Na to hoa aroha = From your dear friend : the correspondence between Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck, 1925-50

 From Tauranga City Library’s Archives and Special Collections

A monthly blog about interesting items in our collections.

The writing of history has its own history, its own significant works and notable published writers. Such books in public library collections can wear out, or just get lost. Older, fragile and sometimes rarer works that have been significant in the writing of New Zealand and Tauranga Moana history are kept apart in Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries' Māori Special Books Collections - secure, cool and dry in a Climate Controlled Room. 

“Na to hoa aroha : from your dear friend” is one of these titles - a complete set of the three volumes is held, courtesy of the estate of Isla Nottingham.

They are an edited collection of the letters exchanged by Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa) during the years 1925-1950, which Sir Peter spent as a senior academic anthropologist at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Hawai`i (eventually becoming its Director in 1936).

At that time letters were the main way of keeping in touch with friends and colleagues, particularly those abroad, and would cover a wide range of topics – politics, culture, family, professional work – with an immediacy and depth it would be hard to describe in formal historical writing or capture from newspaper articles.

For example, a lengthy letter from Sir Apirana Ngata to Buck of 17th December 1928 outlined the effects of the recent election in some detail. The Reform Party, led by his friend Gordon Coates, lost its large majority to the new United Party, which appointed Ngata Minister of Māori Affairs. This enabled him to press ahead with his ambitious scheme to enable Māori to farm their own land.

On 2 July that year Buck had updated Ngata on the progress of his ethnological work in the Pacific – writing up his researches on Samoan material culture and encouraging the creation of a Rarotongan dictionary. He also commented on the findings of the 1926-27 Sim Commission of Inquiry into the confiscation of Māori land under the 1863 New Zealand Settlements Act.

In a P.S. to that letter Buck says “At a meeting of the Academy of Science here, I stumbled across what to the scientists seems to be a new idea. I merely stated that Native Races did certain things because they liked doing it. This very abstruse statement has been very favourably discussed by the psychologists.” He thinks the idea (that indigenous people can make their own choices) may, after some dressing up, be launched by some academic authority as a proper theory.

Professor M. P. K. Sorrenson
Courtesy Auckland University Press

Professor M. P. K. Sorrenson's editing of the books is an example of traditional historical work – transcribing, editing and clarifying primary source material, then publishing it for others to use in their research, such as Dame Evelyn Stokes at the University of Waikato, who wrote extensively on Western Bay of Plenty history. Sorrenson's work, and the reporting of their lived experience by Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck, provide a foundation for us all to continue investigating and sharing how our world has been shaped by decisions and events in the past, an understanding enriched by books, articles, newspapers, photographs, maps and archival resources.

Bay of Plenty Times, 5 March 1963, Page 1

The rest of Sorrenson's career is outlined briefly on the Kōmako Website (“A bibliography of writing by Māori in English"). Years of teaching and research at the University of Auckland were combined with positions at the Historic Places Trust, Waitangi Tribunal and Geographic Board.
In 1997, the year after he retired from the University, the New Zealand Journal of History published an issue of articles by colleagues and students inspired by his work (called a festschrift), concluding with a bibliography of all his publications up to that point ( he has continued to publish).

Dame Evelyn Stokes contributed the article ‘Pai Mārire and Raupatu at Tauranga 1864–1867’ (New Zealand Journal of History, Volume 31, Number 1, April 1997 pp. 58-84). 

Such work continues to this day, as with a recent Master’s thesis for the University of Waikato by Elisha Rolleston, “Tūtereinga o Pirirākau: He piringa rākau, he piringa whakairo, he piringa whare, he piringa mana Māori Motuhake : Reclaiming identity and mana Māori Motuhake”. In it he “explores the role that the Tūtereinga whare whakairo has contributed towards the reclamation of the identity and mana Māori motuhake for Pirirākau” – one of the hapū discussed in Stokes’ 1997 article. 

Sources:

Na to hoa aroha = From your dear friend : the correspondence between Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck, 1925-50. (Tauranga Library catalogue)

Dictionary of New Zealand Biography entry for Sir Peter Buck - Māori

Dictionary of New Zealand Biography entry for Sir Peter Buck - English

Dictionary of New Zealand Biography entry for Sir Apirana Ngata - Māori

Dictionary of New Zealand Biography entry for Sir Apirana Ngata - English

A bibliography of writing by Māori in English - M. P. K. Sorrenson

Tauranga Library holdings of the New Zealand Journal of History

Tūtereinga o Pirirākau: He piringa rākau, he piringa whakairo, he piringa whare, he piringa mana Māori Motuhake : Reclaiming identity and mana Māori Motuhake / Elisha Rolleston (this may take a while to load from the University of Waikato's digital repository).

This title is available to view in Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries’ Māori Special Books Collection. For more information about this and other items in our collections, visit our catalogue or email the Heritage & Research Team: research@tauranga.govt.nz. For archives, photographs, maps and other publications on Tauranga history visit Pae Korokī.

Written by Leslie Goodliffe, Information Access Specialist at Te Ao Mārama - Tauranga City Libraries.