1st posting of this new series dated 3rd January 2018 and out of sequence - apologies!

I purchased this beautiful piece in Hokitika 2004 and its message wss
about Lifelong Learning.

My intent is to blog while developing my third manuscript is not an approach I did with my first two self-publications. Even though I have a deep sense that what has come before has brought me to this place of writing.

This manuscript's focus is a more personal endeavour and with historical beginnings of my lineage of Frederik Manning (Irish settler and in later years appointed a Land Court Judge) and his wife Moerangaroa a Maori woman during a period in the mid-1800’s, reflecting a changing ‘social landscape’ of intermarriage. The genesis of a simple tale of a relationship between a father and his daughter in the New Zealand context 100 years on. 

Do I feel equipped to write this? In my heart, yes but I know full well I am going to waver and hit roadblocks and will need to temper the voice in my head when I wake up, with the question, what are you doing Viti?

My intent to blog while writing this manuscript will assist me to keep moving forward throughout 2018.  After six decades I find myself still curious, still contributing and still creating environments to expand my knowledge and finding answers to questions. Why do we have so many questions?

Not having lived in New Zealand for four decades does generate uncertainties as I explore the New Zealand context.  Not one written from a source-critics perspective but experiences and observations with storytelling and from a daughter/woman’s perspective.

A pathway set by our parents from humble beginnings to provide opportunities for their children in the 1950’s – 1970’s away from economic dependence. No doubt this aspect of the book will generate questions as they emerge.

From a mixed genealogy that ebbs and flows like the tide.  Always has always will. In contemporary times that same genealogy, in some cases, has additional cultural layers with their children and grandchildren which reflects a growing trend.

In November 2016 I attended the 7th Biennial International Indigenous Research Conference hosted by University of Auckland’s, New Zealand Maori Research Centre of Research Excellence. and contributed a research paper under one of the four themes, Healthy Indigenous Economies. A week like no other and left with a new-found awareness, bag full of resources, memories and questions.

Not long after, while fossicking in a small bookshop in Paihia, Northland I came across, At the Margin of the Empire, by Jennifer Ashton, first published in 2015 by Auckland University. One that has provided the platform alongside other material I have gathered over time.

A sociological imagination is a framework I will explore. C. Wright Mills (1959) refers to this as, focusing on the individual in the larger scheme of things. My undergraduate studies were in Sociology and Women’s Studies and these continue to be the areas that I engage with. In this case a simple tale of the relationship between a father and his daughter. On reflection, I was in many ways given equality in my childhood - a family unit with two older brothers.  

It was a ‘gift’ either intentionally or unintentionally I am not sure. That feeling of equality can best be described as the ability to breathe deeply throughout those formative years. The ability to take those deep breathes faltered as I ventured beyond.