A new book by Rachel Buchanan
I imagine there was a point in Rachel Buchanan’s book research when she considered the glittering threads of her story like a spider.
There would’ve been something in the epic story of the Motunui epa to catch each of her eight eyes — Rachel has worked as a journalist, archivist, academic, curator, historian and speech-writer, and her whakapapa Māori is Taranaki and Te Ātiawa.
First, there are the epa themselves. They are a superb set of sinuous figures carved into tōtara panels, most likely for an ancient Te Ātiawa storehouse. Sometime in the early 1800s, to safeguard them from warring tribes, they were sealed away in an airless swamp just north of Waitara.
In 1972, they were rediscovered in the most colonial way possible: by a ditch digger at work clawing farmland from the swamp.
Link to article: Waking the tūpuna - E-Tangata
