Knowledge Is a Blessing on Your Mind: Selected Writings, 1980–2020
by Anne Salmond
Wow! This is a mighty tome. In more ways than one. It is nearly 600 pages long, and weighs half a ton. More importantly, the material within is even more mārohirohi, because Salmond is a determined, distinctive and definitive writer about diversive and often divisive Māori and Pākehā Weltanshauung, with an overwhelming interest in at least attempting to bridge their incommensurability.
As such, this collection of her selected writings arranged in chronological order is – to me anyway – vital, indeed necessary reading for any citizen, any scholar, who wishes to better comprehend the historical and contemporary make-up of Aotearoa New Zealand and the disjunctures and potential connectivities which pertain to these existentially, thus culturally, different ways of life.
Salmond explores, then, the parallels of her own initial and subsequent investiture into te ao Māori, with her manifold writings about the historical and coeval encounters between Pākehā and Māori, including a 114 page exegesis on Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a brief of evidence for the Waitangi Tribunal in 2010; and also writes about pressing environmental issues and suggested collateral approaches to them; about ngā wāhine and their connate rights to be equal everywhere; about two of her early kaitiaki influences, namely Eruera and Amiria Stirling, about anthroplogy and what it could be; about her own whānau – in the correct application of this kupu as extended family across several generations.
But as noted above, Salmond always – and this is the key point as to her overwhelming importance to not only Aotearoa but internationally – sees both sides, and more vitally, always presses for some sort of reconciliation even given the fundamental epistemologic and thus ontologic differences between many Pākehā/Westerners and most non Pākehā/Autochthonous peoples. As she notes in her Preface, she, ‘has spent a lifetime in these ‘in-between’ spaces’.
It must also be stressed here that Salmond is a cogent, articulate, and intelligent writer, obviously well-read and researched (17 pages of References, 30 pages of Notes), and as such, she is detemined to also respond to what she perceives as unfair or unjustified criticisms of not only her own work, but also of tikanga Māori. The chapters Institutional Racism at the University of Auckland (1983), Antipodean Crab Antics (1994) and Once Were Warriors (2016) are display cases of her courage, whereby she argues against the presumed ignorance of predominantly Western male academics and – in the latter piece – he tāne Māori. Salmond has been prolific too, and her voluminous output is shared from pages 544 to 551.
Finally here, a further reflection about this book, this woman. My ex-colleague at Tokoroa College at the turn of this century, Trevor Bentley has written several excellent books pertaining to Pākehā-Māori, who were almost exclusively male outliers. My thought, taku whakaaro, is that Anne Salmond is a veritable and canonical Pākehā-Māori, notable singularly as a female exemplar of these significant cross-cultural individuals.
This book and its progenitor are godsends. Required reading. An essential author. Aē, tika tēnei whakataukī mō tāna mahi –
Tūngia te ururua, kia tupu whakaritorito te tupu o te harakeke. (Clear away the negative to make way for the positive).
Tēnā koe a Anne Salmond.
by Anne Salmond
Wow! This is a mighty tome. In more ways than one. It is nearly 600 pages long, and weighs half a ton. More importantly, the material within is even more mārohirohi, because Salmond is a determined, distinctive and definitive writer about diversive and often divisive Māori and Pākehā Weltanshauung, with an overwhelming interest in at least attempting to bridge their incommensurability.
As such, this collection of her selected writings arranged in chronological order is – to me anyway – vital, indeed necessary reading for any citizen, any scholar, who wishes to better comprehend the historical and contemporary make-up of Aotearoa New Zealand and the disjunctures and potential connectivities which pertain to these existentially, thus culturally, different ways of life.
Salmond explores, then, the parallels of her own initial and subsequent investiture into te ao Māori, with her manifold writings about the historical and coeval encounters between Pākehā and Māori, including a 114 page exegesis on Te Tiriti o Waitangi as a brief of evidence for the Waitangi Tribunal in 2010; and also writes about pressing environmental issues and suggested collateral approaches to them; about ngā wāhine and their connate rights to be equal everywhere; about two of her early kaitiaki influences, namely Eruera and Amiria Stirling, about anthroplogy and what it could be; about her own whānau – in the correct application of this kupu as extended family across several generations.
But as noted above, Salmond always – and this is the key point as to her overwhelming importance to not only Aotearoa but internationally – sees both sides, and more vitally, always presses for some sort of reconciliation even given the fundamental epistemologic and thus ontologic differences between many Pākehā/Westerners and most non Pākehā/Autochthonous peoples. As she notes in her Preface, she, ‘has spent a lifetime in these ‘in-between’ spaces’.
It must also be stressed here that Salmond is a cogent, articulate, and intelligent writer, obviously well-read and researched (17 pages of References, 30 pages of Notes), and as such, she is detemined to also respond to what she perceives as unfair or unjustified criticisms of not only her own work, but also of tikanga Māori. The chapters Institutional Racism at the University of Auckland (1983), Antipodean Crab Antics (1994) and Once Were Warriors (2016) are display cases of her courage, whereby she argues against the presumed ignorance of predominantly Western male academics and – in the latter piece – he tāne Māori. Salmond has been prolific too, and her voluminous output is shared from pages 544 to 551.
Finally here, a further reflection about this book, this woman. My ex-colleague at Tokoroa College at the turn of this century, Trevor Bentley has written several excellent books pertaining to Pākehā-Māori, who were almost exclusively male outliers. My thought, taku whakaaro, is that Anne Salmond is a veritable and canonical Pākehā-Māori, notable singularly as a female exemplar of these significant cross-cultural individuals.
This book and its progenitor are godsends. Required reading. An essential author. Aē, tika tēnei whakataukī mō tāna mahi –
Tūngia te ururua, kia tupu whakaritorito te tupu o te harakeke. (Clear away the negative to make way for the positive).
Tēnā koe a Anne Salmond.
Review by Vaughan Rapatahana
Title: Knowledge Is a Blessing on Your Mind: Selected Writings, 1980–2020
Author: Anne Salmond
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409906
RRP: $65
Available: bookshops
Author: Anne Salmond
Publisher: Auckland University Press
ISBN: 9781869409906
RRP: $65
Available: bookshops
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