Slowing the Sun: Essays

'Hope is a shovel and will give you blisters'

Overwhelmed and often unmoved by the scientific and political jargon of climate change, Nadine Hura sets out to find a language to connect more deeply to the environmental crisis. But what begins as a journalistic quest takes an abrupt and introspective turn following the death of her brother.

In the midst of grief, Hura works through science, pu¯ra¯kau, poetry and back again. Seeking to understand climate change in relation to whenua and people, she asks: how should we respond to what has been lost? Her many-sided essays explore environmental degradation, social disconnection and Indigenous reclamation, insisting that any meaningful response must be grounded in Te Tiriti and anti-colonialism.

Slowing the Sun is a karanga to those who have passed on, as well as to the living, to hold on to ancestral knowledge for future generations.