Performing Indigenous Culture is a highly original work where the author's unique background in performance is brought together with historical research. Another distinction of the book is Schultz's focus: New Zealand and New Zealand indigenous and settler performers. The thematic concerns that run through the settler/indigenous world across the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries delve into a realm in which contemporary notions of race, nation, and gender were rendered into popular form and found easy recognition, giving them both power and danger. This book offers important and accessible ways to bring sometimes complex questions to the fore - useful in extending knowledge in ways that enable global comparisons.' - Charlotte Macdonald, Professor of History, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand 'Schultz presents an original, rigorous, yet engaging study of how shifting understandings of New Zealand identities have been embedded, embodied and performed. Drawing on extensive archival research across three continents, her investigations underline the continuing need for historical performance research into representations of indigenous cultures and their dissemination. Nuanced and penetrating in its analyses, the book is an important contribution to contemporary understanding and will undoubtedly stimulate fresh evaluations of race, gender and performance in global perspective.' - Theresa Jill Buckland, Professor of Dance History and Ethnography, University of Roehampton, London, UK 'What a treat to read this compelling performance history of popular entertainment. Schultz has teased out of the archives many details of a half-century of popular culture depicting M?ori performance-including the troublesome stereotyping and commodification in the acts, as well as the agency and opportunities they afforded M?ori performers. In focusing on the layered agendas and interwoven collaborations of M?ori and P?keh? in producing these shows and films, the book offers a complex view of the historical development of a 'culturally hybrid' New Zealand.' - Jacqueline Shea Murphy, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and Dance Theory, University of California, Riverside, USA
