Abstract
Australia is often regarded by people from Aotearoa New Zealand as a land of promise and opportunity, yet this turns out to be a mirage for many Māori. Patricia Grace’s short story “Ngati Kangaru” (1994) features a Māori whānau (family) that ingeniously deploys the techniques of Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s New Zealand Company to reclaim land for discontented members of the Australian Māori diaspora. The title “Ngati Kangaru”—“ngati” meaning tribe or clan, and “Kangaru,” a transliteration of kangaroo—collectively refers to Māori living in Poihākena/Sydney who express a desire to reinhabit their whenua (land). “Ngati Kangaru” offers an intertextual parody of E. G. Wakefield’s foundational writing, which has exerted its influence with devastating effects, particularly through appropriation of ancestral land. In this article I perform a close reading of Grace’s “zestful Swiftian” satire, which speaks back to Wakefield, imagining the return of Māori whānau whose Australian dreams have failed to materialize.
Recommended Citation
Magner, Brigid
(2024)
"“First you go and form a Co”: Boundary Disputes in Patricia Grace’s “Ngati Kangaru”,"
Antipodes: Vol. 37:
Iss.
1, Article 7.
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/antipodes/vol37/iss1/7