Something New

We feature each fortnight Nicholas Reid's reviews and comments on new and recent books.  

“KNOWLEDGE IS A BLESSING ON YOUR MIND – Selected Writings, 1980-2020” by Anne Salmond (Auckland University Press, $NZ65)

Dame Anne Salmond, anthropologist and historian, is by now one of New Zealand’s most esteemed scholars, an expert in her fields and prolific in her research and writing. Quite apart from the very many papers and articles she has written, she has also produced seven authoritative books on Maori and Pasifika themes and on the interaction of Polynesians and Pakeha.

In gathering together a collection of her writings over forty years, she chose as a title Knowledge is a Blessing On Your Mind. The phrase came from one of her mentors, the erudite Maori elder Eruera Sterling, about whom Salmond wrote in her book Eruera: The Teachings of a Maori Elder. It was from Eruera’s teaching that she began to see anthropology in a new light. She understood that “Eruera’s teachings come out of a chiefly tradition, centred on whakapapa and politics and shaped by the powers of the ancestors – mana, ihi, wehi and tapu. They have led me to reflect about knowledge in the European academic tradition and in the Maori world, and to look carefully at my chosen profession of anthropology.” (p.60)

 In 2013, she was interviewed at length by Cris Shore and Susanna Trnka in which she articulated some of her main ideas: “For me it’s not so much learning about Maori life, it’s actually about learning from it. This is where I think that anthropology has to be heading. It can’t stay within the Western tradition for all of its key conceptions and insights.  If the post-colonial debates have taught us anything, it is that people from other societies don’t appreciate being objectified, turned into items of curiosity for detached inspection.” (p.47) And in the same interview she said “I see anthropology as a kind of comparative philosophy that helps us to bring to light our own unexamined assumptions – about the world and how best to inhabit it – and to generate new ideas and conceptions from this fundamental rethinking. The arrogance of the past – the presumption that the ‘West’ has a monopoly on ‘advanced’ ideas and knowledge….has rightly been attacked…” (p.51) This approach is affirmed in the very last item in the book, the brief comment headed “What is Anthropology?”

Knowledge is a Blessing On Your Mind comprises 500-plus large pages before end-notes and index. It is a formidable book which has to be read carefully. Between chapters Salmond gives detailed accounts of the marae, museums, universities, archives and seminars she has attended and the anthropologists and historians whom she has conferred with – in effect, she gives us a sort of academic autobiography.

In reading my way through this very impressive collection I found myself sorting out the most essential and informative essays; and the essays or commentary that are related to [once] topical matters, polemics and personal connections.

Of the latter, I include “Institutional Racism at the University of Auckland” (1983) which was originally published in the Auckland students paper Craccum, advocating the real need for a Maori marae on campus. “Antipodean Crab Antics” (1994) is Anne Salmond’s spirited response to the negative review of her book Two Worlds which had been written by the philosopher Peter Munz. “McDonald Among the Maori” (1990) deals with Salmond’s Scottish ancestry and how it was connected to New Zealand. It is mainly a tribute to James McDonald, her great-great grandfather, and how he became deeply immersed in Maori customs and arts, and was a pioneer in cinematography, capturing on film images of Maori life in the early 20^th century. Two articles are headed as “Of Women”. One is called “Women and Democracy”, a speech Salmond gave on how there was equity for Maori women and men, who had responsible positions in iwi in pre-colonial times. The other is a newspaper article she wrote in 2016, refuting the argument of Alan Duff (author of Once Were Warriors) that Maori domestic violence was the result of violent Maori traditions. All these articles are informative, expressed clearly and still well worth reading. There is only one article I found difficult to read. This is “Theoretical Landscapes: On Cross Cultural Conceptions of Knowledge” (1982), basically about how metaphor is over-used in too many anthropologic texts. Some of its post-modern language was beyond me, and would have to be untangled for me by a linguistic specialist. In contrast “Pathways in Te Ao Maori” (1984), related to an exhibition and considering taonga that were hidden away in archives, was part of a catalogue, and hence written in a very accessible style as it gave a clear account of varieties of iwi whom Captain Cook encountered in his voyages around New Zealand.

While these texts are all interesting, informative and [with one exception] readable, they are not the most important texts. For an ignorant Pakeha like me, far more enlightening are the major and more detailed essays, which I will now tackle one by one.

