1550: The Coming of the Hawaikians
March 7, 2025
By AHNZ
The Austronesian Expansion out of Taiwan was a prehistoric migration that unfolded over many centuries. This migration has mostly moved humans east across the Pacific to populate the many islands along the way. It was not until about 1200 AD that one of the many forks decided they had made a wrong turn at Samoa/Tonga and doubled back to find New Zealand in their Southern Ocean.
Our first peoples were Soft Forks from the mother population and they were the people of New Zealand’s Archaic Period: Moa Hunters, Waitaha, Moriori; The ‘tangata whenua’. These Polynesians had their own minor adaptations but remained largely compatible with the wider Polynesian cultural norms. Meanwhile, in Hawaiki, their cousins were taking the Hard Fork that New Zealand ethnologist Robert Briffault considered a development shared by all the peoples of the earth sooner or later: Patriarchal Overthrow of Matriarchal Society.
Dr. Briffault’s writing from the 1920s refutes modern Feminism’s claims to being eternally downtrodden by men and flips it around back at them. In his book The Mothers (1927) he documents masses of evidence about the animal kingdom¹ and humanity that all point to males being the subordinate sex until a great revolution can be brought about in society. For example, he writes that Julius Caesar’s friend Divitiacus and other Druids, such as Merlin, were of a masculine secret society that ousted the control of women such as Boudica. And, that when Hannibal invaded Rome through Gaul it was a local council of women he had to negotiate with. ‘Primitive matriarchal races are everywhere changing to patriarchy before our eyes under the influence of European contacts,’ he said. Our inability to perceive that our own cultural firmware has been flashed is a sign that the procedure was a success. Anthropologists like Briffault and James Frazer uncover the hidden meaning in the old myths. For example, the Judeo-Christian has ‘forgotten’ former gynocentrism but clearly records that Adam came first and Eve ruined everything by her sin.
Hawaikians in c.1000 AD evidently represented this force in the Austronesian world. Their Patriarchal cult of Maui crushed the old gods and swept over the elder established Matriarchal regime. Lapita Culture was done for. The Patrilocal (man-centered) group makes herds, according to Briffault, but the Matrilocal (woman-centered) group makes the family. Herds of Patrilocal subcultures were living fast and tearing up the islands to construct and fuel their warships like ancient biker gangs. Communities were turned upside-down while those with their Warrior Genes activated battled it out to see who would win the Social Darwinism survival game. The area must have become exhausted of resources in the process only leaving the best bands maritime warriors undefeated. These now sought pastures new by exploding outward and taking the Maui Cult with them to Hawaii, Easter Island, Tahiti, Tonga, Samoa, and New Zealand.
In his book, The Coming of the Maori, Peter Buck (1949) estimated The Hawaiki Migration to New Zealand at 1350 AD. “Practically all the canoe traditions give accounts of the bitter fighting that took place before their departure.” he says. Ref. Buck (1949,) NZETC
One of Buck’s references is John Wilson (1866) who said the “Hawaikians introduced the art of cultivation into New Zealand, where they found an aboriginal race resembling themselves in appearance and speaking the same language.” Along with agriculture the Hawaikians took fowls, pigs, and the dog with them. Briffault wrote that the domestication of animals, pastoralism, appertains to the hunter. As such, it is Patriarchy’s pathway to gaining economic power and with it the rest of the ‘gifts of Maui’. According to mythology, Maui can be said to have put agriculture into the hands of man by lifting the heavens so crops would have room to grow and by setting the sun on a slower and regular course. The Hawaikian subgroup that that came to New Zealand did not establish the pig but they did bring the dog (kuri) and, according to Wilson, introduced the pukeko. Buck says a stronger Hawaikian ‘gang’ drove ours out but this seems to have been for the best. Depopulation appears not to have saved Hawaiki from economic collapse and the last group out (if they were even able) probably left with less resources. Perhaps they were the ones to go to Hawaii or the dead-end of Rapa Nui (Easter Island.)
