Tears of Rangi : experiments across worlds / Anne Salmond.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preface: Voyaging worlds -- Part One. Early encounters, 1769-1840: -- 1. Hau: the wind of life -- 2. Tupaia's cave -- 3. Ruatara's dying -- 4. Hongi Hika and Thomas Kendall -- 5. How d'ye do, Mr. King Shunghee? -- 6. Decline and fall -- 7. Spring of the world -- 8. Our words will sink like a stone -- gPart Two. Rivers, land, sea and people: -- 9. Tears of Rangi: awa/rivers -- 10. Like a bird on a sandbank: whenua/land -- 11. Fountain of fish: moana/sea -- 12. Once were warriors: tangata/people -- Afterword: Voyaging stars.

"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 remote, beautiful archipelago, settlers from Polynesia and Europe (and elsewhere) have clashed and forged alliances, they have fiercely debated what is real and what is common sense, what is good and what is right. 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. Beginning with a fine- grained inquiry into the early period of encounters between Māori and Europeans in New Zealand (1769–1840), Salmond then investigates such clashes and exchanges in key areas of contemporary life – waterways, land, the sea and people."--Publisher description.

In English, occasional text in Maori.