Red X iconGreen tick iconYellow tick icon

A

Aftermaths

Aftermaths explores the life-changing intergenerational effects of colonial violence in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific. Ranging from Ōrākau pā in the Waikato to the Kimberleys in northwest Australia, from orphanages in Fiji to the ancestral lands of the Wiyot Tribe in Northern California, this collection of illustrated essays reveals the living legacy of historical events, showing how they have been remembered (and misremembered) within families and communities into the present day.

Ara Mai he TētēkuraVisioning our Futures

With less than 2 per cent of the total Māori population holding a doctorate, the need for Māori leadership planning in academia has never been greater. The purpose of this book is to present the experiences of new and emerging Māori academics as a guide for others aspiring to follow.

Artefacts of Encounter

The Pacific artefacts and works of art collected during the three voyages of Captain James Cook and the navigators, traders and missionaries who followed him are of foundational importance for the study of art and culture in Oceania. These collections are representative not only of technologies or belief systems but of indigenous cultures at the formative stages of their modern histories, and exemplify Islanders’ institutions, cosmologies and social relationships. Recently, scholars from the Pacific and further afield, working with Pacific artefacts at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge (MAA), have set out to challenge and rethink some longstanding assumptions on their significance. The Cook voyage collection at the MAA is among the four or five most important in the world, containing over 200 of the 2000-odd objects with Cook voyage provenance that are dispersed throughout the world. The collection includes some 100 artefacts dating from Cook’s first voyage. This stunning book catalogues this collection, and its cutting-edge scholarship sheds new light on the significance of many artefacts of encounter.

B

Beyond the Scene

What contribution does landscape make to our sense of identity? For Beyond the Scene the editors asked eleven writers to choose a landscape that was important to them and to write it from the perspective of their life experience and knowledge. From farmer to art historian and film critic, geographer and planner to lawyer, from landscape architect to poet and environmentalist – these are diverse voices.

Bitter Sweet: Indigenous women in the Pacific

Pacific women’s multiple engagements with work and with sovereignty politics, as well as with their portrayal in film, poetry and tourism, are at the heart of this book. The contributors address the interesting, ongoing questions of representation and identity, as well as their place in the shifting politics of the contemporary Pacific.

Body Trade

A compelling collection of essays on the ‘traffic’ in human bodies in the Pacific from the eighteenth century until today.

C

Cook's Sites

In 1773, Captain James Cook visited Dusky Sound in the far south of New Zealand. The voyage artist, William Hodges, produced remarkable paintings of the spectacular antipodean environment, and of the Maori people who occupied it. The visit represents one of the beginnings of New Zealand's colonial history. How do we make sense of it today? The authors of this book have revisited the sites of contact between Cook's crews in Dusky Sound and Queen Charlotte Sound.

D

Decolonizing Methodologies

This essential volume explores intersections of imperialism and research - specifically, the ways in which imperialism is embedded in disciplines of knowledge and tradition as 'regimes of truth'. Concepts such as 'discovery' and 'claiming' are discussed and an argument presented that the decolonisation of research methods will help to reclaim control over indigenous ways of knowing and being.

Dumont d’Urville

Explorer Jules-Sébastien-César Dumont d’Urville (1790–1842) is sometimes called France’s Captain Cook. Born less than a year after the beginning of the French Revolution, he lived through turbulent times. He was an erudite polymath: a maritime explorer fascinated by botany, entomology, ethnography and the diverse languages of the world.

F

Fiona Pardington

European explorers of the Pacific in the 18th and early 19th centuries faced a problem – how to describe the people they met and report what they had seen and found. From Cook onwards, a serious expedition included artists and scientists in its ship's company. An ambitious journey of the 19th century was the third voyage of the French explorer Dumont d'Urville, from 1837 to 1840. It was just before the invention of photography, when phrenology, the study of people's skulls, was the latest thing. D'Urville chose to take on the voyage an eminent phrenologist, Pierre-Marie Dumoutier, to preserve likenesses of people by making life casts. When the expedition returned to France, the casts were displayed, and later stored in the Musée de l'Homme in Paris, to be joined eventually by other casts from Dumoutier's collection, including those of the d'Urville and Dumoutier families. All were overtaken by photography and history.

