Book award is an acknowledgement of Māori history

Book award is an acknowledgement of Māori history

A book co-authored by the University of Auckland’s Dr Aroha Harris has won the Royal Society of New Zealand 2015 Science Book Prize.

Tangata Whenua: an Illustrated History is written by Dr Harris, Dr Atholl Anderson and the late Dame Judith Binney, and is published by Bridget Williams Books.

The book charts the sweep of Māori history from ancient origins through to the twenty-first century.

Dr Harris (Ngāpuhi, Te Rarawa) is a senior lecturer in History in the School of Humanities in the Faculty of Arts and a member of the Waitangi Tribunal.

Atholl Anderson, who is of Ngāi Tahu descent, is Professor Emeritus at the Australian National University, and Dame Judith Binney was Professor Emeritus in History at the University of Auckland. She died in 2011.

Dr Harris says she was “stunned” to hear Tangata Whenua announced as the winning book from the five shortlisted by UK science writer Philip Ball at an event at the Auckland Writers Festival. She says the book’s success is great for the humanities.

“We do regard it as an acknowledgement of Maori history and its capacity to incorporate a range of sciences and methods - archaeology and genetics, whakapapa and sociology, environmental science and demography.

“It affirms the collaborations that are possible between the sciences and the arts. I think the prize is great for the humanities; I hope others see it that way too.
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The three co-authors decided to write Tangata Whenua about seven years ago, however Dame Judith Binney passed away in February 2011. Dr Harris says her contributions are an important influence in the book.

“Judith's passing was an enormous blow, but also a spur to do a good job, one of which she would be proud,” Dr Harris says.

She now hopes that people will take many strong messages from the book, particularly the need to respect the past.

“The past matters. The past informs who we are, and helps us understand how we came to be who we are. If we don't pay attention to our past we deprive ourselves of the lessons it has to teach us.”

The judges, Professor Jean Fleming, Professor Ken Strongman and Dr Rebecca Priestley, said the book "brings together physical sciences, social sciences and the humanities in a dazzling work of scholarship".

"It draws on these disciplines to tell the stories of the Māori people, their origins, their journeys to find this country and their stories in Aotearoa New Zealand.

"This beautifully published book has a broad public appeal and will be read widely by New Zealanders keen to discover who we are and where we come from."

In addition to being a history, it is based on research on genetics and climate science as well as archaeology, anthropology, ethnography (the study of culture) and paleoecology (study of past ecosystems or environments, reconstructed from fossils).

Professor Strongman says the short-listed books in this year’s science prize were all extremely readable and very well done, but Tangata Whenua stood out.

“It is a book that is likely in the future to be found in any sentient household in NZ. It tells the story of the Māori people so fully that it is bound to be the work most referred to in this context.

“The book represents a seminal melding of the humanities and social sciences and in so doing forms a model for future works.”

Dr Harris is currently working on the Waitangi Tribunal inquiry into Te Rohe Pōtae (King Country)

She is the author of Hikoi: Forty Years of Maori Protest, a book on political protest in the late twentieth century.

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