Traditional Lifeways of the Southern Maori

Overview

Beattie had a strong sense that traditional knowledge needed to be recorded fast. For twelve months, he interviewed people from Foveaux Strait to North Canterbury, and from Nelson and Westland. He also visited libraries to check information compiled by earlier researchers, spent time with Maori in Otago Museum recording southern names for fauna and artefacts, visited pa sites, and copied notebooks lent to him by informants. Finally he worked his findings up into the systematic notes, which eventually became manuscript 181 in the Hocken Collections, and now this book.

Author Biography

Professor Atholl Anderson, FRSNZ, is of Kai Tahu descent. He was head ofanthropology at the University of Otago before moving to Australian National University in Canberra. His works include The Welcome of Strangers: An ethnohistory of southern Maori (Otago University Press, 1998). His most recent publication, co-authored with the late Dame Judith Binney and Dr Aroha Harris, is Tangata Whenua: An illustrated history (2014). James Herries Beattie was bookkeeper, journalist, historian, ethnologist and bookseller. His early work included a multi-volume history of early settlers called, Pioneer Recollections (1909–1911) and an account of southern Maori traditions, placenames and history, published in the Journal of the Polynesian Society (1915–1922).