Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds wins Ockham Book Award

Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds wins Ockham NZ Book Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction!

Last night Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds won the 2018 Ockham New Zealand Book Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction. Congratulations to authors Alison Jones and Kuni Kaa Jenkins!

Tuai was published by Bridget Williams Books in July 2017, launched at Kororāreka Marae in the Bay of Islands, then in Auckland. Since its publication it has met with critical acclaim and substantial public and media interest.

Tuai tells the story of a young Ngare Raumati chief from the Bay of Islands, who travelled to England in 1817 – becoming one of the first Māori travellers in Europe. But on returning to his Māori world in 1819, Tuai found there were difficult choices to be made. His plan to integrate new European knowledge and relationships into his Ngare Raumati community was to be challenged by the rapidly shifting politics of the Bay of Islands.

The Ockham Award judges said:
‘Tuai: A Traveller in Two Worlds presents an evocative picture of young Māori travelling to England; their encounters with people, illness and industry there, and their return home. Tuai is empathetically written, providing the reader a window into a contested time of meeting, conversion and enterprise. The text and illustrations work in concert, presenting a rounded and rich experience for the reader, enhancing the breadth and depth of the research explored within. Key moments are presented so richly that they envelop and captivate the imagination. The care the authors have given these histories, acknowledging the autonomy that mātauranga Māori has in wider Aotearoa historical narratives, is striking, and we need more of it.’

About Alison Jones and Kuni Kaa Jenkins

Alison Jones and Kuni Kaa Jenkins are educational researchers who share interests in the Māori origins of the first school in New Zealand, and initial Māori engagements with pen and paper. Alison, a Pākehā, is a Professor in Te Puna Wānanga, the School of Māori and Indigenous Education at the University of Auckland. Kuni, from Ngāti Porou, is a Professor in Education at Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi. Their first book, He Kōrero: Words Between Us – First Māori–Pākehā Conversations on Paper (Huia, 2011), won the Ngā Kupu Ora Māori Book Awards, the PANZ Book Design Award, and the Best Book in Higher Education Publishing (Copyright Licensing New Zealand) in 2012.

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