New Year Honours: Dame Anne Salmond lands New Zealand's highest royal honour
Wednesday, 30 December 2020
How does one sum up a distinguished career upon being awarded New Zealand's highest royal honour?
“It’s always been this huge adventure,” Dame Anne Salmond says of her career as an anthropologist, environmentalist and multi award-winning author, unable to settle on a particular highlight.
Salmond's work has been recognised with a multitude of awards and honours. In 1988, she was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to literature and Māori, and in 1995 she was promoted to dame for services to historical research.
Despite this, Salmond, a resident of Stanley Point on Auckland’s North Shore, said she was stunned and overwhelmed to receive a letter telling her she had been named a Member of the Order of New Zealand for services to New Zealand in the 2021 New Year Honours.
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It is the highest honour one can receive in the New Zealand Royal Honours system, and one limited to 20 living people.
Salmond was the first social scientist to be awarded the Rutherford Medal in 2013, when she was also named the Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year.
In 2008, she was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and the following year named as Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences.
However, Salmond insists “it's never about the recognition”. In fact, she said she hates being in the limelight and is quick to redirect praise to those she has worked alongside, and those from whom she has learnt.
“I just have such an amazing time doing the things that I've been privileged to do. I've worked with so many extraordinary people. It's a joy.
“I have a roll call of people to thank for moments like this.”
Salmond, a Pākehā, first dived into the world of Māoridom following a scholarship trip to the United States as a 17-year-old.
The trip made her realise how little she knew about her own country’s indigenous people and prompted her to study anthropology at the University of Auckland, where she is now a Distinguished Professor of Māori studies and anthropology.
“When I was young I met up with people who began to teach me and mentor me and show me a dimension of New Zealand that I’d never experienced before.”
She credits Te Whānau-ā Apanui and Ngāti Porou kaumātua Eruera and Amiria Stirling for introducing her to te reo Māori. She would later write books about their lives – Amiria: The Life Story of a Māori Woman and Eruera: The Teachings of a Māori Elder – which both won the former Watties Book of the Year award.
“My life would have been very different without them. I was just so fortunate.”
Salmond, now in her 70s, is “still loving” her work and is currently focusing on environmental projects, including river restoration project “Let The River Speak” alongside colleague Dr Dan Hikuroa and iwi, which looks at how people, water, land and animals can work and thrive together.
“It’s taking that idea of the river itself being a living community and trying to learn about every aspect of its life right back to the beginning until now and to the future.”
As for celebrating her new honour, Salmond said she and husband, Jeremy, would mark the occasion quietly while working on their land in Gisborne.