The Children of Rangi and Papa: the Maori story of creation nā Pauline Yearbury i tuhituhi,i whakaahuatia. Christchurch N.Z.: Whitcoulls, 1976
Pauline Kahurangi Yearbury (Ngāpuhi, 1928-1977) was one of the first two Māori women, along with Dame Kāterina Mataira, to attend the Elam School of Fine Arts, beginning her studies there in 1943 when she was 14. Involved with the First Māori Festival of the Arts at Ngāruawāhia in 1963 and the groundbreaking exhibition New Zealand Māori Culture and the Contemporary Scene at Canterbury Museum in 1966, Yearbury was a pioneer of Māori modernism.
This book - published the year before Yearbury’s death and the only one she made in her lifetime - is based on the 1956 reprint of George Grey’s Polynesian Mythology and has a forward written by Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan, Aotearoa’s first Māori woman cabinet minister. In the forward, Tirikatene-Sullivan describes Yearbury’s beautiful gouache illustrations as “a bridge between the European style of realism and the traditional Māori carving”. Of the book, she says “It is a story of great magnitude… a story of cultural importance, not only for the edification of Pākehā, but to aid the understanding of young Māori”.
The Children of Rangi and Papa: the Maori story of creation nā Pauline Yearbury i tuhituhi,i whakaahuatia. Christchurch N.Z.: Whitcoulls, 1976
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