Maori Epistemologies (1985) was, says Salmond, “ written as a riposte to metropolitan assumptions about the superiority of modernist knowledge, and was argued as cogently as I knew how.” (p.80) She sets out to show how complex and sophisticated traditional Maori thinking was, and she analyses in detail the traditional concepts viz. Matauranga, meaning reliable knowledge and how to communicate and preserve it ; Wananga, being the Maori conception of the universe, including the role of ancestral histories [which were taonga] ; and Tikanga, being the laws and schools preserving the laws; Korero, being discussion, debate and polemics among experts, for lore was passed down by experts - but such experts were aware that other iwi than their own could have a different idea of cosmology and different ideas of the origin stories. Also, Salmond notes, in pre-colonial times Maori understood Mataurenga and Wananga should be held as separate from mere fables, known as korero tara. Tales like those of Maui came into this category. In effect Salmond is proving in Maori Epistemologies that Maori had a very sophisticated and detailed understanding of both the cosmos and human origins, amounting to an advanced philosophy.

Ruatara’s Dying (1993) was originally the last chapter of Salmond’s Between Two Worlds, concentrating of the different perceptions of death as held by Maori and Pakeha.

The Trial of the Cannibal Dog, or, Why Did Captain Cook Die? (1996) is a very detailed article which later became the last chapter of Salmond’s book of the same name. Salmond makes convincingly the case that, progressively, Captain Cook became disillusioned in his three Pacific voyages. He moved from seeing the Polynesian peoples as welcoming and peaceful, to seeing their hostility, cannibalism (not in all Polynesian islands, but certainly in New Zealand) and aggression. As well as this, Cook’s crews became more discontented as they were taken to bleak destinations far from decent provisioning – such as Cook’s forays into the wild southern seas, as near as possible to Antarctica as an 18^th century wooden ship could go. Discontent became anger and Cook, who had generally been lenient in punishing malcontents, became more and more disciplinarian. It all spilled over when Cook reached Hawaii. There was a major clash between the Hawaiians and Cook’s crew when Hawaiian sacred protocols were violated, and in the ensuing fight Cook was killed. This is only one part of Salmond’s narrative, for the earlier pages of this account concern the radically different ways Polynesians and Europeans regarded dogs and other animals, especially when it came to the provision of food.

Their Body is Different, Our Body is Different (2004) examines European and Polynesian interactions, especially with regard to different concepts of navigation – and with the inevitable mutual misunderstandings and Europeans’ unawareness of the importance of ritual.

Possibly the most crucial work in Knowledge is a Blessing On Your Mind are the 114-long pages devoted to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which Salmond was commissioned (in 2010) to write for the Waitangi Tribunal. She makes minute scrutiny of the treaty, how it was understood, how Rangatira basically saw it as the Crown was offering protection but not as imposing British sovereignty, the process by which the treaty was written, and the two different languages in which it was devised. Then, in detail, Salmond gives a collection of the spoken or written reactions to the treaty made by Rangatira (and a few Pakeha) in the months following the signing at Waitangi, when the treaty was taken to different locations on the North Island to be ratified. As did Ruth Ross decades before, Salmond concludes that the English-language version of the treaty was merely a draft, and the only valid version of the treaty was the Maori-language one…but British authority gradually took the English-language version to be definitive. [On this blog you may see my review of Bain Atwood’s A Bloody Difficult Subject  which covers much of this territory.]

The last essays in this collection are categorised as “On Environmental Questions” . One deals with how different Maori and Pakeha conceptions of personhood are – this being in the context of “The Whanganui River Settlement” that deemed the river to be a living person.  The other has to do with the menace of climate change, which is causing the sea to rise and threatening Pacific island states.

As I hope this simplified and inept review of Knowledge is a Blessing On Your Mind has given you at least some sense of Anne Salmond’s achievements. While she does criticise many Pakeha misconceptions or misrepresentations of Maori life and lore; and while she faults many of the older texts written by Pakeha anthropologists in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries; she does not blanketly dismiss with contempt all Pakeha pioneer attempts to reach some understanding about Maori customs, beliefs, rituals, and politics. Elsdon Best still has worthwhile things to say to us. And of course, as an anthropologist, Anne Salmond knows that there is no society or nation that is not flawed.