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Tangata ora, Matariki Williams

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?

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Posted in History, Māori, Non-fiction, Review

Obituary — Judith Binney

Judith Binney  (1940-2011) Judith Binney dedicated her books to those from whom she herself had learnt: in 1995, Sir Monita Delamere and Sir Keith Sinclair; in 2009, Tuhoe’s great 19th-century leaders, “who chose to walk the long paths to peace”,

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History made and re-made, Bronwyn Dalley

Stories without End: Essays 1975-2010 Judith Binney Bridget Williams Books, $49.99, ISBN 9781877242472   Since reading Stories without End, a collection of Judith Binney’s essays, I’ve been talking with  fellow historians about the collected works of other New Zealand historians.

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Posted in Essays, History, Non-fiction, Review

Lofty ideals and fatal flaws, Alan Ward

Encircled Lands: Te Urewera, 1820-1921 Judith Binney Bridget Williams Books, $79.99, ISBN 9781877242441 This is arguably the most important book on Maori-Pakeha relations to be published in the last quarter-century, unlikely to be equalled in this generation. Its importance stems

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Pioneering efforts, Tom Brooking

The Legacy of Guilt: A Life of Thomas Kendall Judith Binney Bridget Williams Books, $49.95, ISBN 1877242330 There are few New Zealand history books that can be described as seminal, that is, books so deep in their research and broad

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Posted in Biography, History, Māori, Non-fiction, Review

Argument without end, Michael King

The Shaping of History: Essays from The New Zealand Journal of History ed Judith Binney Bridget Williams Books, $49.95, ISBN 1877242179 Histories, Power and Loss: Uses of the Past – a New Zealand Commentary ed Andrew Sharp and Paul McHugh

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Posted in History, Non-fiction, Review, Sociology

The making of new kinds of history, J G A Pocock

Redemption Songs: a life of Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki Judith Binney Auckland University Press and Bridget Williams Books, $79.95, ISBN 1 86940 131 x This book is a major achievement. Not, perhaps, of the printer’s and bookbinder’s art. It may be

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Posted in History, Māori, Non-fiction, Review

Waves and ripples, Melanie Nolan

The Oxford Illustrated History of New Zealand Keith Sinclair (ed), Oxford University Press, 1990, $59.95 The People and The Land. Te Tangata Me Te Whenua Judith Bassett, Judith Binney, Erik Olssen Allen and Unwin/ Port Nicholson Press, Wellington, 1990, $59.95 History publishers

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Posted in History, Māori, Non-fiction, Review
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