'This is Māori history. It is the local, the place, the people. It is the paradigm, the method, the analytical frame. It is fraught, deep, powerful, gentle, timeless and always present. Always. Barely below the surface.'
For Aroha Harris, one of Aotearoa’s leading historians, history is a verb as well as a discipline: a way of understanding the world and of changing it. ‘How to history’ is the question underpinning the public lectures, essays and previously unpublished writing gathered in this collection.
Harris writes with characteristic warmth and intellectual clarity, moving from whānau memory and letters to the frameworks and methods of Māori history. Her subjects range from land struggles and urban migration to the quiet determination of nurses, aunties and activists. Throughout, she returns to a central conviction: that Māori history is foundational and continuous, connecting past, present and people across time.