Knowledge Is a Blessing on Your Mind: Selected Writings, 1980–2020

by Anne Salmond

For fifty years, Dame Anne Salmond has navigated ‘ te ao hurihuri’ – travelling to hui in her little blue VW Beetle with Eruera and Amiria Stirling in the 1970s, working for a university marae alongside Merimeri Penfold, Patu Hohepa and Wharetoroa Kerr in the 1980s, giving evidence to the Waitangi Tribunal on the meaning of Te Tiriti in the 2000s. From Hui to The Trial of the Cannibal Dog to today’ s debates about the future of Aotearoa, Anne Salmond has explored who we are to each other. This book traces Anne Salmond’ s journey as an anthropologist, as a writer and activist, as a Pakeha New Zealander, as a friend, wife and mother. The book brings together her key writing on the Maori world, cultural contact, Te Tiriti and the wider Pacific – much of it appearing in book form for the first time – and embeds these writings in her life and relationships, her travels and friends. This is the story of Aotearoa and the story of one woman’ s pathway through our changing land.

608 pages, Hardcover

Published April 9, 2024

About the author

Dame Mary Anne Salmond DBE (née Thorpe, born 16 November 1945) is a New Zealand anthropologist, environmentalist and writer.

Reviews

[Carol Griffiths · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of Ann Salmond's writing about anthropology, history and all of her various passions to do with New Zealand and our place in the Pacific and the world.

[Karen Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book from the library, its been an exquisite reading journey. I have returned this the library and have bought my own copy, I will return to this book again and again.

Anne Salmond is a beckon at the present time, as this current government unravels all that our country has been blessed with.

Buy one and dip into this often, Salmond is am Aotearoa gem and all we learn from her polishes our lives.

[Derek Macleod · Rating 5 out of 5]

A real treasure, a literary gem to dive into and immerse and infuse one’s spirit of hope, transformation and aspiration for the prosperity and temerity of Aotearoa’s future as a multicultural society at peace with itself.