In 1895 a meeting took place in the rugged Urewera ranges

Tuhoe country

that would have lasting effects on our views of traditional Maori society.
Elsdon Best, a self-taught anthropologist and quartermaster on the road past Lake Waikaremoana, was sought out by a leading Tuhoe chief, Tutakangahau of Maungapohatu.
The stories he gave to Best to be recorded for future generations are with us today. Best went on to become a noted Pakeha authority on a people he would style as the last of ‘the oldtime Maori’.

How much did the old man tell him? Was it freely given? Can Best’s writings

so pervasive today in our understanding of Maori culture

be truly relied upon?

In his unique examination of this historically significant relationship, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman poses such searching questions, further informing a vital national debate on the shared identity

and destiny

of Maori and Pakeha.

‘This is our history at its best.’
–Matthew Wright, Sunday Star-Times