Dame Mary Anne Salmond is a New Zealand anthropologist, environmentalist and writer. She was New Zealander of the Year in 2013.
Early life and family
Born in Wellington in 1945, Mary Anne Thorpe was raised in Gisborne, before being sent to board at Solway College in Masterton, where she was dux in 1961. Salmond then attended the University of Auckland, graduating Master of Arts in anthropology in 1968, and the University of Pennsylvania, where she gained a PhD in 1972. Her thesis was titled Hui – a study of Maori ceremonial gatherings. Salmond was inspired to research early Māori history after visiting the United States on a scholarship as a teenager, and when asked to talk about New Zealand, she realised she did not know much about the Māori side of the story. Her links with the Māori world go back to her great-grandfather, James McDonald, a noted photographer, film-maker and artist who worked with Maori leaders including Sir Āpirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck. Salmond married conservation architect Jeremy Salmond in 1971. They live in Auckland and have three children, including anthropologist Amiria Salmond. In 2000, Anne and Jeremy Salmond initiated the restoration of the Waikereru Ecosanctuary in Gisborne.
Career
Salmond was appointed to a lectureship at the University of Auckland in 1971. She had a close relationship with Eruera Stirling and Amiria Stirling, noted elders of Te Whānau-ā-Apanui and Ngāti Porou. Their collaboration led to three books about Māori life:
Hui: A Study of Maori Ceremonial Gatherings – awarded the Elsdon Best memorial gold medal for distinction in Māori ethnology in 1976
Between Worlds: Early Exchanges Between Maori and Europeans 1773–1815 – winner of the Ernest Scott Prize in 1998.
Afterwards, she began to explore early exchanges between Pacific Islanders and European explorers in the Pacific, leading to the publication of three books:
The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas – winner of the history category and the Montana Medal for Non-Fiction at the 2004 Montana New Zealand Book Awards
Aphrodite's Island: the European Discovery of Tahiti
Her book about exchanges between different realities Tears of Rangi: Experiments between Worlds appeared in July 2017. In 2001, Salmond became Distinguished Professor of Māori Studies and Anthropology at the University of Auckland. Salmond has served on the boards of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, the Museum of New Zealand, and she was chair of the New Zealand Historic Places Trust from 2001 to 2007. She was Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Auckland from 1997 to 2006. She is the project sponsor for the Starpath Partnership for Excellence, which aims to ensure that Māori, Pacific and low-income students achieve their potential through education. "Dame Anne has a long-standing engagement with environmental issues, beginning with her work on the Parks and Wilderness Trust from 1990. After founding the Longbush Ecosanctuary in 2000 with her husband Jeremy, she has become the patron of a number of environmental organisations, and speaks and writes widely about environmental challenges. In this work, she seeks to bring together Maori and Pacific philosophies about relations between people, land, rivers and the ocean with practical restoration work and cutting edge science. She is the Patron of Te Awaroa: 1000 Rivers, a project that aims to restore waterways across New Zealand.". In 2018, she presented a six-part history series Artefact, which screened on Māori Television.