The Tangata Whenua, aka Waitaha, aka Moa Hunters, already living in New Zealand were in for some new company. Wilson (1866) called these existing natives the ‘Maui Nation’ but that’s inaccurate. These people were neither agricultural and nor, so far as is yet proven, did they keep domesticated animal stock. Their distinguishing feature is that they had not undergone the Maui Revolution. They remained Matrilocal. For example, “There are 1.4 females for every male in the Wairau Bar sample” according to Buckley et al (2009) who show women, especially elders, overrepresented in burial honors. Moriori were well known for their pacifist ways in contrast to the Maori colonists. Likewise, the Waitaha whose representatives today insist they are matrilineal: “a non violent matriarchal society.” There are statues in Amberley to their ‘grandmothers’ which contrast strongly with Classic Maori era carved statuary which is overwhelmingly phallic. Ref. 1500: The Waitaha, AHNZ, Ref. Phallic Worship, AHNZ
“I said that the people who came to this country in the canoes found the land inhabited, that the men of the island were hospitable to the Hawaikians, and the latter intermarried with the former; but when, in the course of some two hundred years, the immigrants had become strong, wars ensued in many parts, and the aborigines were often destroyed..” – Wilson (1866)
“The name moa was applied to the domestic fowl throughout Polynesia. It was brought into central Polynesia with the pig and the dog and the moa was carried to the Hawaiian Islands in the north and to Easter Island in the far east. Of the three Polynesian introduced animals, only the dog reached New Zealand. From the presence of the word moa in even a few Maori references, it seemed evident that the first settlers, having no introduced moa, applied the spare name to a local bird…” – Buck (1949)
“Waitaha recognises Rongomaraeroa (Goddess of Peace), as being responsible for the matrilineal whakapapa of our Nation. Waitaha were, and are, a matriarchal society. Wāhine were, and are, highly respected for their wisdom and leadership. We believe that grandmothers, mothers, and sisters of the world are guardians of fertility, and nurturers of the next generation. …Our ancestors tell us that the Waitaha people were a matriarchal and pacifist society. Our people had a history, particularly in Te Waipounamu in the South Island, of retreating or running, rather than participating in wars.” – Waitangi Tribunal claim by Grandmother Council of the Waitaha Nation (2021,) Justice.govt.nz
“A different culture based, not on moa but on agriculture, had become favoured by the changing climate. Classical Maori were a competitive war-like people who battled over the best territories for growing their crops. Maoris were a weaponised people but the remains of the Moa Hunters show few weapons and no cannibalism.” – 1280: Capital at Wairau, AHNZ
The new arrivals, the Hawaikians, brought a new culture to New Zealand that would, before long, make them its masters. Cultures are not museum pieces, they are the working machinery of everyday life. However the Maui Cult, or religion, has long ago become so ingrained and just normal that it simply passed into folklore many generations ago. It is a way of life the Hawaikians brought with them from their previous homeland which Buck identifies as the Society Islands. However, Kiwi Codger and Justin Smith have made a strong case that Hawaiki was the Tuamotu Islands group in French Polynesia. Ref. Episode 52: ‘Hawaiiki…..hiding in plain sight?’, Kiwi Codger, Youtube (2021)
The next thing to explore is the Cult of Maui. This was the making of the Hawaikian ferment and the nature of New Zealand’s last colonising migration until Anglo-Zelandians came along in modern times.
Hei-Tiki, You’re So Fine
For Austronesians the tiki is widespread and represents as a carved figure, of any size, the first human being. Lore differs as to this First One being man or woman depending on which tradition is consulted. Robert Briffault’s model obviously attributes the Woman First axiom to the earlier, Archaic East Polynesian, culture and the Man First axiom to the Hawiakian/Classical Maori.
During Briffault’s Patriarchal Coup the tiki symbol was evidently appropriated along with the status of First. Thus, the Polynesian Meta-Truth was re-framed in a grand act of larceny, a trick, from which all subsidiary tricks (ie time, space, land, fire, agriculture, etc.) inevitably followed. The hidden-in-plain-sight Trickster deity at the center of Hawiakian culture was of course Maui.
