| Abstract: | This article offers a critical reading of the celebratory biographical and autobiographical texts for three ‘kiwi icons’. It argues that kiwi icons signal the enduring influence of British colonialism upon national imaginings – through a process that I term ‘re‐settlement’. I demonstrate how representations of Barry Crump, Sir Edmund Hillary and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, prominent New Zealanders during the 1990s, are entwined with dominant constructions of New Zealand society. Further, I explore how these kiwi icons are constructed to serve the quest for nationhood; an endeavour, it is argued, that is about the reinvention of settlement mythology that involves the continuation of particular narratives of colonisation from the past. |
