This Handbook will explore diverse contemporary topics that reflect the variety of heritage in Aotearoa New Zealand, with topics ranging over cultural and natural heritage, the arts and culture, GLAMs (galleries, libraries, archives and museums), public history, and the natural environment. The chapters in this book all have some relationship with people and place, or with Aotearoa New Zealand's shared history and the impact of/response to a colonial legacy. They will explore the conflict and tensions which arise in contemporary debates about postsettler history, national identity, and popular culture. Within this framework of land, Māori and settler/migrant peoples, authors consider the conflict, problems and tensions which arise from settler-colonial violence, post settler history and a fractious national identity. The book will focus on issues that connect to the relationship with indigenous people and the land through the Treaty of Waitangi/Tiriti o Waitangi. It asks: Who are we and what does it mean to live here, as tangata whenua (people of the land) and tangata tiriti (people of the Treaty)? How has our heritage shaped and been shaped by our relationship to each other and to the land?

Conal McCarthy is Director of the Museum & Heritage Studies programme at the Stout Research Centre, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. In his professional museum career he has worked in collections, exhibitions, education, interpretation, governance and curatorial roles. He has published widely on museum history, theory and practice, including the books Exhibiting Māori (2007), Museums and Maori (2011), and Museum Practice (2015), volume 2 of The International Handbooks of Museum Studies (Wiley Blackwell). In 2018 he published the history of Te Papa, and in 2019 Curatopia: Museums and the future of research (co-edited with Philipp Schorch, Manchester University Press).

Michelle Horwood is a Teaching Fellow in Museum and Heritage Studies programme at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. She has an academic background in anthropology, archaeology and museum studies, and has worked at Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, Aotearoa New Zealand’s national audio visiual archive, as well as Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga and Whanganui Rgional Museum. Her doctoral research, focusing upon building relationships between indigenous communities and museums, was published in the Routledge Museums in Focus series in 2019, Sharing Authority in the Museum: Distributed Objects, Reassembled Relationships.

Awhina Tamarapa (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Ruanui and Ngāti Pikiao), an experienced museum curator, researcher, consultant and writer, is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Stout Research Centre at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. She has a PhD in Museum and Heritage Studies examining taonga kākahu (cloaks and other textiles) in museum collections and the ongoing maintenance and revitalisation of weaving in the community. She has curated major exhibitions at Te Papa, and edited accompanying catalogues. In 2018 she was awarded the Mina McKenzie award by Museums Aotearoa.

Kolokesa Uafā Māhina-Tuai, MNZM is a cultural champion and mediator, curator and writer. She is of Tongan heritage with ancestral links to Sāmoa and Fiji. Kolokesa was curator of Moana Oceania cultures at Te Papa (2004-2008) and Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum (2013-2017). She currently works with Toluma‘anave Barbara Makuati-Afitu, of Samoan heritage, for Lagi-Maama Academy and Consultancy,  an educational and cultural organisation they co-founded in 2018. In 2022 Kolokesa was awarded the honour of Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit “For services to cultures and the arts.”