Aotearoa Quotes

“Experience soon taught me never to write about anything important to me - the Māoris, animals, the unemployed men, the empty boarded-up houses that frightened me. The subsequent trampling of my sensibilities would have destroyed me. Soon everything I wrote came only from my imagination.”
― Ruth Park, A Fence Around the Cuckoo

“Her look is all passion
No agony
There is enough of that on the ground, with the mourners-
Mary, all the Marys
The slutty one
The motherly one
The contrary one
The queen
The queer
The virgin
All the women looking up, waiting for her resurrection”
― Tusiata Avia, Big Fat Brown Bitch

“.. and finish my letter by telling you of Ilam's chief outdoor charm: from all parts of the garden and grounds which I have told you of, and my bedroom window has a perfect panoramic view of them. I watch them under all their changes of tint, and find each new phase the most beautiful. In the very early morning I have often stood shivering at my window to see the noble outline gradually assuming shape, and finally standing out sharp and clear against a dazzling sky, then as the sun rises, the softest rose-coloured and golden tints touch the highest peaks, the shadows deepening by contrast.”
― Lady Barker, Station life in New Zealand

“But if there was a mood of paranoia amongst the counterculture, the spies appeared to be gripped by their own fantasies of the 'reds under the beds' variety. Keith Locke, son of communists Elsie and Jack Locke, discovers that the SIS had a file on him when he was eleven years old. In it it had been noted such suspicious activities as attending a Christchurch performance of the Moscow Circus.”
― Nick Bollinger, Jumping Sundays: The Rise and Fall of the Counterculture in Aotearoa New Zealand

“Why has the idea of Māori privilege been so durable? In the first hundred years of colonisation, the idea of Māori privilege aided and abetted the taking of Māori lands and resources. This loss was framed as a ‘privilege’, a necessary step towards amalgamation and the innumerable benefits it would bring to Māori. In the latter half of the twentieth century and the early decades of the twenty-first century, Māori privilege has again been put to use. Notions of privilege, first used to dispossess Māori, are now being redeployed to consolidate the ill-gotten gains of the previous centuries.”
― Peter Meihana, Privilege in Perpetuity: Exploding a Pākehā Myth

“The Colonial Office maintained that land speculators such as the New Zealand Company were a threat to Māori, hence the need for the Crown pre-emption clause of article two. However, rather than protecting Māori, Crown policy based on pre-emption became an effective means of divesting Māori of their lands. Indeed, during Crown colony rule and under the Liberal government, millions of acres were acquired for Pākehā settlement. The privilege of protection was not just about protecting Māori land rights, it was also about amalgamating Māori into settler colonial society. It was envisaged that English law would eventually supplant Māori custom. At first the Crown sought to do this gradually through ‘official’ privileges such as the Protectorate of Aborigines (to ensure Māori interests were taken into account in land transactions) and the Native Exemption Ordinance (to utilise the authority of chiefs in disseminating British law). Pre-emption, the Protectorate of Aborigines and the Native Exemption Ordinance were in essence tools of amalgamation.”
― Peter Meihana, Privilege in Perpetuity: Exploding a Pākehā Myth

“Since 1840 native policy had swung from ‘the privilege of protection’ to ‘the privilege of free trade’. Proponents of either position based their arguments on article three of the Treaty of Waitangi, or at least their interpretation of it. Yet time and time again, no matter the policy, Māori were invariably dispossessed of their lands.”
― Peter Meihana, Privilege in Perpetuity: Exploding a Pākehā Myth

“Hear ye,
"It is the minorities
who need the protection of free speech"
except when it is a poem
twisted into a headline
in an election year”
― Tusiata Avia, Big Fat Brown Bitch

“How do we trace the whakapapa of our symbols <> when our
grandmother is dead <> and our father is dead <> and our great
uncles and aunties are dead <>”
― Tusiata Avia, Big Fat Brown Bitch

“Cannibalism was widely practised by Maori and it continued until well into the 1800’s, especially during the Musket Wars of the early 1800’s when a quarter of the Maori race perished in inter-tribal warfare.”
― Lance Morcan, New Zealand

“While my novel may not convey exactly what happened during the discovery and settlement of New Zealand, I believe it accurately captures the spirit of those bygone days.”
― Lance Morcan, New Zealand

“The Tahitian beauty is Tahitian Queen Obadia who believes the blue-eyed, blond-haired Nicholas has been sent to her by the island’s gods to give her the child she has never had.”
― Lance Morcan, New Zealand

“At the sight of Queen Obadia, the air was driven from Nicholas’s lungs. It was as if Hercules himself had punched him in the gut.

She’s beautiful!

Nicholas fought for breath as he took in every feature of the royal figurehead who was now standing only a few paces from him. He knew there wasn’t a more exquisite creature on the face of the planet. Others around him were equally impressed.”
― Lance Morcan, New Zealand

“Despite the fact that she was probably nearer forty than thirty, her radiance and beauty outshone that of the prettiest wahine. Statuesque, her golden skin was unblemished, and beneath the colourful cape that hung from her graceful shoulders her body was, in Nicholas’s opinion, perfection personified.”
― Lance Morcan, New Zealand

“High cheek bones gave Queen Obadia's face a rare and exotic beauty, but her most riveting feature was her almond eyes. Large and hypnotic, they roamed over the faces of the visitors seated before her, settling for one magical instant on Nicholas’s face. In that split-second he thought he saw something register in the queen’s eyes. Then it was gone as she turned her attention to others.”
― Lance Morcan, New Zealand

“First reviews are in for the new-release historical adventure ‘New Zealand: A Novel’, and acclaimed American book reviewer Grady Harp asks, ‘Could this be the Great New Zealand novel?”
― Lance Morcan, New Zealand