Nēpia Mahuika’s enlightening multisensory journey through Indigenous oral history

Abstract

<p>Nyepia Mahuika’s ground-breaking research, compiled in Rethinking Oral History and Tradition: An Indigenous Perspective, is a first in the field of oral history. It is a hard task to do justice to this book and its author. Mahuika is a critical theorist, writer, and skilled arti-san and he articulates culturally, sensitively, and with authority, the value and significance of Indigenous oral history from a Ngati Porou Maori perspective. Rethinking Oral History and Tradition is a beautifully written scholarly work that has a profound effect on me. The book gives me the capacity to look at myself objectively as an Indigenous oral historian with permission to speak in to this space. As an Indigenous person, this is the first time Isee myself and Indigenous cultures reflected on the pages of such a book – one that speaks to and centres Indigenous knowledges.</p>