Traditional Lifeways of the Southern Maori

James Herries Beattie, edited by Atholl Anderson

Key Points

• Significant source for southern Maori history

Book

Journalist Herries Beattie recorded southern Maori history for almost fifty years and produced many popular books and pamphlets. This is his single most important work, based on a major field project for the Otago Museum in 1920 and published here for the first time.

Beattie had a strong sense that traditional knowledge needed to be recorded fast. For twelve months, he interviewed people from Foveaux Strait to North Canterbury, and from Nelson and Westland. He also visited libraries to check information compiled by earlier researchers, spent time with Maori in Otago Museum recording southern names for fauna and artefacts, visited pa sites, and copied notebooks lent to him by informants. Finally he worked his findings up into the systematic notes, which eventually became manuscript 181 in the Hocken Collections, and now this book.

Editor Atholl Anderson introduces the book with a biography of Beattie, a description of his work and information about his informants. Beattie wrote a foreword and introduction to the Murihiku section, which are also included here.

Contents

Introduction Acknowledgements Murihiku Canterbury Nelson Westland
Appendix 1 Edited remains from first draft of Murihiku volume
Appendix 2 Glossary of names for flora and fauna References Indexes: Names, Place Names, General

Book details

Maori studies, Anthropology
ISBN 0 908569 79 3, 978 0 908569 79 3, paperback, 230 x 155 mm, 640 pp, illustrated, $59.95 approx
Release: mid 2009

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