Q&A with Ockham Book Award-winning Rotorua author Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku

Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku says tourism has shaped and deeply afflicted Rotorua. Photo / Andrew Warner

Curator, critic, activist, the first female Māori Emeritus Professor from a university – and now the winner of New Zealand’s top prize for general non-fiction. Rotorua’s Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku (Te Arawa, Waikato, Tūhoe) won the award for her memoir Hine Toa: A Story of Bravery at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards last month.

Intern journalist Bijou Johnson interviewed the author at Third Place Cafe, overlooking Ōhinemutu – the Māori village where te Awekōtuku grew up and revisits throughout her memoir. These are excerpts from their conversation.

Bijou Johnson: I read a passage from your memoir about your kuia (grandmother) weaving throughout your upbringing. Do you find weaving to be symbolic of your life and the unique path you’ve forged for yourself?

Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku: My family of origin are all word people. They are composers, orators, thinkers, weavers with ideas, with stories. And I was raised by people who were incredibly talented and productive with their hands. Here’s the irony: I am not a weaver at all.

A weaver of words?

A weaver of words and ideas. I got the gift of weaving together ideas. Though my grandmother, my aunties, and my mother – this is in my adopted family – were and are still weavers of great talent and originality. In fact, both my kuia and my koro (grandfather), and a lot of my uncles and aunties, were storytellers. I would go to sleep to the sound, to the magic, to the songs of storytelling. Everybody had a story. Everybody told yarns. Everybody shared gossip. Māori people are enriched and embraced by stories.

Have you always been a writer?

Yeah, I had my first stories published when I was about 8. My mother’s sister was training to be a teacher, and she invented a way of teaching kids by singing the words and having us sing them back to her. She had me reading at 3 and writing at 4. I was doing what I needed to do with all these people weaving. So, I started making my first stories and poems when I was really, really young at Saint Michael’s Convent. Throughout my high school years, I was writing stories that were published in magazines, including The Listener.

You’ve expressed concern over social media and how it’s changing storytelling, especially the written word. How do you want to see storytelling continue in the digital age?

I think we should have it all. We cannot turn away from what is engaging and gripping our young people. I do think that holding a book, opening the pages, and looking at the pictures is really special. It’s a sensual, tactile experience. Smelling a newly printed book is one of life’s greatest pleasures.

How has your relationship with Rotorua changed throughout your life?

My PhD, which I did nearly 50 years ago, was on the social and cultural impact of tourism on the Māori of Ōhinemutu and Whakarewarewa. Tourism, I think, has shaped and deeply afflicted Rotorua.

Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku was raised in the village of Ōhinemutu, Rotorua. Photo / Bijou Johnson

My relationship with mana whenua, with the iwi, with the ground, with the steam, with the bubbling springs, with the lake, with my island, Mokoia, that will never change. That endures. That’s who I am. But my relationship with the self-seeking, get-rich-quick environment of the town now makes me feel sad. I wonder where the beauty has gone.

Do you have any thoughts about how that could change going forward?

Places like New Plymouth, Hamilton, Gisborne and Whanganui are towns that developed with families. Families who have invested in art galleries, museums, libraries, public services and the cultural life of those towns, and they have stayed. Whereas that hasn’t happened here, not really. But hope springs eternal. There’s still a sense that we can make something. The new museum development looks really promising.

Rotorua Museum Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa has been closed for earthquake strengthening since 2016 and is set to reopen in 2027. Photo / Andrew Warner

Rotorua, to me, is a mirror. A very sharply focused and clear mirror of this country’s social and economic problems. I think that the real social initiative and true leadership being asserted here in Rotorua to fix the problems I’ve just described, that leadership and that investment are coming from Māori. It’s coming from Māori entities and organisations that are picking up and looking after the pieces and the problems caused by the wider society and by, and I’ll say it, the racism and the inequity.

Māori need co-operation to be uplifted. We have so many organisations that are investing in our people, are uplifting them, are helping them, are offering services, in a range of different areas of need, from health and dentistry to housing, childcare, and education.

For a long time, I was the only tribesperson with a PhD. Now, there are scores of us. When I came through the system, there was just me, and I couldn’t get a job because I was female.

Ngāhuia te Awekōtuku was in the thick of the first gay rights actions in New Zealand. Photo / Andrew Warner

Do you think that affected your opportunities? Being female and Māori?

Yeah, even in the Māori sector, I was put aside for callow young men with BAs while I had a doctorate.

You’ve faced a lot of opposition and resistance throughout your life. How do you think that shaped the person you’ve become? Do you think you’ve thrived on those challenges over time?

Definitely. I had a wonderful aunt, her name was Bonnie Amoho. And her advice to me was never to give up. Whatever happens to you, never give up.

I haven’t brought them, but Auckland Women’s Centre produced a set of postcards featuring famous Auckland feminists, and there’s one with a couple of lines about my aunt and about her giving me that advice. And that’s also in the text of Hine Toa.

Be true to your dream. Don’t falter. If it’s worth doing, then stay. Stay with the dream, follow it through. You may have to take different pathways and adopt other strategies, but follow them through. Never give up. Make it happen.