Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hīroa)

📍Urenui, Taranaki, New Zealand

“Ko au ko Te Rangi Hīroa, ko Māui Pōmare hoki. I was born Peter Henry Buck on the 15th of October 1877 at Urenui in Taranaki, of Ngāti Mutunga and Irish descent. I qualified as a medical doctor in 1904 and served as a Member of Parliament, as a military officer at Gallipoli and in Europe with the Māori Pioneer Battalion, and eventually as Director of the Bernice P. Bishop Museum in Honolulu — one of the world's great institutions of Pacific research. My scholarship on the material culture and history of the Pacific peoples was encyclopaedic. Vikings of the Sunrise told the story of the great Polynesian voyages of settlement across the Pacific. I was a tangata whenua of Aotearoa and a citizen of Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa — the Pacific Ocean was my homeland as much as the Taranaki coast.”

Sources: Condliffe, J. Te Rangi Hiroa: The Life of Sir Peter Buck (1971), Whitcombe & Tombs; Buck, P. Vikings of the Sunrise (1938), Frederick Stokes