Dame Anne Salmond to start Rutherford lecture series 15 Oct 2014
Related articles
For those readers with families in New Zealand, this might be of interest.
Dame Anne Salmond, renowned author, academic and environmentalist, will give this year’s Royal Society of New Zealand Rutherford Lectures on four different areas of our national life. Dame Anne will open the series, called ‘Experiments across Worlds’, with a lecture in Tauranga on Tuesday 28 October starting at 7.00 pm in the Tauranga Yacht and Powerboat Club at Sulphur Point.
She will explore how exchanges between different ways of being, particularly Maori and European, have helped to shape our past in New Zealand, and how they might contribute to an innovative and successful society for future generations.
Dame Anne Salmond is Distinguished Professor of Maori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland and was awarded the 2013 Rutherford Medal, the Royal Society of New Zealand’s highest research medal, for her eminent work on Maori social structures and interactions with the European world, and on European exploration and engagement in the Pacific. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1990.
Dame Anne says she is fascinated by ‘long-run human history’ and how the trajectories of people and their philosophical frameworks intersect.
‘New Zealand is the last significant land mass on Earth to be found and settled by people. Very late in human history, Polynesians in voyaging canoes settled New Zealand, and about five hundred years later, were followed by explorers out of Europe at the time of the Enlightenment.’
‘Both traditions were highly innovative and experimental, with people rapidly adapting to life in islands very different from their homelands. I am interested in what we might learn from their ongoing exchanges in relation to key topics of national interest such as the sea, land, people and power and water.’
In her opening lecture on ‘The Sea’ in Tauranga, Dame Anne will discuss Maori relations with the ocean, beginning with the moment when Te Whanau a Apanui went out to confront oil company Petrobras’ drilling ship the Orient Explorer in 2012, an echo of the episode almost 250 years earlier when canoes headed out from Cape Runaway to confront Captain Cook’s Endeavour. ‘You can’t really understand these contests unless you go back and understand Maori conceptions of the ocean and also European ideas about sovereignty, freedom of the sea and economic zones,’ she says.
‘It is not as though these ideas no longer have contemporary traction. They are really powerful and they are not just shaping the present, but there’s the opportunity for us to open up different kinds of futures. They may allow us to find ways of living that are more creative, survivable and sustainable.’
In her second lecture on ‘The Land’ in Christchurch, Dame Anne will begin with the first European settlement in the Bay of Islands, where the Church Missionary Society missionaries established their first precarious foothold ashore, and their relations with local rangatira including Ruatara and Hongi Hika. The bi-centennial of that arrival will be commemorated in December this year.
Again, she will explore convergences and differences between Maori and European ideas about land, including notions of property and the impact of the enclosures and surveying in Britain, and how these conceptions played out in New Zealand, along with Maori notions of tuku and hoko and their impact on early land deals and the Treaty of Waitangi, down to the present.
In her third lecture, ‘People and Power’ in Wellington, Dame Anne opens with the encounter between Hongi Hika and King George IV in Carlton House in London, tracing the entanglement of ideas of rangatiratanga and sovereignty from that moment, through the Declaration of Independence and the Treaty of Waitangi to contemporary debates about democratic rights and freedoms.
She will also examine the rights of Maori women and children, and how these have changed over time. In examining the award of the suffrage to women in New Zealand, a world first, she will argue that this was in part because Maori women already had property rights and represented their people in land court cases and elsewhere. ‘When European women wanted rights to property and political participation, it was pretty hard to deny them when Maori women had them already.’
Dame Anne will give her final talk ‘Rivers – Give Me the Water of Life’ in Whanganui as part of the A Place to Live national conference, which will advance the discussion on improving the environments and economies of New Zealand’s regions and smaller centres. This lecture will begin by discussing the settlement between the Whanganui River hapu and iwi and the government in August this year that recognised the Whanganui River status as a legal person in its own right, an example of ‘creative jurisprudence’ that Dame Anne believes may be a world first.
‘What does this mean for our relationships with fresh water? It’s no longer about property rights, but rather seeing waterways as the lifeblood of the land on which we all depend and the right of a waterway to remain healthy is something which, in that settlement, has been put into a legal framework.”
