BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1949 A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 44, 21 January 1949, Page 4

BAY OF PLENTY BEACON Published Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 1949 A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR

Maori people of this district and, | no doubt, Pakeha as well, will have the opportunity early next month of meeting and welcoming one of New Zealand’s most distinguished sons in the world of letters and of science, Sir Peter Buck. Present Director of the Bishop Museum at Honolulu, Professor of Anthropology at Yale, and one of the two Maori Doctors of Literature, Sir Peter arrives in New Zealand on Monday to attend the Pacific Science Congress at Auckland and Christchurch. This district, and Ruatoki in particular, has every right to feel honoured that this distinguished scholar and scientists has made time to come here on this, his first visit to his native land since 1935. Son of an Irish father and a Maori mother, Sir Peter has said df himself in a recent book, “I am binomial, bilingual, and inherit a mixture of two bloods that I would not change for a total of either.” Those circumstances, he has claimed, have helped him in his chosen calling as a student and interpreter of Polynesian anthropology. mother’s blood enables him to appreciate a I culture to which he belongs, and | his father’s speech helps him to terpret it. ’ His mother was the first-born ~&m the senior family of the NgatiAurutu sub tribe of the Ngati** Mutunga of North Taranaki, living | near Urenui, about 18 miles north I from New Plymouth. Sir Peter got his Maori name, Te Rangi Hiroa, in memory of his mother’s only brother, who was so named after an ancestor who had lived centuries before. Following a period at Te Aute College in Hawkes Bay, Sir Peter graduated in medicine and spent a year as a hospital interne. Then,, in his own words, he “obeyed the call of his blood” and joined the Government service as Medical Officer of Health to the Maoris. Then followed a period of intensive study of Maori mythology, legends, traditions, and the details of customs, manners and etiquette. He had already established a reputation as an ethnologist when he resigned his post as Director of Maori Hygiene here to join the field staff of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii. What attracted the attention of the Bishop Museum authorities in the first place was Sir Peter’s knowledge of Maori textiles, concerning which he was even then rn acknowledged authority and wrter of wide repute. It is in a way strange that, of his wide range of talents, the one that should have brought about the departure from New Zealand of this brilliant man was his interest in weaving and plaiting, arts which the Maoris usually left strictly to their womenfolk. Now a world-renowned figure in his chosen sphere, Sir Peter returns again to his native land, and does this district the honour of selecting it for a visit. May its welcome be fully worthy of the visitor.