Two beautiful new covers by designer Ania Nałęcka-Milach hand-drawn digitally from two photographs of fern and embers from the Whanganui River for my forthcoming book Te Ahi Kā - The Fires of Occupation. Two versions of the cover will provide the reader with two choices, either a cover with fern representing a female version of the book, or a male version featuring a cover image of embers. Travelling the Whanganui River Māori women uses the fern as a way of purification, protection and prayer. In the past the men would carry the fire using embers wrapped in a Ponga tree (silver fern) from one village to another as a symbol of occupation. Today, Māori are returning to their ancestral land as Treaty settlements are slowly resolved with the New Zealand government. Te Ahi Kā is more then a physical marker, spiritually it re-awakens the mauri - the life-force - and becomes a fire of ambition inside each individual.
