Tāngata Ngāi Tahu – Helen Brown and Takerei Norton (2017)
This extraordinary volume is composed of 50 profiles of people who have made significant contributions to Ngāi Tahu, from a local level through to those with a national profile.
Publication details
Brown, H. and T. Norton. (Eds). Tangata Ngāi Tahu. Christchurch: Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu: Bridget Williams Books, 2017.
About the book
Tāngata Ngāi Tahu remembers and celebrates the rich and diverse lives of the people of Ngāi Tahu. Spanning time, geography and kaupapa, fifty biographies bring Ngāi Tahu history into the present. The people in this book have contributed to their iwi, hapū and whānau in myriad ways: here are tohunga and rangatira, community leaders, champions of Te Kerēme, activists and scholars, fishermen and farmers, sportspeople, weavers, musicians and many more. All are descendants of Waitaha, Ngāti Māmoe and Ngāi Tahu; united by whakapapa, they are Tāngata Ngāi Tahu.
Produced by the Ngāi Tahu Archives Team to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the Ngāi Tahu Deed of Settlement, the book is beautifully and generously illustrated. Photographs have been sourced from whānau collections, the Ngāi Tahu Archive and external institutions. Together these images constitute a tribal family album that is a taonga tuku iho.
Te Pae Kōrako (the Ngāi Tahu Archive Advisory Committee) has guided this publication, which is intended as the first in a series of biographical volumes.
Tangata Ngāi Tahu: People of Ngāi Tahu was included in the long list for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards 2018
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.