Connecting people

Anne Salmond has been a bridge between cultures all her life. Her new book revisits the stepping stones in her journey.

-  PAUL LITTLE

Wherever she looks, Dame Anne Salmond sees connections: between people, between academic disciplines, between Māori and Pākehā cultures, between the islands of the Pacific, between the past and the present. Sometimes she sets out to make the connections, sometimes she finds them, sometimes they find her. Most recently, she has been examining the existentially crucial connections between humans and the environment.

An important personal connection was sundered in January, when her husband, conservation architect Jeremy Salmond, died. "It's been a horrible year," she says. "Jem and I were very close - 54 years together and we were very happy." She is speaking in the impressive Devonport, Auckland, villa on which her late husband practised his heritage restoration skills. "We've only ever lived in this house. And we bought it when [daughter] Amiria was just a baby. He learned his craft on this house."

As well as the personal partnership, the two shared a professional one in which each complemented the other. When Anne was doing fieldwork on marae around the country, Jeremy accompanied her and "was always much more useful than me", she says. "People assumed because I could speak abit of Māori that I knew a lot more than I did. But they would explain it all to Jeremy and tell him everything."

He is also a presence in her new book, Knowledge Is a Blessing on Your Mind, which collects academic and other writing from 40 years, some previously unpublished. Salmond describes it as "a scholar's journey. It's quite personal in one way, but the way I've been a scholar doesn't really exclude everything else."

She credits Jeremy with the idea for the book's structure. When she was approached about the project by Auckland University Press, she thought it was "boring".