Вити Ихимаэра: Жизнь и творчество новозеландского писателя маори.

New Zealand writer (born 1944)

Witi Tame Ihimaera Smiler ('/w//ɪ//t//i// //ɪ//h//i/'/m//aɪ//r//ə/; born 7 February 1944) is a New Zealand author. Raised in the small town of Waituhi, he decided to become a writer as a teenager after being convinced that Māori people were ignored or mischaracterised in literature. He was the first Māori writer to publish a collection of short stories, with Pounamu, Pounamu (1972), and the first to publish a novel, with Tangi (1973). After his early works, he took a ten year break from writing, during which he focused on editing an anthology of Māori writing in English. From the late 1980s onwards Ihimaera wrote prolifically. In his novels, plays, short stories and opera librettos, he examines contemporary Māori culture, legends and history, and the impacts of colonisation in New Zealand. He has said that "Māori culture is the taonga, the treasure vault from which I source my inspiration". His 1987 novel The Whale Rider is his best known work, read widely by children and adults both in New Zealand and overseas. It was adapted into the critically acclaimed 2002 film Whale Rider directed by Niki Caro. His semi autobiographical novel Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1996) was about a married man coming to terms with his homosexuality. In later works he has dealt with historical events such as the campaign of non violent resistance at Parihaka in the late nineteenth century. Ihimaera is an influential figure in New Zealand literature, and over his long career has won numerous awards and fellowships, including multiple awards for both fiction and non fiction at the New Zealand Book Awards spanning the period 1973 to 2016, the Robert Burns Fellowship (1975), the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship (1993), and a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement (2017). Until 2010 he was the Professor of English and Distinguished Creative Fellow in Māori Literature at the University of Auckland. He has since published two volumes of his memoirs: Māori Boy: A Memoir of Childhood (2014) and Native Son: The Writer's Memoir (2019).

Ihimaera was born in Gisborne, a city in the east of New Zealand's North Island and is of Māori descent. His iwi (tribe) is Te Aitanga a Māhaki. He has affiliations to Ngāi Tūhoe, Te Whānau ā Apanui, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tāmanuhiri, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Porou, and Whakatōhea. He also has Scottish ancestry through both parents. His family marae is Te Rongopai Marae in Waituhi, and he grew up in Waituhi—many of his stories are set in a fictional recreation of the town. My ambition to be a writer was voiced that day. I said to myself that I was going to write a book about Māori people, not just because it had to be done but because I needed to unpoison the stories already written about Māori; and it would be taught in every school in New Zealand, whether they wanted it or not. After high school, Ihimaera attended the University of Auckland for three years, from 1963 to 1966, but did not complete his degree, and returned to Gisborne where he became a cadet journalist for the Gisborne Herald. He subsequently became a postman, moved to Wellington and started studying part time at Victoria University of Wellington, where he completed his Bachelor of Arts in 1971. Ihimaera has said it was rejected by three publishers before being accepted by the fourth. His first two novels were published in quick succession: Tangi (1973), which won first prize at the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards in 1974, and Whanau (1974), which told the story of a day in the life of a Māori village. Norman Kirk, then the prime minister of New Zealand, read Pounamu Pounamu and arranged for Ihimaera to be employed as a writer at the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1973. He subsequently worked as a diplomat with posts in Canberra, New York City, and Washington, D. C.

When Ihimaera began writing again, he wrote The Matriarch (1986) which examined the impacts of European colonisation on Māori, Not long after publication, it came to light that Ihimaera had used passages from the entry on Māori land in An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand (1966), written by Keith Sorrenson, without acknowledgement. Ihimaera apologised to Sorrenson at the time. Mark Williams later noted that the consequences for Ihimaera were minor, and he became a professor in the year of the book's publication. He also wrote a libretto for an opera by Ross Harris, based on his second novel Whanau, and Dear Miss Mansfield (1989), a rewriting of Katherine Mansfield's short stories from a Māori perspective, in response to celebrations of 100 years since her birth. The collection was well received overseas but criticised by New Zealand reviewers for a perceived lack of respect for Mansfield. In a three week period Ihimaera wrote his best known work The Whale Rider (1987), the story of a young girl becoming a leader of her people. It won the Nielsen BookData New Zealand Booksellers' Choice Award in 2003. In 1989 he left his job as a diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the following year he became a lecturer in the English department at the University of Auckland. Bulibasha: King of the Gypsies was awarded the prize for Fiction at the Montana New Zealand Book Awards in 1995. It was described in The Dominion Post as "a rollicking good yarn about Maori rural life in the 1950s", The novel was described by scholar Roger Robinson as featuring "conflict, growth and reconciliation, with subplots heroic, political and tragic". Robinson said it was "no small achievement to take this material off the grubby walls of public toilets, free it from sleaze, write it with vivid passion and through it affirm and celebrate a way of life of which most of us know almost nothing". In a review for The Dominion Post, Gavin McLean described it as Ihimaera's best book to date, and noted that much of the book's impact came from the intensity of the main character's relationship with his parents and his "desperate need to do better by his children"; "Unlike characters in many similar novels, coming out does not mean discarding all one's past." In an article in The Sunday Star Times, Ihimaera was quoted as saying the change "was quite a shock to me because I had always tried to hide, to say 'this is a book that could be about "everyman", this is not a specific story'. So [the film] is now actually nearer to the truth than I would like to admit." After the publication of the novel, Ihimaera and his wife remained married, but no longer lived together. In 1997 he published The Dream Swimmer, a sequel to his 1986 novel The Matriarch. His poem "O numi tutelar" was recited at the dawn opening of the British Museum's long awaited 'Maori' Exhibition in 1998.

