Literary canons have real-world effects – they steal limelight from everyone else. We can challenge them by drawing attention to how they work

I feel sheepish to admit how deeply affected I was when I encountered the research of Gauri Viswanathan, a professor in English at Columbia University in New York City. In Masks of Conquest: Literary study and British rule in India, she traces the history of English back to when it was first systematically taught as a secular discipline. I ask my students: where do you think English was first taught as a discipline? “England?” someone will always guess, realising it seems so obvious there must be a trick.

And yes, they’re right. It’s a trick.

Covid hardships mean pounamu is increasingly being targeted for its value, Indigenous leaders say

The rugged west coast of New Zealand is home to many secrets. Rivers that run flush with gold, beaches that conceal ambergris, and waterways dotted with boulders of the sacred Māori stone, pounamu.

Imbued with spiritual significance to New Zealand’s Indigenous tribes, pounamu – otherwise known as greenstone or New Zealand jade – is highly prized. For centuries Māori have fashioned it into jewellery, tools and even weapons, which could denote status or be used as ceremonial objects or symbols of peace agreements.

A piece of clothing that descends from the codpiece and is designed to promulgate white male power should be optional

Last week it was reported that the Speaker of the House, Trevor Mallard, had decided to keep the requirement that male MPs wear neckties in the New Zealand parliament’s debating chamber after asking members of parliament to write to him about what constitutes appropriate business attire in the House.

If there was ever a year to change New Zealand’s anachronistic parliamentary dress code, it should be 2021, when the new parliament is the most diverse and inclusive ever, including 48% women, 11% LGBTQ, 21% Māori, 8.3% Pacific, and 7% Asian New Zealand members.

‘Don’t be a dick’ was one useful motto we came across in our podcast examination of how to be a modern man

In a Wellington cafe, one of New Zealand’s most respected academics talked about the disconnect between his feelings and the way he knew he was supposed to be: “I could not understand why anyone would see putting your head between two other men’s buttocks as being the high point of New Zealand culture. I was staggered by it. But I never said that, of course – I just buried those thoughts.”

Jock Phillips would go on to become the national historian, but as a boy growing up in the 1960s he knew the wisdom of keeping his cranium down in a land where rugby was next to a religion.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern helps cook breakfast on the national holiday, which celebrates the signing of the treaty of Waitangi on 6 February 1840 by Māori chiefs and the British Crown

Māori memories of past epidemics meant iwi were instrumental in forcing Jacinda Ardern’s government to act quickly

In the space of a few days in 2017 New Zealand’s Labour caucus made Jacinda Ardern their leader. In the space of a month the country made her their prime minister, and in the space of a few years the rest of the English-speaking world would turn to her as a global leader. That might sound cliché, and in a small sense it is, but it captures the adoration and esteem in which large parts of New Zealand and the world hold Ardern. She has apparently committed to a social democratic programme of old, from public housing to subsidised tertiary education, and – more importantly – she has dealt successfully with the virus. Global business leaders and others rightly rate New Zealand’s Covid-19 response as the best in the world.

But is it equally right to simply credit Ardern and her government for this success?

Colonisation has had a particular effect on Indigenous wahine that disadvantages them to this day

The Mana Wahine Kaupapa Inquiry hearings will begin this week, investigating claims regarding the specific tiriti violations of the crown that have led to injustice against wahine Māori across social, physical, spiritual, economic, political and cultural dimensions.

It has been a long time coming, having first been filed in 1993 and led out by the Māori Women’s Welfare League, and then initiated as an inquiry in 2018. While it can be said that all Waitangi inquiry hearings are traumatic, frustrating and difficult, it’s expected that this one in particular will reveal a history that is as foundational, on a national scale, as it is disturbing.