More than 300 scholars, authors, research and community leaders, publishers, secondary school students and politicians came together in Parliament this past week to celebrate the success and future of Te Takarangi - 150 Māori authored non-fiction books.
MC for the evening NPM Board Member and Associate Professor Scotty Morrison led a series of speakers to commend the collection.
These speakers included Hon Willie Jackson Associate Minister of Māori Development, Sir Tīpene O’Regan NPM Board Chair, Professor Wendy Larner President Royal Society Te Apārangi, Professor Linda Tuhiwai Smith author of Decolonising Methodologies and Professor Jacinta Ruru, Co-Director of NPM.
Conceived by Professor Ruru, with Jeanette Wikaira and Associate Professor Angela Walhalla and the team at Te Apārangi, Te Takarangi is a curated collection of Māori publications and knowledge that visibly links us through time and space, and a body of work that provides stability and balance to steer our past, present, and future.
What began as a very simple idea and initiative in early 2017, swiftly became an immense journey of connection, building a compelling selection of 150 Māori authored books that encourages all of us to look beyond the titles to a collective momentum that is evident across this body of work.
From February - September 2018, the Royal Society Te Apārangi and NPM promoted and described the individual titles on a daily basis, taking our communities and whānau on an online journey of discovery (and re-discovery) which reaffirms the undeniable scope and scale of Māori scholarship.
On Tuesday 16 October, we came together to celebrate the impact of the project and commence the next travelling phase of Te Takarangi as it becomes a visual exhibition.
Te Takarangi will be exhibited next at NPM's 8th International Indigenous Research Conference, at the University of Auckland 13th – 16th November, and after that we hope the exhibition will journey to marae, community halls, public libraries, tertiary institutions and galleries around the country.
Collectively these books are visionary and capture the aspirations about what was, and is, possible for Māori and for the future of Māori and Pākehā in Aotearoa New Zealand.
To find out more, visit the Royal Society Te Apārangi website here
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