Writing Back from the Academy: Uncovering the Unnamed Targets of Makereti's Revisionist Anthropology

The second Māori student to enrol at the University of Oxford, Makereti studied anthropology in intellectual epicentre British Empire from 1927 1930, participating transnational academic networks by writing about her own people. Her work was published posthumously as Old-Time Maori , now acclaimed an unprecedented auto-ethnography. Exploring a forgotten seam revisionist anthropology, this article argues that reappraisals have failed capture magnitude project Indigenous resistance writing. Through close reading Makereti's personal papers and work, uncovers targeted revisionism scholarship—in particular identifying unnamed targets critique—and how she used epistemic tools imperial salvage challenge colonial discourses Māori. engagement with Oxford illuminates adaptation discipline institutions often portrayed sites incorrigibly imperialist ideology.