Pūrākau - Nelson Arts Festival
208 Bridge St, Nelson, Nelson / Tasman
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Pūrākau: Weaving Māori Myths Into Modern Stories
Whiti Hereaka and Nic Low have written two remarkable books that tell ancient Māori stories in fresh and compelling ways, with Hereaka flipping perspectives on a well-known tale, and Low using tramping and climbing adventures to bring the past to life.
Winner of the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction at the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, Kurangaituku is the story of Hatupatu told from the perspective of the traditional ‘monster’, Kurangaituku, the bird woman. In this new version of the story, Kurangaituku takes us on the journey of her extraordinary life – from the birds who sang her into being, to the arrival of the Song Makers and the change they brought to her world, and her life with Hatupatu and her death. Through the eyes of Kurangaituku, we come to see how being with Hatupatu changed Kurangaituku, emotionally and in her thoughts and actions, and how devastating his betrayal of her was.
In Uprising: Walking the Southern Alps of New Zealand, Nic Low crosses the Southern Alps more than a dozen times in a bid to understand how his forebears saw the land. Yes, this is a tramping story, but so much more: armed with Ngāi Tahu’s traditional oral maps and the iwi's modern satellite atlas, Low invites us to travel one of the world’s most spectacular landscapes in the company of Māori explorers, raiding parties, and gods and, while doing so, come a little closer to understanding the true history of Aotearoa. When the British arrived, the Southern Alps were not an untouched ‘wilderness’ but rather home to a network of trails crisscrossing the mountains, dotted with settlements, stories and mahinga kai (places where food was tended and harvested).
Hereaka and Low will together explore how storytelling has been used in Māori history in the past and how – and why – is it being reinvented.
This event is part of the 2022 Nelson Arts Festival.
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