These essays come from
deep in the bone of one of the most scholarly and devoted historians of Maori
life and politics. M P K Sorrenson is of
mixed Maori/Pakeha heritage and, since the 1970s, has contributed greatly to a
mutual understanding of the races with his perceptive, cool, and rational
attempts to unravel truth from the tangle of myth, sentimentality and prejudice
over the 245-year relationship between Maori and Pakeha
He opens with an essay on “The Whence of the Maori” that
summarises the many attempts from the time of James Cook to trace the origins
of the Polynesians in general and Maori in particular. It is a succinct
backgrounder to a question that remains unanswered because archaeology
continues to add strokes to a picture that is still being painted.
He further backgrounds the subject with an essay on tracing
early developments in Pacific anthropology.
I
had read of treaties, mostly short-lived, offered and accepted by Native
American tribes in the 18th century, but I had never understood
before reading Sorrenson’s “Treaties in British Colonial Policy” that the
Treaty of Waitangi had much more deeply rooted origins in British colonial
policy than simply a bid to mollify Maori at the assumption of British
sovereignty. Treaties of various sorts had been offered to a number of
countries in the British Empire, mostly, as it turned out, with one-sided
benefit to the British, and few with any longevity.
In
the case of the Treaty of Waitangi, the fact that it was translated into Maori
was a crucial factor in its longevity, he considers, despite any ambiguities
the translation may have contained.
He
has also included an essay on the Waitangi Tribunal, on whose activities he has
had considerable influence.
These
essays are detailed and dense, not an easy read but a rewarding one for anyone
who wants to know about how the present New Zealand culture has been
embroidered from the threads of the past.
Ko Te Whenua Te Utu; Land is the Price, Essays on Maori History, Land and Politics (Auckland University Press), by M P K Sorrenson.
| Published - Mid-April 2014, 230 x 165 mm, 344 pages |
| Paperback, 978 1 86940 810 7, $49.99 |
About the reviewer:
Gordon McLauchlan is an Auckland-based writer and commentator and a regular reviewer on this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment