Dame Judith Binney, DNZM, FRSNZ (1 July 1940 – 15 February 2011) was a New Zealand historian, writer and Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Auckland. Her work focussed primarily on religion in New Zealand, especially the Māori Ringatū religion founded by Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuki and continued by Rua Kenana.[1] She also wrote extensively on the history of Ngāi Tūhoe.
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Judith Mary Caroline Binney was born in Australia in 1940. She graduated with a first-class honours degree in history from the University of Auckland in 1965, and started work at the university as a lecturer in the History Department the next year. She retired as Professor of History in 2004. She wrote biographies of both Te Kooti and Kenana, as well as a book on Kenana's followers, and another on Pākehā missionary Thomas Kendall. With Judith Bassett and Erik Olssen she wrote People and the Land, a history of New Zealand aimed at high school–level readers.
In 1997, she was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and in 2006 a Distinguished Companion (equivalent to a damehood). In 1998 she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. She was awarded $60,000 at the Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement in 2006. Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark stated: "Judith Binney’s work plays a vital role in recording our history, with a focus on Maori communities. Her writing draws on oral histories and communal memories, and uses photographic sources as an integral part of the written historical discourse."[2]
In 2007, Binney was named an inaugural fellow of the New Zealand Academy of Humanities, and she was a historical consultant for Vincent Ward's film, Rain of Children (2008).
In 2010, she won the New Zealand Post Book of the Year and General Non-fiction Award for Encircled Lands: Te Urewera, 1820-1921 (Bridget Williams Books). The book documents Tūhoe's quest for self-government of their lands, granted to them in law more than a century ago.
On 4 December 2009, Binney received serious head injuries after being struck by a truck while crossing Princes St in Auckland City.[3]
On 15 February 2011, she died in her Auckland home, aged 70, of an illness unrelated to the accident.[4] She was survived by her husband, Sebastian Black.