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This impressive book sets out Maori aspirations for more political, economic and cultural self determination in the face of ongoing settlements with the Crown. Durie discusses this self determination under six distinct headings which are separated as chapters. These are: the environment, cultural identity, social policy, land issues, fisheries and the Treaty of Waitangi. In each of these areas he looks at the power historically held by the Crown and also looks to more recent developments which have influenced Maori relationships with the Crown.
As well as this the book is aspirational about what could be offered to Maori in the future and how this can be extracted through the current framework of the public sector. By the end of the book, ideas for how tino rangatiratanga can best be offered to Maori is shaped within possible future governance and sovereignty structures. He offers the idea that sovereignty can be maintained both at a tribal level and at higher levels of governance, allowing for both arguments which have traditionally been the focus of much debate.
Through this, Durie focuses on the 1835 Declaration of Independence by Maori iwi as an important constitutional document alongside the Treaty of Waitangi. He sees the sovereignty aspired to by Maori as existing within and not apart from the wider nationhood of New Zealand.
This is a very well written and argued book. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in Maori and constitutional law in New Zealand.
We've all heard of the terrible suppression of abuse in the Catholic Church in recent times. All over the world, stories have spilled out about the abuse of children in the Catholic church, and a church hierarchy that failed to act in a way to stop the abuse. This book is about a similar abuse of power, but this time in the Anglican Church in New Zealand.
Deans applied to be ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church in 1982. A priest in this institution is (unlike a Catholic priest) entitled to be married and entitled to be female. As was normal practice, Deans was given a spiritual guide and mentor. This man was to become her abuser and the man she risked everything to expose. Deans was unfortunately not the only victim of this man, as she was to find out women had been assaulted and abused by him before and reported him, but to no avail. Deans and some of the other women made it their mission to make sure no more women got hurt and to make sure the Anglican Church took responsibility to make sure the same thing could not happen again.
This book is a daring one. The man involved is not named - although I believe he has since been outed. Deans aims to show the respect she feels for the church and in the same breath wishes to expose those who would give that church a bad name. This woman is obviously gutsy and to stand up to her abuser like this and to demand change shows a survivor attitude that resonates throughout the book. Deans writes exceptionally well and shows us the battle for recognition she faced, as well as how this battle affected her personal life.
This is a brilliant book about brave survivors taking into their hands a fight and a responsibility, which was to forever change the outlook of the Anglican Church in New Zealand. I would recommend it to all.
Janet Frame is one of my favourite authors of all time. It seems she was a modern-day Virginia Woolf. Her way with words is absolutely magical. This was her only book to be set in the United States. The main topic of this book is death. Dr Talbot Edelman, our narrator, is a post-graduate medical student working in New York and researching death. We learn early on that he does this because death has always been repressed in his family; people have died or been dying and have suddenly disappeared and been pushed out of the imagination. Talbot discovers, as we do by reading this book, that death has become a taboo and dying has become the most lonely place of all. He experiments on his dog, Sally, his most faithful companion who he breaks and puts back together, because he loves her and because he couldn't bare to harm anyone else.
Talbot comes to meet Turnlung, an old man who seems to resemble his dead grandfather. Talbot comes to befriend and research Turnlung, an author and a man who has moved to New York, not to live but to die. The existence of Turnlung's existence is quite questionable from his entrance into the story. We wonder if he exists or if he only exists for Talbot.
Above all this book is a critique of the way that Western civilisation deals with death - we brush it under the carpet, we don't talk about it for fear of being viewed as morbid, we ignore it and we brush past it in day-to-day life, it is inevitable but it is completely silent. Talbot's experience with death in his family sets him up for a life of wondering and researching the taboo of death and in his own way his world becomes mythical as he obtains custody of a buffalo in the zoo.
This is an amazing book and I take something new from it every time I read it.
The murders of the Bain family occurred in 1994 in Every Street, Dunedin. On the 20th of June, Robin Bain, his wife Margaret and children Arawa (19), Laniet (18) and Stephen (14) were shot in the early hours of the morning. David was later arrested and charged with their murder. His conviction was overturned by the Privy Council in 2007 and a retrial in 2009 returned a 'not guilty' verdict.
In this book by Joe Karam (a former New Zealand rugby player, two main pieces of evidence that eventually contributed towards the overturned conviction are presented. Karam effectively pieces together the events leading up to the 20th of June and analyses the work of the Police who eventually arrested and charged Bain. In an unprecedented case in New Zealand, vital evidence was misplaced and moved. In addition to this, important tests which could have conclusively ended the case right there and then were not run. Furthermore, legal advice offered to David, as well as the evidence presented by his defence counsel in court was insufficient.
