Matters of the Heart : A History of Interracial Marriage in New Zealand

Philip Soutar died at Ypres in 1917. Before becoming a soldier, Soutar’s life revolved around his farm at Whakatane, where he lived with his Maori wife Kathleen Pine in an ‘as-you-please marriage, uncelebrated by a clergyman’. Matters of the Heart introduces us to couples like Philip and Kathleen to unravel the long history of interracial relationships in New Zealand.

That history runs from whalers and traders marrying into Maori families in the early nineteenth century through to the growth of interracial marriages in the later twentieth. It stretches from common law marriages and Maori customary marriages to formal arrangements recognised by church and state. And that history runs the gamut of official reactions – from condemnation of interracial immorality or racial treason to celebration of New Zealand’s unique intermarriage patterns as a sign of us being ‘one people’ with the ‘best race relations in the world’.

In the history of intimate relations between Maori and Pakeha, public policy and private life were woven together. Matters of the Heart reveals much about how Maori and Pakeha have lived together in this country and our changing attitudes to race, marriage and intimacy.