Narrating indigenous modernities : transcultural dimensions in contemporary Māori literature The Māori of New Zealand a nation that quietly prides itself on its pioneering egalitarianism have had to assert their indigenous rights against the demographic institutional and cultural dominance of Pākehā and other immigrant minorities European Asian and Polynesian in a postcolonial society characterized by neocolonial structures of barely acknowledged inequality. While Māori writing reverberates with this struggle literary identity discourse goes beyond any fallacious dualism of white brown colonizer colonized or modern traditional. In a rapidly altering context of globality such essentialism fails to account for the diverse expressions of Māori identities negotiated across multiple categories of culture ethnicity class and gender. Narrating Indigenous Modernities recognizes the need to place Māori literature within a broader framework that explores the complex relationship between indigenous culture globalization and modernity. This study introduces a transcultural methodology for the analysis of contemporary Māori fiction where articulations of indigeneity acknowledge cross cultural blending and the transgression of cultural boundaries. Thus Narrating Indigenous Modernities charts the proposition that Māori writing has acquired a fresh transcultural quality giving voice to both new and recuperated forms of indigeneity tribal community and Māoritanga (Maoridom) that generate modern indigeneities which defy any essentialist homogenization of cultural difference. Māori literature becomes at the same time both witness to globalized processes of radical modernity and medium for the negotiation and articulation of such structural transformations in Māoritanga. Publishers descriptio