As well as outlining the failure of the Police to adequately deal with this case, Karam presents two vital pieces of evidence which he believes exonerate David from guilt. The first has to do with a pair of glasses and a misplaced lens and the second involves a message left on the computer and how quickly David could get back from his paper run. I found the second piece of evidence most helpful and most likely to point to the innocence Karam suggests, but I still don't believe the case is as open-shut as he suggests.
Additionally, Robin Bain displayed many more signs of someone likely to have a meltdown than David. He was about to be outed by his daughter, Laniet for sexual abuse throughout her lifetime, he was living in the caravan out the back of the property and he felt as though his world was falling apart. David on the other hand was doing well performing, had good friends and was doing the best he had in awhile.
Although it is clear that the Police investigation had many holes and that evidence was destroyed it is my opinion that no one will ever know who fired the gun that day. The evidence presented in this book is persuasive, enough so that it would and should have resulted in a not guilty verdict at the outset. But whether Bain will ever conclusively be able to prove his innocence, or whether he will be able to build a new life for himself after so many years in jail is another matter altogether.
I was impressed by Karam's writing. For some reason ex-rugby player didn't ring literary genius to me, but his argument was well presented, worded and would impress most lawyers.
I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the Bain case.
This is the sequel to the book Bread and Roses that I reviewed a few entries okay. It documents the latter part of Sonja Davies' life including the making of the movie Bread and Roses, her entry into Parliament as the MP for the electorate of Pencarrow, her daughter's struggle with Motor Neurone Disease and her eventual retirement to a house in Masterton.
As in her other book, Davies does a remarkably honest and passionate job of representing what it was to be a woman in the largely male world of the House of Representatives, alongside current and former Labour MPs such as Phil Goff (now leader of the Labour Party) and Helen Clark (now Head of the UN Development Council) and against benchmarks of 1980s and early-1990s National politicians like Robert Muldoon (who infamously called Davies Granny) and Labour politicians (like Roger Douglas, now an MP for Act). On top of all this, Davies' daughter was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease. It is amazing that Davies who had already lost her husband and then her son was able to survive through all of this with the same determination that she did.
The book also documents her many overseas trips which continued to various conferences around the world and meant she met some of the leaders of women's rights and the various peace and anti-nuclear groups at the time. It is even more amazing to consider that in and among all these various events, her previous experience with TB meant she frequently caught bouts of pneumonia and would be very ill for large amounts of time. Davies retired to a house in Masterton which she created to her liking in the 90s. She maintained interests in gardening and was received regularly by her grandsons.
This is another impressive book by Davies, possibly on par with her previous one and of even more interest to me as it started at around the period I was born. Sadly Davies died in 2005 but even her long life was amazing considering her busy life and the fact that she relied on one lung for most of her life. I would highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in New Zealand historical figures and politics.
No adequate book image sorry.
This autobiography documents the amazing life of Sonja Davies; a prominent New Zealand feminist, trade unionist, member of the peace movement and MP for the Labour Party in the late-1980s to the early-1990s. Davies shares with amazing insight her early life, born as an illegitimate child in 1920s New Zealand brought up by her grandparents in Oamaru. The chapter is entitled "A different childhood" and this conceptualises her life very well. Later on, living with her mother and life as a child in New Zealand at this time is most accurately represented. The book continues as Davies left shcool early to enter the workforce, went to nurses school and eventually became a vital part of the movement for trade unions in New Zealand. Amidst all of this, she marries at 17, before falling in love with an American marine, later killed in the Pacific part of World War II. Giving birth to her first child, she becomes very sick and this begins her years-long battle with tuberculosis. Despite this, this amazing woman came through all of this, married and continued her amazing work as an activist in New Zealand Labour Federations, child care centres and her first political contests.
There is no doubting that Davies had a difficult life, from the very beginning she was different, a 'love child' with a colourful family life. It is made clear here that this woman who thinks she was just one of many was a hero in many ways and definitely a huge figure. This book covers her life up until the 1980s and how she dealt with the many challenges life threw at her. There is nothing innately astonishing about Davies' writing, but it is her firm honesty and compassion to the cause which catches the reader. Her relationships with a wide variety of prominent New Zealand names including Norman Kirk (former NZ Prime Minister), Walter Nash (former NZ Prime Minister), Mary Varnham (former Labour Press Secretary for David Lange) and Sue Kedgley (current Green Party MP). The latter two co-editors of another book I have reviewed which Sonja Davies also had a chapter in. It is also clear that Davies had a deep connection with her environment, living all over New Zealand at various times in her life and appreciating the sights it has to offer.
