Tears of Rangi Experiments Across Worlds

Six centuries ago Polynesian explorers, who inhabited a cosmos in which islands sailed across the sea and stars across the sky, arrived in Aotearoa New Zealand where they rapidly adapted to new plants, animals, landscapes and climatic conditions. Four centuries later, European explorers arrived with maps and clocks, grids and fences, and they too adapted to a new island home. In this, her most ambitious book to date, Dame Anne Salmond looks at New Zealand as a site of cosmo-diversity, a place where multiple worlds engage and collide.

Dame Anne Salmond is Distinguished Professor of Maori Studies at the University of Auckland and author of books including The Trial of the Cannibal Dog: Captain Cook in the South Seas; Aphrodite’s Island: The European Discovery of Tahiti and Bligh: William Bligh in the South Seas.