Salmond hails from an eminent anthroplogical background. As she points out in the preface to Tears of Rangi, her great-grandfather was James McDonald, a noted filmmaker and photographer, who worked with the early Maori anthropologist Te Rangihiroa (Sir Peter Buck) and New Zealand ethnologist Elsdon Best, recording traditional practices of Maori life in the 1920s.
The influences of Salmond’s early life are evident throughout her work, forming the methods that she uses in her research—in this case, “historical ethnography” (22), combining historical enquiry, ethnography, and Maori studies. Archaeology does not feature in her repertoire of methods, although recent investigations have occurred at important sites that she mentions. Place plays a part. Salmond grew up in Gisborne, a small town on New Zealand’s East Coast, the place where James Cook landed the Endeavour in 1769, thus initiating the first fateful encounter between the indigenous Maori and Europeans. New Zealand’s cross-cultural...