Dame Anne Salmond - Leading the Charge of New Zealand Romantic Thinking - by Colinxy
The Romantic Cloak
Few figures embody the Romantic impulse in New Zealand’s intellectual life more vividly than Dame Anne Salmond. Her writings, media appearances, and social media engagements reveal a deep commitment to cultural relativism and poststructuralist thought. She venerates the theorists of fragmentation and ambiguity, and in doing so, positions herself as a defender of what is known as the “Noble Savage.” Within this framework, behaviours that might otherwise be condemned are excused if they emerge from her preferred cultural narrative, while anything associated with European ancestry is treated with suspicion—except, of course, when it comes to herself and her academic circle.
The Mistress of Selective Quotation
Bruce Moon, a Nelson commentator, has aptly described Salmond as “the mistress of selective quotation.” His critique highlights how she constructs her narratives by carefully choosing fragments that support her thesis while omitting contrary evidence.
For example, in her 2016 New Zealand Herald article “Maori Once Were Tender Fathers,” Salmond quoted Richard Cruise’s 1824 observation of paternal tenderness toward children. Yet she ignored Cruise’s equally explicit account of frequent female infanticide, where mothers killed newborn daughters by pressing on the skull. Likewise, she cited Joel Polack’s admiration for children participating in councils, but omitted his detailed descriptions of widespread infanticide methods—strangulation, drowning, suffocation. Missionary Henry Williams casually recorded such practices, and later medical scholarship confirmed them. None of this appears in Salmond’s narrative.
The result is a romanticised picture: tender fathers and attentive councils, with the brutal realities of infanticide and tribal warfare erased. Salmond’s selective lens transforms fragments of kindness into a sweeping cultural portrait, while silencing the darker half of the story.
The Half-Told Story
What emerges from the fuller record is stark. Boys, valued as future warriors, were nurtured by fathers; girls, deemed surplus, were often destroyed. Survivors may indeed have been treated with tenderness, but this was within a context of systemic violence. Beyond the family, tribal warfare raged on a colossal scale. The Musket Wars alone claimed a third of the population.
Consider the Ngāpuhi assault on Mauinaina pā in 1821: two thousand men, women, and children were slaughtered, followed by cannibal feasting until the stench of corpses drove the victors away. Such episodes were not aberrations but part of the historical fabric. Yet Salmond’s romantic narrative omits them entirely, leaving readers with a sanitised vision of harmony.
Treaty Contortions
Salmond’s selective method extends to her interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi. When Ngāpuhi tribesmen advanced the claim that sovereignty was never ceded, she told the Waitangi Tribunal that kawanatanga—the word used in the Treaty—was not a plausible stand-in for sovereignty. Bruce Moon challenged her directly, pointing out that derivation is not meaning, and that kawanatanga was a perfectly serviceable translation. Chiefs at Waitangi understood the implications and later reaffirmed at the 1860 Kohimarama conference that the Queen was their sovereign.
Salmond dismissed this evidence as belonging to “a very different period,” despite its consistency with 1840 testimony and the presence of the same chiefs. Yet she readily accepts oral traditions recorded more than 150 years later, even when they contradict contemporary accounts. This double standard undermines the objectivity expected of a professional historian.
The White Saviour Complex
Salmond’s public interventions often carry the tone of a “white saviour” speaking on behalf of Māori experience. After the Christchurch Mosque shootings, she declared that “white supremacy is a black strand woven through our history as a nation.” Her rhetoric positions her as interpreter and guardian of indigenous grievance, while simultaneously casting European heritage as inherently suspect.
This posture is not universally welcomed. Māori commentators have criticised her for paternalism and for presuming authority over narratives that are not hers to control. Her insistence that only those with “special knowledge” can truly understand the Treaty reinforces the sense of gatekeeping—a claim that ordinary New Zealanders lack the capacity to engage with their own founding document without her mediation.
Honours and Judgement
Despite these flaws, Salmond has been showered with honours and accolades. Yet the question remains: what does it say about the judgment of those who elevate her, when her scholarship rests on selective quotation, romantic omission, and interpretive double standards?
Her work exemplifies a broader trend in New Zealand intellectual life: the romanticisation of indigenous culture, the demonisation of European heritage, and the elevation of poststructuralist relativism as unquestionable truth. It is a trend that demands scrutiny, lest public discourse be led astray by half-told stories and ideological zeal.
Bruce Moon, a Nelson commentator, has aptly described Salmond as “the mistress of selective quotation.” His critique highlights how she constructs her narratives by carefully choosing fragments that support her thesis while omitting contrary evidence.