The early forms of tiki were large and public in the same way that trains, town clocks, computers etc. used to be large and communal. Now we have personal vehicles, personal watches, and personal computers. For example, the (remaining) Pukaki tiki of 1836 weighs 350kg, the 20 cent coin version 4 grams. Ultimately all of these things become digital (aka virtual) and have no mass at all. It seems to be a unique innovation of the Hawiakians who became the Classic Maori in c.1550 that they got their tiki down to a wearable form about the size of our wrist watch or mobile phone. Nobody these days pays much attention to the old fashioned town clock or needs an internet cafe as our predecessors did because the personal version is more desirable and affordable. Only in New Zealand do we see the personal tiki, the ‘hei-tiki’ as Maoris called it. The Hawiakians who became Hawaiians, Tongans, Samoans etc. have either lost the hei-tiki or never had it to begin with. Of course, what was previously made of wood or bone could adopt the indigenous New Zealand fabrication technology that lasts much longer: greenstone. Such were the hei-tiki that Captains Cook and de Surville discovered in the 1770s.
To the Hawiakian the hei-tiki represented Maui himself and will have been a terrific medium to spread their cult. The music industry was transformed when customers could have their own gramphones or CD players rather than gather around the communal piano or the hugely expensive church organ. Selling the playable media (eg records, tapes, DVDs,..) made the industry a fortune and rewarded the content creators. Likewise, Church Reformation broke the Catholic monopoly² on faith which once relied on a Latin Bible and a monopolistic distribution network priesthood. The hei-tiki transformed the Austronesians the way the Martin Luther and the Tyndale Bible did for Anglo-Saxons by making it personal, portable, and accessible.
And, as it turns out, while the Hei-Tiki is not a book it is packed with a great deal more information than you would at first suppose.
The Hei-Tiki Codex
The Austronesians and their Hawiakian subculture never developed their own writing system. As a result their oral facilities came to the fore as did carving symbolic information into bone, wood, and flesh (tattooing.) To read the Hei-Tiki we need the benefit of C19 ethnologist James Frazer, author of The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (1890.) Ref. AHNZ
Frazer wrote that the early human mind essentially mistakes correlation for causation so will think that things that are alike in one way must be alike in others too. For example, a tall person ought to have an affinity for giraffes because, after all, they’re both high up off the ground. So we get the branch of practical magic that Frazer called Sympathetic Magic and all the interesting things superstitious people try to do with it. One subset is Negative Magic such as warding off spells known as taboo (tapu in Maori) where the object is to stop something from happening. For example, disposing of a coin in a well to avoid even greater loss. Or, small food (or people) offerings to spirits so they won’t take away even more. Using broken weapons or armor thinking it is now unbreakable because it is pre-broken; Or thinking a thing lightning proof once struck since ‘lightning never strikes the same thing twice.’ We also symbolically pre-break ships by hitting new ones with a bottle and pre-drown people as a protective spell in a much older mythology than the rebranded name we have for it now: “christening.” We even self-attack ourselves as a way to ward off someone else abusing us with violence or negative criticism. Frazer would, I think, say that primitive minds believe they can trick spirits of fate into moving on if they see their work has already been done.
Even in the 2020s many practitioners of Sympathetic Magic try to taboo COVID-19 by wearing paper masks that do not work. These token objects resemble the real masks (N95 grade) that do work. The same applied to the jab which resembled medicine so by Sympathetic Magic (including some “booster” spells) it ought to have tabooed COVID spirits from entering the body.
