Witi Tame Ihimaera-Smiler (; born 7 February 1944) is a New Zealand author. Raised in the small town of Waituhi, he decided to become a writer as a teenager after being convinced that Māori people were ignored or mischaracterised in literature. He was the first Māori writer to publish a collection of short stories, with Pounamu, Pounamu (1972), and the first to publish a novel, with Tangi (1973). After his early works he took a ten-year break from writing, during which he focused on editing an anthology of Māori writing in English.
From the late 1980s onwards Ihimaera wrote prolifically. In his novels, plays, short stories and opera librettos, he examines contemporary Māori culture, legends and history, and the impacts of colonisation in New Zealand. He has said that "Māori culture is the taonga, the treasure vault from which I source my inspiration". His 1987 novel The Whale Rider is his best-known work, read widely by children and adults both in New Zealand and overseas. It was adapted into the critically acclaimed 2002 film Whale Rider directed by Niki Caro. His semi-autobiographical novel Nights in the Gardens of Spain (1996) was about a married man coming to terms with his homosexuality. In later works he has dealt with historical events such as the campaign of non-violent resistance at Parihaka in the late nineteenth century.
Ihimaera is an influential figure in New Zealand literature, and over his long career has won numerous awards and fellowships, including multiple awards for both fiction and non-fiction at the New Zealand Book Awards spanning the period 1973 to 2016, the Robert Burns Fellowship (1975), the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship (1993), and a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement (2017). Until 2010 he was the Professor of English and Distinguished Creative Fellow in Māori Literature at the University of Auckland. He has since published two volumes of his memoirs: Māori Boy: A Memoir of Childhood (2014) and Native Son: The Writer's Memoir (2019).
Early life and education
Ihimaera was born in Gisborne, a city in the east of New Zealand's North Island and is of Māori descent. His iwi (tribe) is Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki. He has affiliations to Ngāi Tūhoe, Te Whānau-ā-Apanui, Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāi Tāmanuhiri, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Porou, and Whakatōhea. He also has Scottish ancestry through both parents. His family marae is Te Rongopai Marae in Waituhi, and he grew up in Waituhi—many of his stories are set in a fictional recreation of the town. He began writing at a young age, and in later life recounted writing stories on the wall of his childhood bedroom.
He attended Te Karaka District High School for three years and the Church College of New Zealand in Temple View, Hamilton, for one year, after which he completed his final year of schooling at Gisborne Boys' High School. He has said that he became interested in becoming a writer when he was fifteen and realised that Māori did not feature in the books he read. His schoolteacher then instructed his class to read the short story "The Whare" by Pākehā writer Douglas Stewart, about a young man who encounters a Māori settlement. He found the story "so poisonous" that he threw the book out of the window and was caned for doing so. Writing about the incident in his 2014 memoir Māori Boy, he said:
After high school, Ihimaera attended the University of Auckland for three years, from 1963 to 1966, but did not complete his degree, and returned to Gisborne where he became a cadet journalist for the Gisborne Herald. He subsequently became a postman, moved to Wellington and started studying part-time at Victoria University of Wellington, where he completed his Bachelor of Arts in 1971. He met librarian and student Jane Cleghorn at university, and they married in 1970.
Career
Early career: 1960s and 1970s
Ihimaera began writing seriously in 1969, around age 25, and had his first short story "The Liar" accepted for publication by the New Zealand Listener magazine in May 1970. His first book, Pounamu Pounamu (1972), was a collection of short stories, which was awarded third prize at the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards in 1973. Ihimaera has said it was rejected by three publishers before being accepted by the fourth. His first two novels were published in quick succession: Tangi (1973), which won first prize at the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards in 1974, and Whanau (1974), which told the story of a day in the life of a Māori village. He was the first Māori writer to publish a collection of short stories and the first to publish a novel.