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    Wayfinding Pasifikafuturism : an indigenous science fiction vision of the ocean in space : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2020) Cole, Gina
    This thesis examines science fiction space stories written by Indigenous writers and asks how these texts look to the past while commenting on the present and providing transformative imaginaries of our existence as Indigenous peoples in the future. It also investigates how these texts challenge the inherent colonialism of the science fiction genre and its norm of the white, male, heteronormative, cisgender point of view. This thesis comprises two sections, creative and critical. Twenty percent provides the critical analyses and eighty percent makes up the creative section. The critical component is in two parts. The first part defines the specific point of view adopted in this thesis, which is that of science fiction literature written by Māori and Pasifika authors as the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific. This point of view is captured within the term I have developed and called, “Pasifikafuturism”, a theoretical construct that situates Oceanic science fiction in the afterlife of colonisation and seeks to move beyond postcolonialism to create Pacific conceptions of the future. Pasifikafuturism is located alongside other Alternative Futurisms with which it has commonalities, including Afrofuturism, Indigenous Futurism, Queer Indigenous Futurism, Chicanafuturism, Latinofuturism, and Africanfuturism. Pasifikafuturism is identified within the context of the Pacific Ocean and the ancestral practices and methodologies of wayfinding and waka building. The second part of the critical study comprises a close reading of two science fiction space stories written by Indigenous authors. The first is Witi Ihimaera’s space novella Dead of Night, a story about six people travelling through space to the end of the universe, or Te Kore. The second is Nnedi Okorafor’s novella Binti in which the titular protagonist, a young Indigenous woman from the Himba tribe in Namib, is the first person in her community to travel into space to attend an intergalactic university. In the creative portion of this thesis, Pasifikafuturism is explored imaginatively in an original novel titled Na Viro, which is shaped and informed by my critical research. Na Viro is a work of science fiction set in interstellar space and the Pacific. Tia, the protagonist in Na Viro, is a young Fijian woman who travels into space to rescue her sister from a whirlpool. This thesis argues that science fiction, and specifically space stories, can be used as a lens through which to examine the histories and ancestral knowledge of Indigenous peoples adversely impacted by colonialism; and as a way of reclaiming and re-growing Indigenous knowledge that has survived. Furthermore, I use Pacific wayfinding as a methodological framework to enable the envisioning of transformative futures in science fiction stories where our knowledges are centralised, privileged, and respected.
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    A va'ine approach to creative writing : the tīvaevae framework and the calabash breaker : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Creative Writing at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Kokaua-Balfour, Stacey
    This thesis explores an approach to creative writing embedded with an indigenous cultural framework from the Cook Islands. The tīvaevae framework, based around the process of constructing Cook Islands tīvaevae quilts, shapes both the critical and creative components of the thesis. The critical component explains how the tīvaevae framework is utilised and includes a discussion of an archetype called the calabash breaker, named after the poem of the same name by Selina Tusitala Marsh. The calabash breaker appears in different guises in both traditional and contemporary Moana narratives and can be recognised by her strong links to family, community and place, combined with tendency to rebel against the social conventions of her community. Typically, her insubordinate nature drives the narrative towards her ultimate act of disruption while also providing a method of social critique. Characters who share the traits of the calabash breaker are explored through a close reading of Witi Ihimaera’s novel Whale Rider (1987) and Sia Figiel’s novel The Girl in the Moon Circle (1996). In the creative component, a middle grade novel titled The Mōmoke’s Daughter, a Rarotongan girl named Kimiora from Porirua discovers she is the daughter of a mōmoke, a figure from Rarotongan cultural narratives. Kimiora and her friend return to the world of the mōmoke in the depths of te Moananui a Kiva, the Pacific Ocean. The book has a strong environmental concerns and explores what it means to be Indigenous to the Pacific while also part of a global community that is responsible for so much of the environmental destruction of ocean habitats. The novel uses the calabash breaker, expressed through the character of Kimiora, to explore Cook Islands ideas about identity, family, belonging, place and the role of mana tiaki (kaitiaki) of ocean environments.
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    History, gender and tradition in the Māori nation : female leaders in Witi Ihimaera's The Matriarch, The Whale Rider and The Parihaka Woman : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2015) Hepi, Tracey
    This research is underpinned by the question of how Witi Ihimaera portrays the survival of Māori nationhood through his female protagonists in The Matriarch, The Whale Rider and The Parihaka Woman. Specifically this thesis aims to inves-tigate how the texts question and reconsider ethnocentric Western notions of history, while exploring a Māori point of view that interrogates and refigures that history through recourse to myth; it also examines how the modes of transmission of Indigenous mythologies in these works intercept both racial politics and the gender protocols framing the interpretation of Indigenous bodies. I shall argue that Ihimaera’s historical revisionism seeks to refigure Māoridom’s links to tradi-tion and restore a symbolic Māori sovereignty through an idea of history that can encompass both Pākehā and Māori.