"Carving Up The Cross": The Decolonisation of Colonial Christian Gender Hegemony in Māori Writing in English

Abstract

This thesis looks at how the texts of Māori writing in English reject, transform, and reinterpret hierarchical constructions of gender and sexuality that are present within Biblical literature through a Te Ao Māori and mātauranga Māori lens in order to create new understandings and interpretations of faith that disavow confining and controlling aspects of colonial and religious institutions. The damage done by the implementation of a patriarchal, heteronormative binary gender system under colonial Christianity, as demonstrated within Witi Ihimaera’s “Hine-Tītama—Ask the Posts of the House,” Vaughan Rapatahana’s “anglican prattle,” and essa may ranapiri’s “Holding Rights To,” is being countered by the centring of Māori pūrākau and tikanga, as in Briar Wood’s “Kilmarten Glen,” and Hinemoana Baker’s “Rangiātea.” These ideas of a rigid, fixed gender system that marginalises Māori men, women, and non-gender conforming individuals are worked against, through literature that draws on the stories and values of Te Ao Māori to reclaim ideas of rebirth, equality and emancipation at the heart of Biblical narrative, such as the emancipation of the self in J.C. Sturm’s “Good Friday,” and the disavowal of colonial Christian ideology in Apirana Taylor’s “Carving up the Cross.” Narratives around faith change and adapt under different cultural contexts, and the adaptation of Christian narratives through a distinctly Māori worldview is at the centre of activist writing practices of the Māori authors under examination here. By applying a close reading methodology, this research examines how Māori authors are actively decolonising prescriptive gender roles set forth in religious ideology, contributing to the ongoing transformation of cultural and religious worldviews, such as those articulated by Reverend Māori Marsden and Upolu Lumā Vaai, and the development of a politic defined here as being of love, faith and emancipation. The primary aim of this thesis is to demonstrate the existence of decolonial, transformative reclamations of indigenous gender and faith that are being carried out through the works of Māori authors writing in English, and to examine what these reclamations look like in a decolonising context.