Writing the New World

‘Writing the New World: Indigenous texts 1900-1975’ is a multi-year project supported by a Marsden Fund (Royal Society of NZ) award 2018-2021. The focus of the project is on published texts written (and translated) by Indigenous people in four specific sites: New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and Hawai’i. Despite people like Albert Wendt and Witi Ihimaera being held up as if nothing happened before their first publications, of course Indigenous people had been publishing across all genres and in English as well as in Indigenous languages for a very long time.

Because many of these publications have been in periodicals, they have slipped through the critical cracks between the genres and forms most often engaged in literary studies. The project explicitly seeks to decentre an obsession with Indigenous “firsts” and instead takes for granted the interconnected, intergenerational, multilingual whakapapa of Intellectual thought of the region.

Seventeen Indigenous students and independent researchers -who bring a diverse range of Maori, Samoan, Niuean, Nukuhiva, Cook Islander, and Fijian backgrounds and experiences - have been involved in the project. The project has also supported two fabulous students in their masters research: Wanda Ieremia-Allan (MPhil; now upgraded to PhD student); and Ammon Apiata (MA).