A Hei-Tiki, as is obvious to everyone with a moment’s thought to give, resembles a human baby. Big eyes, huge head, little limbs lacking much evidence of mature dexterity. My observation, as in the images above, is that the baby is in breech position in the womb. That is a very dangerous situation for both mother and child and all the more so in ancient times before access to our modern medical knowledge and techniques. Examination of where the suspension cord is placed shows that hei-tikis were orientated in ‘sympathy’ with, and thus to ward-off, the anguish of breech birthing. Curiously enough an early investigator of the tiki, Horatio Robley, never saw this but thought instead he’d found a modification of a sitting Buddha³. Ref. A-080-024, Alexander Turnbull Library
“The heitiki is a small, carved ornament, usually of greenstone, worn suspended from the neck. It is often incorrectly referred to as tiki. Tikis are, properly, the much larger human figures carved in wood guarding the entrance to a Maori pa and, also, the smaller wooden carvings used to mark a tapu place. The heitiki’s origins are obscure. Best says that the first was made for Hina-te-iwaiwa, the Maori Moon Goddess and patroness of women. It is regarded as sacred, and the most widely held theory claims that it represents the human embryo, especially those of still-born children. These are considered to be particularly powerful spirits, owing to their having been cheated of life. Another version suggests that the heitiki is connected with Tiki, the Maori god who was responsible for the creation of life or who was the first life itself. In both explanations the heitiki is clearly a fertility symbol. ” – Bernard Foster, Department of Internal Affairs. Encyclopaedia of New Zealand (1966)
“During the 1814-1815 CE visit to Whangaroa, John Liddiard Nicholas (1784-1868 CE), who accompanied the Reverend Samuel Marsden (1765-1838 CE) on one of his journeys to Aotearoa, noted a taua (war party) of around 150 men who were wearing hei tiki around their necks.” – Kim Martins, World History Encyclopedia (2021)
The hei-tiki doesn’t only taboo a breech birth but is imbued with many other ailments that the wearer can use to keep her unborn child safe from. According to Charles Bechtol, M.D, the tiki is preventative magic in a time before preventative medicine for 9 specific deformities. Famous in his trade (biomechanics and orthopedic surgery,) Professor Bechtol looked at the tikis we’ve all been observing for hundreds of years and he saw paediatric medical conditions. Amazing work. Bechtol was reading the Hei-Tiki Codex. Ref. Hei Tiki, Journal of the Polynesian Society, Volume 76, No. 4, 1967. Auckland University, Wayback Machine
Numbered by Bechtol on his diagram (left) we have taboo of: 1. Torticollis, 2. Sprengel’s deformity, 3. Anencephaly, 4. Cleft palate, 5. Split tongue, 6. Oligodactyly of hand, 7. Of the foot, 8. Club foot, and 9. Umbilical hernia.
A description of the common congenital anomalies can be found in any text of orthopaedics or pediatrics, Bechtol points out with humility. “The possibility that the first hei-tiki was made to represent a single birth with multiple deformities seems the most logical explanation.” he said.
To this list of 9 I add: 10. Breech birth and, 11. Stillbirth. An evil spirit that had come to ‘install’ these ailments on an unborn child was supposed to see the heitiki and think their work had all been done and move on. As the sex of the tiki, like the unborn child, is an unknown its power will work on baby boys or girls.
Bechtol may have connected, as AHNZ does, these representations to James Frazer’s model of Sympathetic Magic. Certainly some of the readers of the Journal of the Polynesian Society in the late 1960s could have put this together. However I think it more doubtful that others have situated it in Robert Briffault’s paradigm or to Maui. This magical object is certainly the expert work of minds schooled in midwifery and concerned with neonatal care. It would have belonged to and been refined by the older Matrilocal culture where women were the elites. The Hawiakians, with so many other things as we will see, snatched this away for their own Cult of Maui and redacted all ‘history’ contrary to it being theirs all along.
“Maui, ya clown, let it go!”
No wonder there is dispute over the hei-tiki being Maui since there were competing traditions in strife with one another. The masculine Maui Cult wrested control over this along with all the other forms of specialist authority including provenance over the moon. Robert Briffault is emphatic that whichever sex controls the moon is dominant so where there is a moon goddess there is Matriarchy. According to John Savage who visited Maoris in 1805 the moon was “their favourite deity. They believe it to be the abode of a man, who, at some distant period, paid a visit to New Zealand, and who they believe is still very anxious for its welfare and that of its inhabitants.” Here is a culture with a moon god, Maui, who has made the moon his mistress like so many other peoples Briffault lists in his books.
