In turning his back in 2004 on what he described as the 'captivity' of 'Pakeha-style biculturalism', Witi Ihimaera offered us his latest registration of changes in the larger culture New Zealanders share. (1) His decision late in 1975 to stop writing for ten years because his early work was 'tragically out of date' had registered the mounting Maori radicalism the Land March of that year only partially represented. (2) His resumption of publication with The Matriarch (1986) responded to the questioning of his right to write by Maori radicals. Co-editorship of the Te Ao Marama series (1992-6) confirmed his political kaupapa, and the novel Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1995) marked the start of a gay kaupapa continued in The Uncle's Story (2000). Further eddies and crosscurrents can be seen elsewhere in his considerable body of publication. Turning his back on biculturalism 'Pakeha-style' may well come to be seen as a significant new part of this sequence, one that points to changes in the ways in which Maori artists write in English. For in place of this discarded biculturalism, the writer now-twice-reborn has come out for tino rangatiratanga, the evolution of what has been described as 'different cultures--"two treasures"--strong and independent' (3) and thus the confirmation in the literary culture of a term that has acquired considerable historical and political weight since it was coined, to mean something like 'true ownership and control', in or before the devising of the Treaty of Waitangi. Furthermore, Ihimaera's new stance came at the start of what has been a remarkable project, the rewriting of The Whale Rider (1987) as an 'International Edition' (2003) and his earliest fiction Pounamu Pounamu (1972), Tangi (1973) and Whanau (1974) into Pounamu Pounamu (2003), Ihimaera: His Best Stories (2003), Whanau II (2004) and T,Se Rope of Man (2005), in an 'Anniversary Collection' that celebrates thirty years of association with his publisher, Reed.
