Stacey Kokaua (Ngāti ‘Arera of Rarotonga/ Pāmati/ Pākehā), a researcher working on the project ‘Writing the New World: Indigenous texts 1900-1975,’ published a short piece about the few months she spent at a significant archive in Dunedin, New Zealand. She describes the reading room as a “glass cage filled with light” in which she experiences both dismal alienation and profound connection.
Through ‘Writing the New World,; an ongoing project about Indigenous engagements with periodicals in the twentieth-century Pacific, Dr. Alice Te Punga Somerville has worked with a range of Pacific students, community researchers, and colleagues – including Stacey – to connect with their respective textual genealogies. In this presentation, Dr. Te Punga Somerville will trace some key sites and moments in which they have experienced, embraced, subverted, talked about, and analysed the many forms that archives can take in Indigenous worlds.
Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Āti Awa, Taranaki) is a scholar, poet, irredentist and māmā. Her publications include Once Were Pacific: Māori Connections to Oceania (2012), 250 Ways to Start an Essay about Captain Cook (2021) and a collection of poetry, Always Italicise: how to write while colonised (2022). Alice holds a joint professorial appointment at the University of British Columbia in the Department of English Language & Literatures and in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies.
Registration for the event is encouraged, but walk-in attendees are welcome.