In the early 2000s Ihimaera published Woman Far Walking (2000), a play from the perspective of an elder Māori woman who has witnessed key historic events and who Ihimaera describes as the personification of the Treaty of Waitangi. Shortly after publication, book reviewer Jolisa Gracewood detected short passages from other writers, especially from historical sources, used without acknowledgement. Ihimaera apologised for not acknowledging the passages, said the omission was inadvertent and negligent, and pointed to many pages of other sources that he had acknowledged. The University of Auckland investigated the incident and ruled that Ihimaera's actions did not constitute misconduct in research, as the actions did not appear to be deliberate and Ihimaera had apologised. Gracewood subsequently found additional passages that had been copied without explanation, and the book's publisher Penguin Books removed the book from public sale. Ihimaera purchased the remaining stock himself. Some literary commentators, such as Vincent O'Sullivan, C. K. Stead and Mark Williams, criticised the university's response to the incident. Keith Sorrenson said that the events suggested Ihimaera had "learnt nothing" from his earlier plagiarism of Sorrenson's work in The Matriarch (1986). His twelfth novel, The Parihaka Woman (2011), featured elements of the opera Fidelio and the history of Parihaka and the campaign of non violent resistance. Reviewers for the Sunday Star Times, Otago Daily Times and The New Zealand Herald were more negative, and all noted Ihimaera's use of an amateur historian as narrator; they noted that this device allowed him to add numerous citations and references, and avoid any further accusations of plagiarism, but detracted from the quality of the writing. It was followed by the short story collection The Thrill of Falling (2012), in which Ihimaera explored a range of genres including contemporary comedy and science fiction. The second instalment, Native Son: A Writer's Memoir was published in 2019, and covers his early adult years in the 1960s and 1970s and how he became a published writer. After finishing Native Son, he decided to take a four year break from writing, but ended up instead writing Navigating the Stars: Māori Creation Myths (2020), a modern re telling of traditional Maori legends. Ihimaera wrote the script for a stage show adaptation of Navigating the Stars, produced by theatre company Taki Rua, which was performed at the Soundshell in the Wellington Botanic Garden in early 2021.

Ihimaera has been recognised as "one of the world's leading indigenous writers". Literary scholar and Professor Emeritus at the University of Otago Alistair Fox in The Ship of Dreams: Masculinity in Contemporary New Zealand Fiction (2008) devotes four of the eleven chapters in the book to the writings of Ihimaera, indicating his importance within the context of New Zealand literature. Fox describes his epic novel The Matriarch as "one of the major and most telling 'monuments' of New Zealand's cultural history in the late twentieth century as far as the situation of Māori in this postcolonial society is concerned", noting that Ihimaera "has remained at the forefront of Māori arts and letters to an unprecedented degree, with an impressive output across a range of genres". As part of the Auckland Arts Festival 2011, musician Charlotte Yates directed and produced the stage project "Ihimaera", featuring Ihimaera's lyrics about his life and works, and with performances by New Zealand musicians including Victoria Girling Butcher, Paul Ubana Jones, Ruia Aperahama and Horomona Horo. Yates had previously created similar projects as tributes to New Zealand poets James K. Baxter and Hone Tuwhare, and chose Ihimaera for her third project because he was "a writer with a huge body of work that I can give to a number of musicians for them to put their heart and soul to". In the 2004 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature. In 2009, following the restoration of titular honours by the New Zealand government, he declined redesignation as a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. In 2004, Ihimaera received an honorary doctorate from Victoria University of Wellington. In the same year, he undertook a residency in world literature at George Washington University, funded by Fulbright New Zealand. On receiving the award, Ihimaera said it was a recognition of his iwi: "Without them, I would have nothing to write about and there would be no Ihimaera. So this award is for all those ancestors who have made us all the people we are. It is also for the generations to come, to show them that even when you aren't looking, destiny has a job for you to do."