Slowing The Sun: Essays By Nadine Hura

Overwhelmed by the complexity of climate change, writer and advocate Nadine Hura (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) sets out to nd a language to connect more deeply with the environmental crisis. But what begins as a journalistic quest takes an abrupt and introspective turn following the death of her brother.

In the midst of grief, Hura works through science, pūrākau, poetry and back again. Seeking to understand climate change in relation to whenua and people, she asks: how should we respond to what has been lost?

Hura’s essays explore the interwoven challenges of environmental degradation, social disconnection and Indigenous reclamation. At their heart lies a powerful assertion: that any meaningful response to climate change in Aotearoa must be grounded in Te Tiriti and anti-colonialism.

As Hura writes:

‘What is achingly present in every landscape across Aotearoa is absence: disappeared peaks, drained wetlands, attened forests, sunken and strangled eel weirs, straightened rivers, silt-choked beaches, slip-eroded slopes, pulverised pā and polluted hills rotting with buried rubbish.

This is the ‘starting point’ for Māori climate adaptation. The environmental destruction was achieved through a combination of military force, legal trickery, constitutional cunning, and institutional and cultural amnesia. It continues today through mechanisms of unbridled power, of which the recently passed Fast-track Approvals Act 2024 is just the latest.’

Slowing the Sun is a karanga to those who have passed, and to the living: an invitation to hold fast to ancestral knowledge and protect it for future generations.

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Nadine Hura (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi, Pākehā) is a writer whose work connects literature, social policy and environmental justice. Her work with Māori communities on climate research for the Deep South National Science Challenge led to many of the essays in Slowing the Sun. She has written extensively for The Spino, E-Tangata and other platforms. Hura, a Māmā, poet and essayist, lives in Titahi Bay, Wellington, while pursuing her writing and advocacy for the protection of Papatūānuku and revitalisation of matauranga Māori.

Publication May 2025
RRP $39.99 
ISBN 9781991301369
 

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