Tangata O Le Moana

Book excerpt: Aotearoa New Zealand has been shaped by a long and dynamic history with the other islands of the Pacific, their people and their cultures. Today, it is home to the largest population of Pacific Islanders anywhere in the world. The first of its kind, this illustrated history tells the fresh and surprising story of over a thousand years of Pacific peoples in New Zealand - a millennium of exploration, encounter and cultural exchange - from the legendary feats of exploration and migration undertaken by the ancestors of modern Maori to the politically explosive dawn raids of the 1970s to Tana Umaga becoming the first PI captain of the All Blacks. Uniquely, Tangata o le Moana puts the Pacific Island viewpoint at its centre, using all new primary sources and a rich cache of oral history material to tell the stories of our shared past. Across fifteen chapters written by leading historians and writers, every aspect of this history is touched on, from migration to tourism, economics to politics, sport to the arts. The book is lavishly illustrated with hundreds of historical and contemporary photos, archival documents, specially commissioned maps and beautiful images of evocative museum objects. Tangata o le Moana is a rigorously researched, but human and colourful, record of the story of New Zealand as a Pacific place.