Risks of Myth: The Politics of New Zealand Literary Journals

The founding axiom of New Zealand's oldest surviving literary journal. Landfall, is that literary journals must keep in touch with the real issues of life and carry 'news of reality', as Charles Brasch put it in the first issue. During the last ten years there has been a lot of news to report in New Zealand. In the litany of the protest movements it is given in shorthand: Bastion Point, Raglan, Waitangi, the Tour. Except for the last the South African Springboks' Rugby tour in 1981 these names refer to marches and occupations protesting at the alienation of Maori land. In the course of these protest movements, liberal white (or Pakeha) sympathy for Maori grievances has been transformed: passive goodwill has given way to tumultuous feelings of guilt, responsibility, admiration, even yearning for the indigenous culture so nearly destroyed by colonisation.