purpose in writing. When he first learned that no Maori had ever published a book, he made it his goal to change that. Two years after his first novel. He said:
My first priority is to the young Maori, the ones who have suffered most with the erosion of the Maori map, the ones who are Maori by color but who have no emotional identity as Maori. My second priority is the Pakeha (Non- Maori New Zealander) — he must understand his Maori heritage, must understand that cultural difference is not a bad thing and that, in spite of the difference, he can incorporate the Maori vision of life into his own personality. Thirdly, I write for all New Zealanders to make them aware of the tremendous value of Maori culture and the tragedy for them should they continue to disregard this part of their dual heritage. (source)
At this moment, Ihimaera is in the first phase of Maori Writing, Narratives of (Be)Longing. His first priority is Maori people to recognize and develop a cultural awareness and reestablish their heritage. This was a primary goal of the Maori Renaissance in the late 1960s.

As you can tell, however, he’s already aware that his audience is bigger than just the Maori people. He’s also writing to white New Zealanders and to his nation with the goal that they will respect his first priority, reestablishing a cultural inheritance.
Right from the beginning of his writing, he faces the tensions of preserving an indigenous world view while writing for an audience beyond his ethnicity.
Narrative of (Un)Belonging
After two successful novels and two successful collections of short stories, Ihimaera took a hiatus from writing which lasted ten years until in 1986 when he decided to publish again. However, his writing in this period reflects a much more politically minded agenda and belongs to the period of (Un)Belonging when economic, cultural, and political tensions swelled to their greatest.
No longer was the Maori experience just one of rediscovery; it was activism spurred on by unjust representation and equality.

For a little longer than a decade, Maori literature was engaged in challenging both colonizer agendas and Maori social issues. During this time the most well known and longest lasting Maori novels were published: The Bone People by Keri Hulme, winner of a Booker Prize, The Whale Rider and The Matriarch by Witi Ihimaera, Potiki by Patricia Grace, and Once Were Warriors by Alan Duff which also inspired a critically acclaimed film, boosting the novel’s popularity.
Unlike his novels and short stories in the 70s, Ihimaera now wrote less about Maori tropes and cultural iheritances and more about real pressing issues through fiction.
He said…
[Politics have] been implicit in my work but until now I’ve never integrated it into literature, in an explicit manner (source).
By work, he is referring to his position in the embassy rather than his oeuvre. The 80’s for him mark an implicit turn towards speaking out against the injustices that he has seen for his position as a Maori, government worker, and author.
He also stated…
Just as all literature is politics, so too am I not only a writer but a political person. So I’ve really gone out and actively sought positions where I can support any endeavor by a Maori, whether it be in politics or in art or literature or whatever (source)
By taking this activist stance in his writing, Ihimaera dialed up the tension he already faced in his earlier writing, complicating the relationship between addressing his people, his countrymen, and the nation as a whole.

To quote from another interview just a year later, he said that authors were…
Beginning now to direct our work to the Pakeha (white New Zealander) who is the majority in power. Because if we cannot interpret our needs to the Pakeha in power then we will never, ever, advance the causes of the Pacific (source).
This shift in purpose didn’t sit well with everyone, which is something Ihimaera acknowledges.
There were many people, Maori as well as Pakeha, who hated The Matriarch, who disliked it intensely because of its race and gender politics (source).
It seems impossible for author directing their work towards activism to satisfy even their own indigenous race.
Transcultural
In 1991, a few years before this activist period, Ihimaera said in an interview…
The time may be coming when Maori will be writing from a less collective response and more of an individual response (source).
His words proved prophetic, and in since the mid 90’s and into the 21st century, Maori writing has entered a period of modernism.
Two outcomes occurred. First — Maori writing became much more personal in showing aspects of the author’s life foregoing traditional themes and tropes that were exhausted during the 70’s through the early 90’s (source).
Second — an international audience became more interested in Maori literature than ever before, which added additional tension to the writing of Witi Ihimaera.

One of the first indications of this person touch in Ihimaera’s work was his novel Nights in the Garden of Spain, where he came out as gay, as well as writing the story from the perspective of a Caucasian protagonist. Since that novel, his works have been focused on an individual experience rather than a universal Maori experience.
Does the introduction of such personal experience displace the cultural or political bend of his work? Not necessarily. Rather, it adapts to the current circumstances, blending all his earlier preoccupations. Ihimaera describes his role in this transition this way.
I think I am… like Maui — trying to locate or fix a Maori destination for all Maori who negotiate their lives through the postcolonial constructs of a universal reality and a hybridized world (source).
His goal is not to center a Maori destination on his own experience, but to write so that others can see what it’s like to negotiate multiple identities: indigenous, gay, mixed race, religious, rich, poor, or any other means of self-identity.
Beyond just a modern or postmodern experience, Ihimaera now has to deal with an international audience, a phenomenon initially foreign to him. In 1992 he said…
I’ve never really thought of an American audience. It just always surprises me… to come to grips with the fact of any interest other than Maori or Pakeha in my work (source).
In 2004, Ihimaera seems to have changed his tune a little about his international aesthetic.
Of all the Maori writers I think that my work is probably the most internationally inclined. But I am not saying that that comes from a Maori source, that comes from my training as an academic and a literary enthusiast within the study of English (source).
That’s a far cry from admitting that he has an international audience in mind, but the quote exemplifies a shift in his thought as an author to understand why there may be a global appeal to his work.
While Witi Ihimaera has been outspoken and confident in his direction as a writer, it’s clear that his journey as an author pinned him between competing priorities caused by a rapidly changing, modern world.

Maori’s were hardly the only minority culture to experience the beginnings of a cultural movement or renaissance in the 60’s. To name a few in the west, Hawaiians, Latin Americans, Blacks, Australian Aboriginals, and Native Americans all experienced increased activism and cultural rejuvenation in the last 50 years.
It’s impossible and unfair to suggest that all cultures faced the same stumbling blocks and reacted in the same way. Yet for Witi Ihimaera, his interviews show the difficulty and shifting nature of writing under the pressures of indigeneity.
