Anne Salmond

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Salmond, Anne (1945 - ) is an historian, writer and Distinguished Professor of Māori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland, where she is also Pro Vice-Chancellor (Equal Opportunity). For many years she worked closely with Eruera and Amiria Stirling, noted elders of Te Whaanau-a-Apanui and Ngāti Porou. Their collaboration led to three books.

The first was Hui: A Study of Maori Ceremonial Gatherings, written in 1971-72 and awarded the Elsdon Best Memorial Gold Medal for distinction in Maori ethnology in 1976. Then came the story of Mrs Stirling's life, Amiria, which won third place at the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards in 1977. Finally,Eruera Stirlings Eruera: Teachings of a Maori Elder, won first prize in the Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards in 1981. Salmond's major work Two Worlds: First Meetings Between Maori and Europeans 1642-1772 was published in 1991. It won the National Book Award (Non-fiction), the Ernest Scott Prize, and third place at the 1992 Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards. Between Worlds: Early Exchanges Between Maori and Europeans 1773-1815 follows on from this work. 'It was,' Salmond says 'a swashbuckling period of cross-cultural trial and error.' Between Worlds was also the winner of the Ernest Scott Prize.

The Trial of the Cannibal Dog, published by Penguin UK, a fresh and often startling account of Cook's three voyages around the Pacific, attracted widespread international attention, and won the Montana Award for History and the Montana Medal for Nonfiction at the 2004 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Penguin Books republished Eruera: Teachings of a Maori Elder and Amiria: The Life Story of a Maori Woman in 2005. Her latest book Aphrodite's Island, describing the early contact period in Tahiti, is in press with Penguin NZ and the University of California, and this will be followed by The Paradise of the World, a remarkable new exploration of William Bligh's adventures in Tahiti and the mutiny on the Bounty.

Anne Salmond has achieved many distinctions during her academic career, including a Fulbright Scholarship, a New Zealand Federation of University Women's Scholarship, a Nuffield Commonwealth Travelling Scholarship and the seventh James Cook Fellowship. In 1988 she received the CBE for services to literature and the Maori people and in 1990 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. In 1995 she was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire for Services to New Zealand History, in 2004 she received a Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Non-Fiction, and in 2007 she became an inaugural Fellow of the New Zealand Academy of the Humanities.

She has served as Chairwoman of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust Board, and in 2007 had the rare honour of being elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, one of only a handful of New Zealanders to have won this international accolade.

Salmond's Aphrodite's Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti, was published by Penguin in 2009. Here, she tells a bold new account of Tahiti's discovery and mythic status in Western imaginings about sexuality and the exotic.

Anne Salmond's Bligh: William Bligh in the South Seas was published by Penguin in 2011. Jim Eagles reviewed the book in the New Zealand Herald, 'Remarkable . . . The mutiny has inspired some marvellous books, of which this is possibly the finest.'

Salmond was named the 2013 Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year. In the same year she won the Royal Society of New Zealand Rutherford Medal. The Rutherford Medal is the highest award instituted by the Royal Society of New Zealand at the request of the Government to recognise exceptional contributions to the advancement and promotion of public awareness, knowledge and understanding in any field of science, mathematics, social science, or technology.

MEDIA LINKS AND CLIPS

• A selection of reviews of The Trial of the Cannibal Dog (2003)
• A video interview with Dame Anne Salmond
• NZ Listener interview with Anne Salmond about her biography Bligh