He Kōrero: Words Between Us; First Māori–Pākehā Conversations on Paper—Alison Jones and Kuni Jenkins (2011)
Today we acknowledge authors Professor Kuni Jenkins (Ngāti Porou) and Professor Alison Jones’ successful award at the Ockhams this week for their evocative story of Tuai (2018) profiled on Te Takarangi earlier this year. We celebrate their success by profiling the authors first writing collaboration He Kōrero (2011), the story of early Māori engagement with writing.
Publication details
Jones, A. and K. Jenkins, He Kōrero: Words Between Us; First Māori–Pākehā Conversations on Paper. Wellington: Huia Publishers, 2011.
About the book
He Kōrero traces Māori engagement with handwriting from 1769 to 1826. Through images of beautifully reproduced written documents, the book tells rich stories about the first encounters Māori had with ink and paper and the first relationships between Māori and Europeans that established and maintained the earliest school. They include surviving textual material such as copybooks from one of the first schools, and the fascinating letters and drawings by Tuai and Titere, two young men from the Bay of Islands who visited Britain in 1818 and became important teachers of English missionaries headed for New Zealand.
He Kōrero builds on Alison and Kuni’s Marsden funded research into the earliest Māori writing and its significance for understanding the dynamics of the two-way teaching and learning relationship that existed historically between Māori and Pākehā.
Further information
This publication is part of the series Te Takarangi: Celebrating Māori publications - a sample list of 150 non-fiction books produced by a partnership between Royal Society Te Apārangi and Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga.