THE STORY OF TE RANGIHIROA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 500, 21 January 1949, Page 6

THE STORY OF TE RANGIHIROA

HEN Sir Peter Buck, Director of the Bishop Museum at Honolulu, Professor of Anthropology at Yale, and one of the two Maori Doctors of Literature (the other is Sir Apirana Ngata) arrives in New Zealand on Monday, January 24, to attend the Pacific Science Congress at Auckland and Christchurch, it will be his first visit to his native land since 1935. As a world authority on Polynesia, he will be one of the most important figures at the Congress. During the evening of this coming Sunday, January 23, the four ZB stations and 2ZA will present the first of a series of talks on Maori leaders, by Eric Ramsden, who has chosen Te Rangihiroa (as Sir Peter Buck is known among his own people) as the subject of hig first broadcast.

Sir Peter Buck’s career, according to Mr. Ramsden, falls into several distinct phases, but he already had an established reputation as an ethnalogist when he resigned his’ post as Director of Maori Hygiene here, and ‘joined the field staff of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii. His departure from New Zealand, strangely enough, came about through his interest in weaving and plaiting, arts which M€aoris_ usually leave strictly to their womenfolk. Acknowledged as the authority. on Maori textiles, his writings on the subject attracted the attention of the Bishop Museum authorities. Listeners to the Commercial stations will hear more about Sir Peter Buck if they tune in on Sunday to 1ZB at 9.30 p.m., 2ZB at 6.45 pm., 3ZB at 4.15 p.m., 4ZB at 6.0 p,m., or 2ZA at 6.30 p.m.