PAST HELPS FUTURE

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 502, 4 February 1949, Page 17

PAST HELPS FUTURE

Sir Peter Buck and his Work

IR PETER BUCK has a distinguished name in the field of ethnology, and equally distinguished is his appearance and manner. Well-built, with grey hair, large expressive eyes, and a kindly mouth, he has the quiet, firm voice and slow yet warm smile of the scholar to whom study has brought inner harmony and outward charm. His bow tie and the cut of his blue shirt gave hint of American influence, but there was little suggestion in his speech that he had been living in United States territory for 14 years. Fondling his pipe rather than smoking it, Sir Peter told of the work he had been doing at-the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, of which he was now director, as well as being Professor of Anthropology at Yale. He had joined the museum as an ethnologist for a. period of five years, but as it had provided him with opportunities for research he had stayed on. As director he had responsibilities for the administration of the museum and its research programme, and this involved keeping in touch with specialists all over the world. But he had also tried to combine with this work the fur- thering of his own particular studies,

which concerned investigations into the original cultures of the various island groups in Polynesia — their arts and crafts, foods, houses, canoes and all material things, their social organisation, inter relationships between families; their native religions, and also the

taking of measurements of physical characteristics to find the relationship as human beings of one group to another. This work had been taken up by the Bishop Museum whi¢h had sent out important. expeditions into the field. The museum had been criticised for interesting itself in this particular field, the critics. contending that the world was changing and that the museum should be taking notice of these changing things. "But," said Sir Peter, "we want a picture_of native culture as it was and then when we have that as a_background we can appreciate what changes are taking place and have been taking place and what things have remained steadfast." Much of this work had already been accomplished and now it would be possible to consider the changes from the basic pattern. The information gathered would be of value to administrators of non-self-governing peoples. "Was this research all of recent origin, and if so had mistakes been made because it had been lacking in the past?" I asked. A good deal of work had been done in the past by missionaries and explorers like Captain James Cook, and useful material had also been gathered by travellers, but from an_ ethnologist’s point of view much more detail was needed, and a thorough, systematised approach by trained anthropologists -was required. The Bishop Museum had sent out expeditions and Sir Peter thought that it had done more work in one large

field than any other single institution in the world. The policy of the museum was to publish reports on this work as soon as possible. Reports from some of the earlier expeditions had been buried away bécause lack of funds had prevented their publication and _ consequently they were not readily available to those who needed them. In addition to papers on its own work the museum also published monographs on the work of other expeditions: Mistakes had been committed in the past through lack of information and through reports being made by biased people who sought material to support a conclusion they had come to beforehand. Some of the early writings on the Maori contained many errors — Grey’s Polynesian Mythology, for example — and people using such material as a basis for research naturally made mistakes. » "Are’ the problems of the Maori identical with the problems of the Polynesian peoples as a whole or do they have special characteristics?" In their migrations from Hawaiiki, Sir Peter replied, his ancestors had faced conditions which ‘no other Polynesian group had had to face. The. Hawaiians travelled approximately the

same distance from the Society Group as did the Maori. But whereas the HaWaiians went north to a tropical country where they could reproduce a_ pattern of living similar to that they had left behind, the Maori came south ‘where climate and natural resources deviated

to an extraordinary extent from that existing in the land from which they had come. "Wouldn’t the fact that the Maori was early called upon to adjust himself to a European culture make his difficulties greater than that of other Polynesian groups?" Not only the Maori but the Hawaiian had early contact with the European, although some other groups did not. The first changes in the Maori pattern of living caused by climatic conditions developed within their own culture and there was ‘time for this development to take place. But the coming of the European meant that the Maori had to develop a tremendous amount at once, and it was more than could be assimilated in the time. This was something which only in late years had. been realised. : "What do you consider the most pressing problems facing the Polynesian peoples?" "Well, a number of things go hand in hand. Health and hygiene are occupying a lot of attention and are very, very important. Then there are other things -such as nourishment and food supplies-making the best use of native foods instead of imported foodstuffs. And education is also to be con- sidered. All the "people in Micronesia want to learn English. However, we must beware of the danger of having too elaborate a scheme at the start. We

have got to go cautiously."

P.

M.

(Photograph on page 21)