Ko te Whenua te Utu / Land Is the Price Essays on Maori History, Land and Politics

For more than half a century, Keith Sorrenson—one of New Zealand’s leading historians and himself of mixed Maori and Pakeha descent—has dived deeper than anyone into the story of two peoples in New Zealand. In this new book, Sorrenson brings together his major writing from the last 56 years into a powerful whole—covering topics from the origins of Maori (and Pakeha ideas about those origins), through land purchases and the King Movement of the 19th century, and on to 20th-century politics and the new history of the Waitangi Tribunal. Throughout his career, Sorrenson has been concerned with the international context for New Zealand history while also attempting to understand and explain Maori conceptions and Pakeha ideas from the inside. And he has been determined to tell the real story of Maori losses of land and their political responses as, in the face of Pakeha colonization, they became a minority in their own country. Ko te Whenua te Utu / Land Is the Price is a powerful history of Maori and Pakeha in New Zealand.

M. P. K. Sorrenson is professor emeritus of history at the University of Auckland and the author of numerous articles and several books, including Maori and European Since 1870, Maori Origins and Migrations, Na To Hoa Aroha, and Separate and Unequal: Cultural Interaction in South Africa 1919–1961.