These works formed the genesis of her creative writing doctorate, which she graduates with from Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington this May.
“It was an angry response to the way I was seeing wāhine Māori portrayed in the stage plays I was seeing,” she says. “I would be sitting there in these plays going, ‘huh? I don’t know any Māori women who are like that’.”
Maraea recalls going to a play with a friend, who turned to her during the intermission and said, “why do they hate us?”. This inspired Maraea to write stories evoking and inspired by wāhine Māori she knew.
After studying for her Master of Arts in Creative Writing from the International Institute of Modern Letters (IIML) at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Maraea had a year-long break before pursuing her PhD, taking that time to put together her proposal.
Maraea wanted to be decolonial in her approach to crafting her works, and in the kaupapa. “I decided to use wāhine Māori that have been significant to me in my life story and talk about my relationship with them. I wanted matemateāone to infuse my work.
“You don’t really know what you’re doing when you start a PhD. You have a vague idea of what you’re aiming for, and then you have to get there, and the doctoral haerenga constantly changes.
“If I am to really counter the way in which wāhine Māori are presented, I need to put as many wāhine Māori on stage as I can.” For Maraea, “that in itself tells story. Koinā te manawāhine kei reira.”
Maraea’s doctoral journey ended up being strongly impacted by external factors. She had always intended to return home to the Bay of Plenty once her doctorate was completed, but while she was home on a break from study her father became sick, and COVID-19 arrived.
She had less than 24 hours to return to Wellington, pack up her life, and return home again. As with other departments, the IIML pivoted and Maraea continued her PhD remotely. Having completed two of her three creative projects, a film manuscript and a play manuscript, she started the third play as well as her exegesis during these events.
When her father died in 2022, Maraea was paralysed with grief, and she came close to giving up on her PhD. As she says, “it took some time to recover, and I am still recovering.”
“All the pestilence started happening. There were cyclones and that had a direct impact on one of my marae. There was concern that our urupā had been washed out to sea, and there were people in my whānau who were missing [they were all located].”
Eventually, the reasons why she wanted to do a doctorate in the first place, and the ongoing support of her supervisors, the staff at IIML and the Faculty of Graduate Research, and her whānau drove her towards the finish line.
My Great, Great Grandmother is a Māori Princess
Maraea’s manuscripts feature 30 wāhine Māori , which has a practical aspect to it as well—when those stories are produced, there will be 30 wāhine Māori on stage or on screen. Maraea also makes it clear in one of her plays, 02 04 16 10 07, that the actors whakapapa Tūhoe, because of the story that is being told.
“I will never not write about the impacts of colonialism, and the impact it has upon me, generationally, and that it continues to have upon me,” Maraea says. “I want to show us, and I want to put us in places/spaces that we’re not usually in.
The title of her thesis is Ko te matemateāone, Ko te mana wāhine, Ko te mana motuhake, Ko te mana motuhake, Ko te matemateāone, Ko te mana wāhine: My Great, Great Grandmother is a Māori Princess.
“In my life, when somebody was uncovering their whakapapa Māori, they would say ‘oh, my great-grandmother was a Māori princess’, but we don’t have that kind of hierarchical structure. You’re applying another culture’s views of hierarchy upon us. So, the pākehā subtitle is a tongue-in-cheek dig.”
Chapters within the exegesis of her PhD tell of her relationship with selected wāhine Māori that have impacted Maraea’s life as wāhine Māori and as a critical thinker. They include Kai Tahu, Rangitāne scholar Irihapeti Ramsden, who created the cultural safety aspects of nursing degrees, activist Tuaiwa Eva Rickard who led the return of her whenua at Te Kōpua after it was taken for use as a military base in the 1940s and then repurposed as the Raglan golf course in the 1970s, and Ngāti Pikiao, Ngai Te Rangi prolific filmmaker and documentarian Merata Mita who amongst many accolades was the first Māori woman to write and direct a feature film.
Tūhoe, Ngāti Ruapani, Ngāti Kahungunu tohunga ahurewa and scholar Rangimarie Rose Pere features, as do Maraea’s tīpuna—Te Urupa Rakuraku. Two chapters pay homage to Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu legal scholar Moana Jackson and to her father, Taua Rakuraku.
As Maraea acknowledges, “it took a lifetime of relationships to get me here”.
When it came to pulling it all together, Maraea presented her thesis as a web page, which is a first for the IIML, and will be made public after two years. “It was my response to making academia accessible,” she says. “Really trying to be decolonial in my approach and my creative process. It was hardcore doing that towards the end! But I had tremendous support from my supervisors, Associate Professor Ken Duncum and Dr Nicola Hyland, and from the school.”
Maraea finished her PhD in Creative Writing with Script Writing as a specialty last year and is returning to Wellington in May for her graduation. Currently, she is working on many plays, including the final play in her Te Urewera trilogy. She continues to write poetry and facilitate online creative writing wananga.
“I’m thinking and writing constantly about the way in which we’re impacted as a people, by different things, and I do that for the great aroha that I have for my people, and for myself. I want to see us striving. I’m calling things out, not just in the pākehā world, but in te ao Māori as well. I’m never going to stop. I love it. It’s healing, and it’s a way that I’m able to process really hard things.”