maori writing

Cover of the first edition of Te Ao Hou The New World.

The New World

Te Ao Hou (1952-76) was a bilingual quarterly published by the Maori Affairs Department and printed by Pegasus Press. According to its first issue, its intention was 'to provide interesting and informative reading for Maori homes … like a marae on paper, where all questions of interest to the Maori can be discussed'. Now available online, it serves as an invaluable resource for anyone interested in researching Māori topics.

'Surely the best of all the Maori stories', is how Margaret Orbell, as the editor of the magazine Te Ao Hou, described the tale of the impetuous 17th-century lovers Ponga and Puhihuia. The story describes an illicit romance taking place in a world of desperate canoe voyages, flamboyant dances, cunning deception and hand-to-hand combat, set around the shores of the Manukau Harbour. It is rich in song-poetry, oratory, archaic custom and tribal history, and its Māori-language version is a storehouse