Floating Islanders: Pasifika Theatre in Aotearoa

Floating Islanders: Pasifika Theatre in Aotearoa celebrates 30 rich years of Pasifika theatre in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Authors Lisa Warrington and David O’Donnell have interviewed over 30 theatre practitioners – playwrights, directors and performers whose heritage lies in Samoa, Niue, Fiji, Tonga, Tokelau and the Cook Islands.

Four Generations from Maoridom

Memoir of Syd Cormack, a South Island kaumatua and fisherman

H

Hauaga

John Pule is one of the most significant artists living and working in New Zealand today. From the mid-1990s his powerful, enigmatic and personal paintings attracted great interest, and his work came to be widely shown. Famously inspired by hiapo, the innovative barkcloths of nineteenth-century Niue, Pule has been fascinated by the Polynesian past and present, but his work ranges far more widely, responding both to ancestral culture, and to the global terror and violence of our time.

Hiapo

'Hiapo' is the word for barkcloth or tapa in the language of Niue. The aim of this book 'is to reveal the power of a remarkable art, that until now has been obscure to all but a few specialists' - the painted hiapo of Niue island in central Polynesia. Most known pieces of hiapo were produced in the mid to late nineteenth century and are now dispersed, largely in museum collections, all over the world. The authors have worked on this project for a decade, visiting museums, collecting information, travelling to Niue, talking to old people, trying to find out how these paintings were done and who made them.

History of New Zealand and its Inhabitants

A new edition of a rare and sought-after book. History of New Zealand and its Inhabitants is the English translation of Italian monk Dom Felice Vaggioli’s radical, prescient appraisal of British colonisation in Aotearoa. Vaggioli was one of the first Benedictine priests to be sent to Aotearoa NZ, and while working in Auckland, the Coromandel and Gisborne during the years 1879–1887, he observed lifestyles and customs and gathered information about the country’s history, including first-hand accounts of the signing of Te Tiriti and the conflicts in Taranaki and Waikato. The Italian version of his book about Aotearoa was destroyed in Europe due to its anti-Protestant and anti-British views but was later discovered and translated into English in Aotearoa by John Crockett in 2000. This 2023 edition brings Vaggioli’s unique document into the public eye once more.

I

I whanau au ki Kaiapoi

Natanahira Waruwarutu was a child at the time of the capture of Kaiapoi Pa by Te Rauparaha's Ngati Toa warriors in 1832. The early years of his life, recounted here in the original Maori text and an accompanying translation, saw great change in the Maori communities of Waitaha (Canterbury) and Akaora. Otako leaders set aside Moeraki, further south, for Kaiapoi refugees and Waruwarutu moved between the two places until he died in 1895. Before his death, he passed on to scribe Thomas Green, himself a Ngai Tahu elder, a substantial body of material that now defines modern understanding of the traditional history of Ngai Tahu. This manuscript was part of that material and, as Te Maire Tau describes in his introduction, has a history of its own.

Indigenous Identity and Resistance

Indigenous Identity and Resistance brings together the work of Indigenous Studies scholars working in Canada, New Zealand and the Pacific in research conversations that transcend the imperial boundaries of the colonial nations in which they are located. Their lucid, accessible, and thought-provoking essays provide a critical understanding of the ways in which Indigenous peoples are rearticulating their histories, knowledges, and the Indigenous self.

K

Ka Ngaro Te Reo

In 1800, te reo Māori was the only language spoken in New Zealand. By 1899, it was on the verge of disappearing altogether. In 'Ka Ngaro Te Reo', Paul Moon traces the spiralling decline of the language during an era of prolonged colonisation that saw political, economic, cultural and linguistic power shifting steadily into the hands of the European core. In this revelatory and hard-hitting account, Moon draws on a vast range of published and archival material, as well as oral histories and contemporary Māori accounts, to chart the tortuous journey of a language under siege in a relentless European campaign to ‘save and civilize the remnant of the Maori Race’. He also chronicles the growing commitment among many Māori towards the end of the nineteenth century to ensure that the language would survive.

L

Landscape/Community

New Zealanders have a strong affinity with the land and firm connections are drawn between the land and cultural identity in the economy, in politics and in art. Histories of migration, settlement and environmental adaptation ensure the subject of communities and landscapes is increasingly important in New Zealand studies.

M

Making Our Place

Fascination with the interplay of people and place inspired the editors to bring together New Zealanders from differing backgrounds and disciplines to explore some of the stories and sites of conflict and change to be found amongst our sacred, historic, rural, urban and coastal landscapes. All engage with the underlying question: are there better ways to reconcile the tensions inherent in our struggles with the land and each other?