Savage goes on to write about the heitiki alongside a drawing of it, “an ornament formed of the green talc I before mentioned, which they intend for a likeness of this protecting deity. It is worn round the neck of both sexes, particularly during times in which peril is apprehended.” Ref. Savage (1807)
New Zealand, in 1925, had a little bit of a national discussion about the true origin of the tiki after a Mr Burnett put one up for a sports prize. Wiremu Keepa (Gisbourne) said Maui (aka Maui-Tiki-Tiki a Taranga) was the stillborn, crouched-up head, three-fingered reject of his mother. The tiki represented Maui who had overthrown maternal rejection to lead his people out of bondage as a demigod. The tiki, Keepa said, was a representation of Maui but only worn by a woman of authority. Ref. Gisborne Times (1925,) Papers Past
Alfred Grace of Nelson, another authority of his day, chimed in to say the tiki represents the unborn child and was worn by women to ward off evil spirits, especially the ‘stillborn’ generating kind. The women’s quarters were haunted, he said, by such evils and only following religious customs and incantations (karakias) would protect them from attack. You can see by what means a Patriarchy could keep its women under control by having them perform or refrain from rituals and attitudes on pain of ‘evils’. However, Grace connected the tiki to women rather than Maui and men which might speak to experience with natives local to him. Ref. ibid
Next, an East Coast authority named Kawharau struck back against these opinions since the wider world was paying attention to the answer. He said the “tiki as worn by women does not represent Maui.” The first person a tiki was made for was the Goddess of Women who presided over childbirth. The tiki represented the embryo in the womb, the synthesis of male and female reproduction and so influential over bringing these forces together to create a baby. Demonstrating his familiarity with James Frazer’s notions, Kawharau even used his term: “sympathetic magic.” He also credits Elsdon Best who probably learned from the likes of John Savage before him. “It is clear that the tiki neck pendant represents a very ancient myth and ancient cult…When a woman was about to be confined and difficult partruition arose, charms would be brought…the name of Pani was mentioned..also Hina te Iwaiwa, but not Maui. Here Hina is the personification of the moon..” – Ref. Gisborne Times (1925,) Papers Past
“The most prominent figure in Polynesian myth and manifestly one of the most ancient, is Maui, the “creator of land,” the “creator of man.”…An alternative name of Maui, by which he is more commonly known in Samoa, the Marquesas, and in Tahiti, is Tiki, Ti’i, or Tiki-tiki. The New Zealand moon-charm in the form of a foetus, which is fabled to have been given to Maori women by the moon, represents Maui; its full designation is Maui-tiki-tiki. The name, which means “‘top-knot,”” is explained in the New Zealand and Hawaiian versions of his myth by the account of Maui’s premature birth as a shapeless abortion.”
“Like all fertility charms, the cowry and other shells have come to acquire general magic protective virtues against all evils, in much the same manner as the greenstone tiki, which formerly was worn exclusively by Maori women as a fertility charm, has come to be worn by men also as a protective amulet.” – Briffault (1959)
“The man in the moon, or green amulet, is suspended from the neck upon all occasions of full dress, though indeed it is very commonly worn at other times. There are smaller ones, made to be worn by children. ” – Savage (1807)
“At the dawn of the day, in the great Southern Ocean
When the world’s greatest fish was being landed
And the boat they were pulling it into was sinking
And the sea was quite lumpy, and the weather was foul
And the bloke with the map was as pissed as an owl
And the boys called out “Maui, ya clown, let it go”
In the noise, he reached down for his grandmother’s jawbone
And he winked at his mates and he said
“Boys, we don’t know how lucky we are,”
“I have a feeling I have stumbled on something substantial.” – We Don’t Know How Lucky We Are, Fred Dagg (1975)
Although the opinions of the gentleman correspondents differ, as to New Zealand and Pacific traditions, they can can all be equally valid within the Briffault framework. When he wrote this big triple-book opus The Mothers in 1927 he was of course very well-acquainted with the currents of New Zealand thought. He had served as a city and country doctor in this country, debated and lectured in, and served as President of, the Auckland Institute and Museum (before it became our Auckland War Museum.) Doctor Briffault also served our country as a Gallipoli ANZAC before leaving us in 1920 for England. A thinker very well placed to have the whole puzzle of Maui and to have solved it.
Survey of Maui’s Great Coup
To wrap up, let’s get back to how the mythology of Maui the Trickster tells the story of “mankind” turning the tables on “womankind.”
