Nga Pikituroa o Ngai Tahu
Oral Traditions of Ngai Tahu

Rawiri Te Maire Tau

Key Points

• What can we find out about the past from oral traditions?
• How were the oral traditions of Ngai Tahu formed?

The author examines the nature and forms of Ngai Tahu traditions – waiata, karakia, whakapapa and placenames – and how they might be interpreted. His principal sources include family manuscripts written by elders of the tribe in the late nineteenth century. He looks at key events and relationships, compares them with the traditions of other tribes, and asks what is myth and what is history?

The Ngai Tahu story is one of migration from the North Island to the north of the South Island, and the occupation of lands further south. Buut the purpose of this study is not to construct a history. The real questions the author addresses are how, why and by whom the tribes’s traditions were formed, and how they might be unravelled to understand Ngai Tahu’s past.

Te Maire Tau is a senior lecturer in the History Department at the University of Canterbury.

History, Maori studies
ISBN 1 877276 27 8, 978 1 877276 27 9, hardback, 245 x 170 mm, 336 pages, illustrated, $50

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