Money Makes You Crazy

The Solomons are a group of islands in the west Pacific where most villages have no road access and no electricity and the modern material world has not fully arrived. In the travel book with a difference, the author visits five communities and listens to people's stories of how they are responding to the temptations of the money from logging, fishing and tourism contracts. In a microcosm, their experience represents the ways in which Western business is affecting traditional ways of life worldwide.

Mothers’ Darlings of the South Pacific

Like a human tsunami, World War II brought two million American servicemen to the South Pacific where they left a human legacy of some thousands of children. 'Mothers’ Darlings of the South Pacific' traces the intimate relationships that existed in the wartime Pacific between US servicemen and indigenous women, and considers the fate of the resulting children. The American military command carefully managed such intimate relationships, applying US immigration law based on race to prevent marriage ‘across the colour line’. For indigenous women and their American servicemen sweethearts, legal marriage was impossible, giving rise to a generation of children known as ‘GI babies’. Among these Pacific war children, one thing common to almost all is the longing to know more about their American father. 'Mothers’ Darlings of the South Pacific' traces these children’s stories of loss, emotion, longing and identity, and of lives lived in the shadow of global war. It considers the way these relationships developed in the major US bases of the South Pacific Command from Bora Bora in the east across to Solomon Islands in the west, and from the Gilbert Islands in the north to New Zealand. The writers interviewed many of the children of the Americans and some of the few surviving mothers, as well as others who recalled the wartime presence in their islands. Oral histories reveal what the records of colonial governments and the military largely have ignored, providing a perspective on the effects of the US occupation that until now has been disregarded by historians of the Pacific war.

N

Ngā Kete Mātauranga

In this beautiful and transformative book, 24 Māori academics share their personal journeys, revealing what being Māori has meant for them in their work. Their perspectives provide insight for all New Zealanders into how mātauranga is positively influencing the Western-dominated disciplines of knowledge in the research sector.

Niue 1774–1974

Niue 1774–1974: 200 years of contact and change, by Margaret Pointer, Otago University Press

Niue and the Great War

Tragic story of Niue’s sacrifice in WW1. Captivating, richly illustrated account. By a leading author on Niue history.

O

Oceanian Journeys and Sojourns

Oceanian Journeys and Sojourns focuses on how Pacific Island peoples – Oceanians – think about a range of journeys near and far: their meanings, motives and implications. In addition to addressing human mobility in various island locales, these essays deal with the interconnections of culture, identity and academic research among indigenous Pacific peoples that have emerged from the contributors’ personal observations and fieldwork encounters. Firmly grounded in the human experience, this edited work offers insights into the development of new knowledge in and of the Pacific. More than half the authors are themselves Oceanians and five of twelve essays are by island women.

P

Pacific Identities and Well-being

This anthology addresses the mental health and therapeutic needs of Polynesian and Melanesian people and the scarcity of resources for those working with them. It is divided into four parts – Identity, Therapeutic Practice, Death and Dying, Reflexive Practice – that approach the concerns of Maori, Samoans, Tongans, Fijians and people from Tuvalu and Tokelau. Contributors include a wide range of writers, most of who are Maori or Pasifika. Poems by Serie Barford, Selina Tusitala Marsh and Tracey Tawhiao introduce each section. As Pasifika populations expand, so do the issues generated by colonisation, intermarriage, assimilation, socioeconomic insecurity and international migration. The stresses of adolescence, identity, families, death and spirituality are all explored here in innovative research that offers a wealth of inspiration and ideas to supportive family, friends and practitioners.

Pasifika Styles

Pasifika Styles is about a groundbreaking experiment in the display of contemporary Pacific art. The artists flung open the stores of the museum and installed their works in cases next to taonga collected on the voyages of Cook and Vancouver. This heralds a new era of collaborative curatorship in ethnographic museums.

Promoting Health in Aotearoa New Zealand

'Promoting Health in Aotearoa New Zealand' provides a rich scan of the health promotion landscape in New Zealand. It explores ways in which Māori, and other, perspectives have been melded with Western ideas to produce distinctly New Zealand approaches. In doing so it addresses the need for locally written material for use in teaching and practice, and provides direction for all those wanting to solve complex public health problems.

