Being Chinese Helene Wong Bridget Williams Books, $40.00, ISBN 9780947492380 Going Places: Migration, Economics and the Future of New Zealand Julie Fry and Hayden Glass BWB Texts, $15.00, ISBN 9780947492694 The First Migration: Maori Origins 3000 BC – AD 1450 Atholl Anderson…
Tangata Whenua: An Illustrated History
Atholl Anderson, Judith Binney and Aroha Harris
Bridget Williams Books, $100.00,
ISBN 9781927131411
The final chapter of the weighty Tangata Whenua is titled “Tangata Whenua, Tangata Ora”, and the book could just as easily have been called that. Throughout the three millennia that are chronicled, an overwhelming theme of the book is that Māori endure, adapt, and live. Any student of New Zealand history will have heard the unfortunate phrase uttered in 1856 by physician and politician Dr Isaac Featherston, that it was the duty of Europeans to “smooth down … [the] dying pillow” for Māori. His was a viewpoint brought forth by the belief that the indigenous population could not withstand European conquest and disease. What more of a testament to Māori endurance can there be than the release of a book detailing the way in which Māori live, nigh on 150 years after that phrase was uttered?
Ngai Tahu: A Migration History – The Carrington Text Rawiri Te Maire Tau and Atholl Anderson (eds) Bridget Williams Books with Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu, $69.99, ISBN 9781877242397 The Beating Heart: A Political and Socio-economic History of Te Arawa …
Traditional Lifeways of the Southern Maori, by James Herries Beattie Atholl Anderson (ed) University of Otago Press in association with Otago Museum, $59.95 The South Island has not been as fortunate as the North with tribal histories. The slim…