For example, in her 2016 New Zealand Herald article “Maori Once Were Tender Fathers,” Salmond quoted Richard Cruise’s 1824 observation of paternal tenderness toward children. Yet she ignored Cruise’s equally explicit account of frequent female infanticide, where mothers killed newborn daughters by pressing on the skull. Likewise, she cited Joel Polack’s admiration for children participating in councils, but omitted his detailed descriptions of widespread infanticide methods—strangulation, drowning, suffocation. Missionary Henry Williams casually recorded such practices, and later medical scholarship confirmed them. None of this appears in Salmond’s narrative.
The result is a romanticised picture: tender fathers and attentive councils, with the brutal realities of infanticide and tribal warfare erased. Salmond’s selective lens transforms fragments of kindness into a sweeping cultural portrait, while silencing the darker half of the story.
The Half-Told Story
What emerges from the fuller record is stark. Boys, valued as future warriors, were nurtured by fathers; girls, deemed surplus, were often destroyed. Survivors may indeed have been treated with tenderness, but this was within a context of systemic violence. Beyond the family, tribal warfare raged on a colossal scale. The Musket Wars alone claimed a third of the population.
Consider the Ngāpuhi assault on Mauinaina pā in 1821: two thousand men, women, and children were slaughtered, followed by cannibal feasting until the stench of corpses drove the victors away. Such episodes were not aberrations but part of the historical fabric. Yet Salmond’s romantic narrative omits them entirely, leaving readers with a sanitised vision of harmony.
Treaty Contortions
Salmond’s selective method extends to her interpretation of the Treaty of Waitangi. When Ngāpuhi tribesmen advanced the claim that sovereignty was never ceded, she told the Waitangi Tribunal that kawanatanga—the word used in the Treaty—was not a plausible stand-in for sovereignty. Bruce Moon challenged her directly, pointing out that derivation is not meaning, and that kawanatanga was a perfectly serviceable translation. Chiefs at Waitangi understood the implications and later reaffirmed at the 1860 Kohimarama conference that the Queen was their sovereign.
Salmond dismissed this evidence as belonging to “a very different period,” despite its consistency with 1840 testimony and the presence of the same chiefs. Yet she readily accepts oral traditions recorded more than 150 years later, even when they contradict contemporary accounts. This double standard undermines the objectivity expected of a professional historian.
The White Saviour Complex
Salmond’s public interventions often carry the tone of a “white saviour” speaking on behalf of Māori experience. After the Christchurch Mosque shootings, she declared that “white supremacy is a black strand woven through our history as a nation.” Her rhetoric positions her as interpreter and guardian of indigenous grievance, while simultaneously casting European heritage as inherently suspect.
This posture is not universally welcomed. Māori commentators have criticised her for paternalism and for presuming authority over narratives that are not hers to control. Her insistence that only those with “special knowledge” can truly understand the Treaty reinforces the sense of gatekeeping—a claim that ordinary New Zealanders lack the capacity to engage with their own founding document without her mediation.
Honours and Judgement
Despite these flaws, Salmond has been showered with honours and accolades. Yet the question remains: what does it say about the judgment of those who elevate her, when her scholarship rests on selective quotation, romantic omission, and interpretive double standards?
Her work exemplifies a broader trend in New Zealand intellectual life: the romanticisation of indigenous culture, the demonisation of European heritage, and the elevation of poststructuralist relativism as unquestionable truth. It is a trend that demands scrutiny, lest public discourse be led astray by half-told stories and ideological zeal.
Sources for Further Reading:
Anne Salmond and her record of performance
Dame Anne gets it all wrong
Anne Salmond at it again
Anne Salmond on Treaty interpretation and “special knowledge”
Her comments on white supremacy after Christchurch
Critiques of her “white saviour” posture
Source: https://nominister.wordpress.com/2025/12/21/dame-anne-salmond-leading-the-charge-of-new-zealand-romantic-thinking/
2 comments:
Thank you, whoever it is who wrote this article. The Grate Dane Anne Salmond has betrayed both her own race, and the original Maori people - remnants whoever they are, now really gone from New Zealand.
The romanticisation of indigenous culture is nothing new. It was a spin-off of the environmentalism of the 60s and 70s, when it appeared to be tacitly held that primitive peoples lived in 'perfect harmony' with their natural environment. Their herbal pharmacopoeia contained remedies against every disease known to them (reinforced by tales of Europeans being snatched from the jaws of death through the administration of a herbal concoction, e.g. the legend of Spanish countess in Peru saved by quinine). There was a theological argument that was still doing the rounds when I was a kid (I was raised a Calvinist) to the effect that the 'dark races' were 'innocent' as they had missed out on 'God's law' and were therefore blameless with regard to infringements of the then axiomatically accepted Christian moral code (e.g. practising polygamy rather than monogamy). Eugene Grayland noted in his must-read book "Coasts of Treachery" that while the Maoris could do no right in most settlers' view, they could do no wrong in the rose-coloured view of the missionaries.
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