SOURCE: James, Trevor. “‘Telling Our Own Stories’: Reclaiming Difference, a Maori Resistance to Postculturalism.” In Cross-Addressing: Resistance Literature and Cultural Borders, edited by John C. Hawley, pp. 51-65. New York: State University of New York Press, 1996.

In the following essay, James contends that Maori writers have infused a distinctive sense of spirituality into their writing, using this as a means of differentiating themselves from New Zealand writers of European descent.

The thrust of this [essay] may be simply stated. In New Zealand literature one of the ways by which Maori writers have defined an indigenous identity has been to claim a difference from a surrounding and dominant Pakeha culture. (“Pakeha” is the Maori word for New Zealanders of European descent.) This difference has been fixed in the assertion of a distinctive spirituality—a view of life that is nonmaterial, that unifies past, present and future, and that underpins...