- Born to Fail
- Maui’s mother thought her last born a dud and cast him out. The baby floated away like Moses into the hands of another
- As the metaman, Maui redeemed all men by surviving and triumphing (after a journey into the deep sea, which Carl Jung identifies as the collective unconscious).
- Time: Mastering the Sun
- Similar to Apollo, Maui is master of time by taking power over the sun itself with his brothers.
- The prior, woman’s, regime made slaves of men who had to eat and work very quickly, which they deeply resented.
- Now the women’s old weapon came into the hands of Maui: his grandmother’s jawbone, the immortal part of what had once been her power of speech and incantation.
- Maui, like Samson in the Bible, used this as a weapon. He beat the snot out of the sun, thus slowing it in its course and lengthening man’s day.
- For eternity men’s ears had suffered as wrinkly old grandmothers “jawboned” on endlessly about topics of no interest to the guys until now
- Instead of going fishing together or getting something to eat men had to listen to long prattling sermons about women’s health and how people worked harder in the old days and kept the huts cleaner. They felt like Bart Simpson stuck visiting Grandpa in the old folks home crossed with being forced to dress for church and be talked at for hours
- Maui freed men from these matriarchal monologues by shutting up the geriatric grandma in her meta form! Man’s time endowment was thus liberated. School’s out for summer, school’s out forever!
- It may be that the “ass” that Samson’s jawbone had belonged to will turn out to represent the Boring Bronze Age Broads of Ancient Israel
- To this day women may not speak on the marae in New Zealand and it is the old men who enjoy talking at great length without the need to say anything
- The old world would have been like the Mighty Mongrel Mob being forced to dress nicely with tidy hair sitting quietly on the mat while a marathon version of The Vagina Monologues (1996) was improvised for them on a stage during a big rugby game they badly wanted to watch at lunch time when they’d already skipped breakfast
- Land: Founder of the New Country
- Hawaiian mythology informs us that Maui and his brothers used a magic hook to fish their homeland out of the deep so they could live upon it.
- The Hawaiian version says this was the Hawaiian Islands.
- New Zealand Maori mythology says this was our North Island, “Te Ika-a-Maui” (the fish of Maui). His canoe became the South Island.
- Perhaps so for Tonga, Samoa, etc., or perhaps these were not new places for the Hawaiians, so such a creation myth would have been a suspicious redaction of known information.
- Domestication: The First Dog
- As Maui is the first man in the revised mythology, we also have a first dog.
- Maui created it out of a man, his brother-in-law—yet another trick on women: he deprived his sister of a husband.
- This myth is a patrilocal indicator, as it suggests that in ‘marriage,’ the woman doesn’t gain a husband but the men gain a new brother.
- The Hawaiian, Maori, etc., dog species have since become extinct but would have been invaluable in their day.
- To the Hawaikins, as with other cultures, the dog was invaluable: man’s best friend
- Space and Agriculture: Maui Lifts the Sky
- Women’s world was dark and confining according to this Maui mythology.
- The men lived bowed down and craved lebensraum.
- The sky was so low that even the plants were low specimens, barely growing above the soil.
- Maui, like Atlas, lifted the sky to create room for man to hold his head up high and for crops to thrive.
- This is probably also a reclaiming of the story of the original separation of earth and sky, which mythology says is the act of brothers working together.
- Fire: From province of women who had it at their fingertips to a light for all mankind
- Until Maui, the power of fire was, of course, the province of women.
- A goddess was the keeper of the sacred flame, and Maui contrived an audience by putting all the fires out.
- Fire kept being offered from the woman’s fingertips, but Maui kept tricking her until, in frustration, the power was revealed.
- Like Prometheus, Maui had now given mankind fire. He had thwarted the power and will of women to get it.
- Mortality: Final Trick Gone Wrong
- In Hawaiian mythology, death was, of course, the fault of women, but men resolved to reverse this problem as with the others above.
- Maui attempted a trick on the goddess of death using Sympathetic Magic.
- As she slept, he tried to reverse-traverse her birth canal. Those old-time Hawaiian ‘philosophers’ were right—this would have done the trick.
- Instead, vagina dentata.
