White man from Te Anau in Tūhoe country

White man from Te Anau in Tūhoe country

It’s a white world in Te Anau. Māori are rare here, certainly in terms of any visible cultural presence. There are marae further south – in Bluff, Invercargill, and Ōraka-Aparima Rūnaka at Colac Bay on the south coast. Ngāi Tahu were fast to establish trading with European sealers and whalers from around the beginning of the nineteenth century, with Māori also taking their rightful place on whaling and sealing ships – they already knew how to na…