'A Bloody Difficult Subject'

Ruth Ross is hardly a household name, yet most New Zealanders today owe the way they understand the Treaty of Waitangi — or te Tiriti o Waitangi as Ross called it — to this remarkable woman' s path-breaking historical research. Taking us on a journey from small university classes and a lively government department in the nation' s war-time capital to an economically poor but culturally rich Maori community in the far north, and from tiny schools and cloistered university offices to parliamentary