The one downside I would suggest this book has is its confusing timeline. The subtitles suggest the book is written chronologically, but at many times different things happening at similar times are in different chapters. I can obviously understand why she would want to separate aspects such as her son Mark's tragic death but this did confuse me as a reader and I think it would have represented the many things this amazing woman did even more if they had all been included in the same chunk. A further review of her second book Marching On... will come later.
Overall an amazing read (apparently also made into a movie) documenting the life of one of New Zealand's forthright figures in trade unionism. I would highly recommend it to any New Zealander, regardless of their political stance. It is a highly historical account of New Zealand and growing up in New Zealand.
Sonja Davies died in 2005.
Last year, my friend Serra got me bound editions of eight of Janet Frame's books to read which I did in quick succession. I started to really appreciate the way she writes, I'd grown up knowing who she was, rather famous in New Zealand and saved at the last minute from getting a leucotomy, a practice rampant in mental health in NZ long after other countries had stopped using it. All of Janet Frame's books seem to be part-auto-biographical in a different way, they definitely all mirror someone she knows.
This book is about an author who goes to stay in a house in Berkeley where a couple has agreed to let her use their house while they are away in Italy. When they die in an accident and everything is left to her, four friends of the couple comes to stay and it is at this point in the novel that the real and imaginary start to collide. We are taken on journeys with each of the characters, all connected to NZ somehow but all with different backgrounds. Although the main character is quite silent, you begin to wonder how she knows everything about each of the characters.
As usual Frame in this book draws on her own experiences, as well as that of ex-pat New Zealanders and the experience of living in a country so cut off from the rest of the world (especially pre-email etc.). Frame teaches us in this book to look beyond first impressions and takes us on a journey through a vivid imagination. As with all her other books, I highly recommend this.
This book documents the amazingly distressing story that occurred in the National Women's Hospital from the 1960s onwards where cervical cancer patients were virtually experimented on, and as a result many died or suffered extraordinarily long with a disease that could have been treated at the first instance. Since the writing of this book, a couple of pieces of information have been corrected, I am unsure as to what exactly these are but the substance remains the same.
As Coney suggests, although one doctor was at the centre of the research, the problem lay with the hospital itself and the various obstacles that were surpassed to allow such a thing to take place initially. The fact that it also went on despite protests from doctors and nurses alike is also testament to the lack of follow-up and checking involved especially considering many people knew that Dr Green's methods were not used by any other doctor in the world.
Coney tells this story very well. A lot of people perceived the whole thing (wrongly) as a feminist witchhunt but Coney tells the story impartially and fairly throughout even mentioning some of the more amusing comments she received about her political beliefs. It also showed that no one person was held to account but it was a more systemic failure.
Highly recommend this book to any New Zealander, shocking and well thought out.
Patricia Grace is arguably one of the best authors New Zealand has ever seen. I first read a short story by her in high school for NCEA called "Flower Girls" which slowly but surely exposed a dark side to a family, written between the lines. This novel holds a breadth of knowledge encapsulated in the viewpoints of four of the characters.
Gran Kura, the oldest character who acts as a grandmother tells her story throughout the pages starting from a childhood attending a school where speaking Maori was banned even where it was the only language a child knew properly. Her stories from childhood to adulthood and experiencing continuing disregard by government authorities, act as a poignant backdrop to the grievances that are exposed and that follow throughout the book. As an adult, she become a Maori language activist, seeking to never speak English again.
Tawera, the great-grandson of Gran Kura is perhaps the most interesting character in the book, his older sister died before she was even born and her eyes taken out for studies by the hospital (of course without the permission of family). Tawera experiences a special bond with his sister throughout his childhood acting as her eyes which were stolen and never replaced. His childhood experiences are all coloured by her voice telling him to include her or to tell her what something looks like. To me, this story brought up the initial maltreatment of the first baby's death by the hospital and her spirit has stayed in the womb and attaches on to Tawera when he is born.
Paania, Tawera's mother loses her abusive husband in the same car accident that kills her first child. Her story is highlighted through the pages, firstly fighting against a husband who doesn't seem to care; secondly dealing with the loss of her first child; thirdly experiencing discrimination in her place of work and also watching Tawera grow up. Her role by the end of the book is furthered when she begins to address the grievances that her mother in law (Kura) has told her all about.
Mahaki is a lawyer working in a community office. After the council tries to sell the local iwi some land after having stolen it from them in the first place, he spearheads an attempt at peaceful protest against the council who will not accept their argument. This battle represents all the battles because of colour exposed throughout the book.
This book not only addresses characters in a phenomenal way but also shows the foundations of the Maori grievances that still exist until this day. Especially the anecdotes by Gran Kura show how a colonised race can lose out. You should read this book.
