Can we blame Cook for everything that followed? Is it the fault of the Englishman who met his early end in 1779 that Māori are statistically likely to meet an early end in 21st century New Zealand? This is not a biographical or historical lecture about Captain James Cook; nor is it a morbid tale of indigenous destruction. Instead, Indigenous Studies scholar and author of Once Were Pacific: Ma-ori Connections to Oceania and Two Hundred and Fifty Ways to Start an Essay About Captain Cook, Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Ātiawa, Taranaki), leads an examination of past, present and future, reflecting on the many stories we tell about Cook and his legacy and what they suggest about the different futures imagined for Aotearoa.
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