The 2014 Rutherford Lectures are free and open to the general public. However, to ensure a seat, please register at www.royalsociety.org.nz/events
Enquiries to: [email protected] or 04 470 5781
Lecture details:
The Sea
Tauranga | 7pm Tuesday 28 October
Tauranga Yacht and Powerboat Club, Sulphur Point
The Land
Christchurch | 7pm Thursday 6 November
Charles Luney Auditorium, St Margaret’s College, 12 Winchester Street, Merivale
People and Power
Wellington | 6pm Thursday 13 November
Soundings Theatre, Te Papa
Rivers – give me the water of life
Whanganui | 5pm Sunday 16 November
Royal Wanganui Opera House, 69 St Hill Street
Ends
News
Hilary Timmins' Award-Winning UK Documentary Series To Inspire NZ Students
29 Jun 2020 Education
Dream Catchers, produced and directed by Hilary Timmins, celebrates the success stories of more than thirty inspirational New... more
New Zealand reaffirms support for Flight MH17 judicial process
7 Mar 2020 News
Ahead of the start of the criminal trial in the Netherlands on 9 March, Foreign Minister Winston Peters has reaffirmed the need to... more
Business
NZ Government's Economic package to fight COVID-19
17 Mar 2020 Business News
The Coalition Government has launched the most significant peace-time economic plan in modern New Zealand history to cushion the... more
NZ Government announces aviation relief package
19 Mar 2020 Business News
Transport Minister Phil Twyford today outlined the first tranche of the $600 million aviation sector relief package announced earlier... more
Living
Diversity was Key at New Zealand Trade Tasting in London
6 Jun 2022 Food & Wine
New Zealand Winegrowers Annual Trade Tasting was recently held in London, on Wednesday 4 May, in Lindley Hall.
It was the first... more
Kiwi author stuns Behind the Butterfly Gate
12 Jan 2022 Arts
Hidden behind the Butterfly Gate is where the secret has been kept for 76 years...
New Zealand writer Merryn Corcoran’s... more
Property
Fairer rules for tenants and landlords
17 Nov 2019 Property
17 NOVEMBER 2019
The Government has delivered on its promise to the over one million New Zealanders who now rent to make it fairer... more
New Zealand Government will not implement a Capital Gains Tax
17 Apr 2019 Property
The Coalition Government will not proceed with the Tax Working Group’s recommendation for a capital gains tax, Jacinda Ardern... more
Migration
Boosting border security with electronic travel authority – now over 500,000 issued
19 Nov 2019 Migration
19 NOVEMBER 2019
We’ve improved border security with the NZeTA, New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority, which helps us to... more
Christchurch reinstated as refugee settlement location
18 Aug 2018 Migration
18 AUGUST 2018
HON IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY
The announcement that Christchurch can once again be a settlement location for refugees... more
Travel
Gallipoli Anzac Day services cancelled
19 Mar 2020 Travel & Tourism
The New Zealand and Australian Governments have announced this year’s joint Anzac Day services at Gallipoli will be cancelled... more
New Zealanders advised not to travel overseas
19 Mar 2020 Travel & Tourism
New Zealanders advised not to travel overseas
more
Sport
The Skipper's Diary: Sir Richard Hadlee honouring his father and NZ's Forty-Niners
27 Oct 2019 Cricket
NZNewsUK London Editor Charlotte Everett spoke to Sir Richard Hadlee about why he’s chosen to publish his father’s... more
PREVIEW: All Blacks v England semi-final
26 Oct 2019 Rugby
The two most convincing quarterfinals winners are set to square off in a semifinal showdown for the ages when the All Blacks meet old... more
Columns
Gordon Campbell on the Gareth Morgan crusade
11 Nov 2016 Opinion
Gordon Campbell on the Gareth Morgan crusade
First published on Werewolf
The ghastly likes of Marine Le Pen in France and Geert ... more
Gordon Campbell on the US election outcome
10 Nov 2016 Opinion
Column - Gordon Campbell
Gordon Campbell on the US election outcome
Well um.. on the bright side, there (probably)... more
Kiwi Success
Congratulations to Loder Cup winner
26 Sep 2018 People
25 SEPTEMBER 2018
The Loder Cup, one of New Zealand’s oldest conservation awards, has been awarded to Robert McGowan for 2018... more
Appointments to New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO
16 Aug 2018 Appointments
16 AUGUST 2018Appointments to New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO
HON JENNY SALESA
Associate Education Minister Jenny Salesa is... more
Recruitment
Historic pay equity settlement for education support workers
14 Aug 2018 Recruitment
14 AUGUST 2018Historic pay equity settlement for education support workers
RT HON JACINDA ARDERN
HON CHRIS HIPKINS
Prime Minister
The... more
Historic pay equity settlement for education support workers
22 Aug 2018 Recruitment
14 AUGUST 2018Historic pay equity settlement for education support workers
RT HON JACINDA ARDERN
HON CHRIS HIPKINS
Prime Minister
The... more