Na To Hoa Aroha; From Your Dear Friend: The Correspondence between Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck, 1925–50—M. P. K. Sorrenson (Ed.) (1986)
Historian Professor Keith Sorrenson (Ngāti Pukenga) collected in three volumes the complete correspondence between two distinguished twentieth-century Māori scholars and statesmen, Sir Āpirana Ngata and Te Rangi Hīroa (Sir Peter Buck).
Publication details
Sorrenson, M. P. K. Na To Hoa Aroha; From Your Dear Friend: The Correspondence between Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck, 1925–50. Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1986.
About the book
The letters exchanged by Sir Āpirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck between 1925-1950 cover the later years of the lives of both Ngata and Buck, when both were in their prime. The two were close friends who maintained their correspondence so as to keep each other up to date on both their actions and their thinking while they were many geographical and cultural miles apart.
Without the letters we would not have such ready access to the influential ideas that Ngata and Buck have bequeathed to us.
These three volumes give us a unique perspective on the contributions of the two men to New Zealand history as well as to the history of anthropology in in the Pacific. Their correspondence is vital to an understanding of their personal commitments to the work they chose to undertake, which stands as a great memorial to their innovative thinking.
Professor Keith Sorrenson should be rightly praised for the work of retrieving the manuscript material, editing it, and organizing it into three volumes and 174 letters. Professor Sorrenson provides an introduction that gives some biographical details on the two men and a brief overview of the New Zealand setting at that time. The photographs in each volume give a visual setting for both men and comments in Māori in the letters have been translated in footnotes.
Further information
This publication is part of the series Te Takarangi: Celebrating Māori publications - a sample list of 150 non-fiction books produced by a partnership between Royal Society Te Apārangi and Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga.