September 20, 2018
War’s legacy a shifting history
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The author of a new novel about the Māori Contingent in World War 1 says Māori need to find ways to tell their own history.
Legacy by Wellington-based Whiti Hereaka of Ngāti Tūwharetoa and Te Arawa draws on oral histories of the war to give the flavour of daily life in the army and present the action in a way that differs from the standard Pakeha Anzac history.
It also includes a time slip with a contemporary teenager thrust back 100 years to serve alongside his great-great-grandfather in the contingent.
She says that was a device to allow the people from the past to present their own narrative while also putting it into a modern Māori context.
"Part of the reason i wanted to write it is I think it is really important that we own our own stories and know our own stories. I want people who read it to go off and think about how they view history and that history is as malleable as a fiction depending on who is telling it, and it is important we tell or stories so we are included in that history," Hereaka says.
Legacy is published by Huia.
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