The Double Rainbow:James K Baxter, Ngati Hau and the Jerusalem Commune
Newton, John
Published 2009
ISBN 9780864736031
Format paperback
Category History
out of print
Published 25 April
‘When Maori and Pakeha do these things together the double rainbow begins to shine.’
In 1969, New Zealand’s best-known poet, James K. Baxter, moved to Jerusalem on the Whanganui River and established an intentional community under the mana of the local hapu, Ngati Hau. The Jerusalem commune proved a magnet for disaffected and damaged young people. As the setting for Baxter’s celebrated late works, Jerusalem Sonnets, Jerusalem Daybook and Autumn Testament, it quickly became the country’s most famous hippie community, as well as a media byword for the idealism and excess of the emerging youth culture.
But what was life really like at Jerusalem, beyond the popular stereotypes? And what did it mean, for Ngati Hau, to be deluged with long-haired strangers and with the media attention which followed them?
Here, for the first time, events are reconstructed from the point of view of James K. Baxter’s followers and of the local people who accepted them. The story told in this book is unique: nowhere else has a Pakeha community submitted so comprehensively to the authority and generosity of a Maori one. The events described are exceptional in our nation’s colonial history. But they also convey an image of what a bicultural Aotearoa might yet become.
The true story of the Jerusalem commune is Baxter’s undiscovered masterpiece. Now this scrupulous and evocative book allows us to read and to begin to interpret it.
Praise for The Double Rainbow
Baxter's experiment in bicultural communalism has continuing lessons for us all. It is an important book.
Peter Simpson NZ HERALD
John Newton's book about Baxter's final years succeeds so brilliantly because it concentrates less on the barefoot guru of media legend and more on the rise and fall of his commune at Jerusalem. Newton does not treat Jerusalem as a cultural dead end, but as an early prototype - 10 years before the Maori resurgence reached the mainstream - of the bicultural struggles that New Zealand society is still engaged in.
Gordon Campbell METRO
...a fine book which adds a great deal to our understanding of a remarkable experiment, and deserves to be widely read.
Mike Riddell OTAGO DAILY TIMES
Double Rainbow is a scholarly, readable and fascinating account of events at the tipping point in our cultural history.
Peter Dornauf WAIKATO TIMES
The Double Rainbow is the fruit of an incredibly-impressive amount of extensive and laborious research. Newton commendably resists romanticising Baxter, Baxter’s vision, or the Ngāti Hau ‘classroom’ itself. Those engaged in Baxter’s work and who want to better understand his Jerusalem Daybook or are interested in his biography, those seeking to understand, assess and inform Aotearoa’s multi-cultural, historical and spiritual landscape, those wanting to listen and to speak intelligently into contemporary debates about the relationship between government authorities and badge-wearing gangs carving out their own neo-tribal identity, and, more broadly, to a nation fascinated with re-carving a new national identity which buries settler mono-culturalism in its wake, and those devoted to the challenging work of inspiring, creating, leading, building, replanting and closing local and grassroots communities will be well-served to have Newton’s essay in hand. An invaluable and timely record, it is also certain to inform, impress and inspire.
Jason Goroncy Lecturer, Dean of Studies, Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership
 |
John Newton was born in Blenheim in 1959 and grew up on a sheep farm at Port Underwood in the Marlborough Sounds. A poet and critic, he taught for two years in the English Department at Melbourne, and from 1995 to 2008 in the English Department at the University of Canterbury. He now lives in Wellington. Left: Colin Durning and John |
|---|---|
The Double Rainbow was presented to the Jerusalem community on 25 April and launched by Lydia Wevers in Wellington at Unity Books 28 April 2009. Launch highlights included Lydia's address, Colin Durning’s eloquent mihi, the haka and waiata performed and John’s acknowledgement of all the support and aroha he drew on during the book’s gestation. Click here for Lydia's speech |
 |