- Death remains with us, and the work of Maui has ended because he has died in the act of one last good deed for men against a woman.
Conclusion
All these stories about Maui have been very well known to all New Zealand children for many years. Picture books in the children’s section abound and he appears in 2 recent Disney films. You can easily find the stories being retold and hunt for variations and finer details that are given above. One great mistake is to depict Maui the way all mythological Maoris are depicted these days which is as mesomorph bodybuilders with gym memberships and access to protein shakes. The authentic Maui was deformed and diminutive in stature. Like Hephaestus, a lame god.
To understand the Hawaikins and their Classic Colonisation of New Zealand we here have the main structure. All of it seems to have been well understood in the past by Maoris and those who studied them but I assume nobody has ever synthesised it all until now. It may be that members of the Auckland Institute and Museum or the Polynesian Society, especially in the time of Robert Briffault, had such ideas on their lips or even committed them to their journal. If so then no sooner the idea glinted than the world changed radically and with it our interests and attitudes. Everything after World War II has been redefined so that by the 2020s it’s not even Politically Correct, let alone mainstream, to speak of pre-Maori people in New Zealand. Where an ancient tomb, bag, or rock art is discussed it is automatically assumed to be “Māori” and put in the power of the local tribe. What our ancestors studied and collected for museums are now explicitly being broken up and “returned” to Maori tribes. Ref. “In 2003, the government mandated Te Papa to develop a formal programme for the repatriation…from international institutions to iwi…Te Papa has returned close to 850 Māori ancestors to Aotearoa by repatriating ancestral remains,..”, Museum of New Zealand
As the Millennial Saeculum is coming to the end now there will be a new beginning for New Zealand and for it’s outlook on history. We once swept away the old view of the past and that’s going to happen again very soon. To understand anew how New Zealand became populated we can do no better than to consult the mythology of Maoris themselves and the excellent comprehensive record offered by men like Sir James Frazer and Doctors Robert Briffault and Charles Bechtol.
—
1 Raising the question: To what extent are any given saeculums nature documentaries (eg as scripted by David Attenborough) disinformation in the service of the prevailing human cultural paradigm?
2 Catholicism had gravitated, as it still does, toward worshipping a female god (Mary.) In Briffault’s terms the Protestants and Maui Cult were patriarchs overturning matriarchal society as the primitive Judeo-Christians had done. Indeed, Bishop Jean Pompallier compared Maui and wife Hina to Adam and Eve noting that in both continuities it was women who caused death to come into being. He even wrote that Maui’s son killed his own brother as Cane did Able. Ref. Early History of the Catholic Church in Oceania, Pompallier (1888,) Early New Zealand Books, AU, AHNZ
– According to Methodist Missionary James Watkin, Pompallier told the local Maori that Hine, the wife of Maui, was the Virgin Mary! Evidently an agreeable notion the Maoris found affinity with. Ref. A History of Otago, Eric Olssen (1984)3 If anything it’s the exact other way around: Buddha a more derived form of the tikiImage ref. Hei tiki 1750-1850, W Oldman collection, Museum of New ZealandImage ref. “The breech position involves the fetus resting with the head up instead of down in the pregnant person’s pelvis,” Medical News Today (2022)
Image ref. Hastings Town Clock (est 1935,) Hawke’s Bay Knowledge Bank
Image ref. Social media app named Tiki, Financial Express (2022)
Image ref. Maui. Smite (2022)
Image ref. Briffault writing The Mothers in London, 1926-7. Letters of Robert Briffault, Arthur Searle (1977)
Image ref. Face of Maui. Secrets of New Zealand, Natural History New Zealand Ltd (2002)
Ref. Bellwood, Chronological dispersal of Austronesian peoples across the Indo-Pacific. Wiki
Ref. The story of Te Waharoa, John Wilson (1866, ee1907,) The Internet Archive
Ref. The Mothers, Abridged Edition, Robert Briffault (1959)
Ref. Menagerie of deformed babies! Looking at Hei Tiki, Dougal Austin, Museum of New Zealand (2015)
Ref. Some Account Of New Zealand, John Savage (1807,) Early New Zealand Books, AU, AHNZ
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