Indigenous Language Print Culture: Colonial Discourses and Indigenous Agency

Abstract

The attached video presents a seminar given by Dr Lachy Paterson on 23/3/2010 to the Centre for Australian Indigenous Studies, Monash University as part of the Brown Paper Seminar Series. Te Tumu thanks Monash University for allowing this seminar to be further disseminated.

The research, still in its early stages, explores the relationship of indigenous peoples, specifically Māori and Hawaiian, with print in the nineteenth century and how print-culture helped them imagine identities larger than the local, larger than the band, clan, or tribe, or island. The talk is based on Dr Paterson’s own research on Māori-language texts, but also relies heavily on the work of Noenoe K. Silva for the discussion on Hawaiian-language texts.

The talk utilises the ideas of Benedict Anderson, espoused in his famous book, Imagined Communities, in particular how groups begin to develop a national consciousness through exposure to, and making use of printed materials. The research compares and contrasts the utilization of print, and the development of a national consciousness, by the indigenous peoples of Hawaii and Aotearoa in opposition to colonial processes. It shows that they did not always closely follow Anderson’s models but also incorporated more indigenous elements into their discourse and practice.