Mike Butler: Disinterest in pre-Maori history stuns

Official disinterest in pre-Maori New Zealand history stunned Australian-based researchers Peter Marsh and Gabi Plumm in Part 1 of their new documentary series titled Skeletons in the Cupboard.

Episode 1 The Redheads assembles evidence that Aryans from India migrated to the islands of the Pacific, including New Zealand.

Mike Butler: Gunpoint treaty threat and other lies

Hawke's Bay elder Jerry Hapuku spoke to the Hawke’s Bay Today newspaper for a Waitangi Day story this year. Maybe the excitement of being interviewed blurred the line between fact and fiction so he told a story about his ancestor, chief Te Hapuku, being forced to sign the Treaty of Waitangi at gunpoint.

That’s news to me I thought when I saw the headline, having read a lot of regional history, so I checked historian Angela Ballara’s description Te Hapuku and the treaty in her biography of him in the Encyclopaedia of New Zealand. Ballara is a current member of the Waitangi Tribunal and her writings are very pro-Maori.