R

Rauru

Tene Waitere of Ngati Tarawhai (1854-1931) was the most innovative Maori carver of his time; his works reached global audiences decades before the globalisation of culture became a fashionable topic. Rauru is the highlight of a famous anthropological museum in Germany. Hinemihi, the carved house featured in one section of this book, sheltered survivors of the Tarawera eruption in 1886 before being removed to the park of an English country house. The magnificent His carved Ta Moko panel is one of Te Papa the Museum of New Zealandís icons.

S

See No Evil

Powerful, shocking account of New Zealand’s ‘selective diplomacy’ over West Papua by a leading author on peace and Pacific issues, Maire Leadbeater

Sālote

Queen Sālote ascended the throne of Tonga in 1918, at the age of 18, to lead this Pacific nation through the hazards of the 20th century until her death in 1965. She led this Pacific nation through the hazards of the twentieth century until her death in 1965. An outstanding figure of her time, she was dubbed 'Queen of Paradise' by the British press during her visit to London for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

T

Tarara

At the turn of the twentieth century, Croatians were migrating from Dalmatia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Maori, having become part of the British Empire, were losing much of their land. All were looking for work. They came together on the gumfields of the far north, digging up kauri gum resin for export.

The Lives of Colonial Objects

The Lives of Colonial Objects is a sumptuously illustrated and highly readable book about things, and the stories that unfold when we start to investigate them. In this collection of 50 essays the authors, including historians, archivists, curators and Māori scholars, have each chosen an object from New Zealand’s colonial past, and their examinations open up our history in astonishingly varied ways.

The Urewera Notebook

The Urewera Notebook, by Katherine Mansfield, edited by Anna Plumridge

The Welcome of Strangers

Two hundred years ago Maori in the south of New Zealand had a lifestyle quite distinct from that of their northern cousins, and different experiences of contact with Europeans. This book provides an insight into those times. While it ranges from Marlborough to Stewart Island, its emphasis is on the far south.

Traditional Lifeways of the Southern Māori

Journalist Herries Beattie recorded southern Maori history for almost fifty years and produced many popular books and pamphlets. This is his single most important work, based on a major field project for the Otago Museum in 1920 and published here for the first time.

Travels in Oceania

First published in Paris as Journal d’un balenier, this translation focuses on Dr Thiercelin’s travels and does not include chapters on whaling operations. It takes the reader to New Caledonia, the Chatham Islands, the South Island of New Zealand, Tahiti and Hawaii. Thiercelin made two voyages in the Pacific, twenty years apart, on the Ville de Bordeaux 1837–41 and the Gustave 1861–64. He provides a rare point of view – that of a well informed, educated European who was neither a missionary nor a government official. While his ideas were limited by the ethnocentricity of the time, his commentary on the French and English colonisation of the Pacific is insightful and often critical.

Treaty-Based Guidelines and Protocols for Tertiary Education Institutions

What are the implications of tertiary education providers committing to the Treaty of Waitangi? Treaty-Based Guidelines and Protocols for Tertiary Education Institutions seeks to clarify what exactly a Treaty relationship means for tertiary institutions. It is written by Te Maire Tau, David Ormsby, Marjorie Manthei and Tahu Potiki.

Tuhituhi

This study of the art of William Hodges opens fresh theoretical perspectives on the representational problems raised by these early paintings produced in the South Pacific. Following Pacific Island historians of the 1960s, it argues that it is possible to read the texts and visual material produced from early South Seas encounters against the grain, as moments of cross-cultural exchange that challenge postcolonial complacencies.

V

Vastly Ingenious

Reflecting in 1769 on the manners and customs of the South Sea islands, Joseph Banks remarked that ‘in every expedient for taking fish they are vastly ingenious.’ Hence the title of this book on Pacific material culture, past and present, with broad themes of origins, the movement of peoples and the development of their technologies.

W

Wai Pasifika

In this beautifully written and stunningly illustrated book, David Young focuses on the increasingly endangered resource of freshwater, and what so-called developed societies can\nlearn from the Indigenous voices of the Pacific.

Witi Ihimaera

Witi Ihimaera is one of New Zealand's best-known and most loved writers. Author of seven volumes of fiction – including the award-winning Pounamu, Pounamu, Tangi and The Matriarch – he has also written essays, editorials, and an opera, Waituhi.

Back to top