Jeffrey Paparoa Holman lives in Christchurch/Ōtautahi and he is a senior research fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Canterbury. He has published two books of poetry, As Big as a Father (Steele Roberts, 2002) and The Late Great Blackball Bridge Sonnets (Steele Roberts, 2004), and his latest book is a study of the ethnographer Elsdon Best and his principal Tūhoe informant, the Tamakaimoana chief, Tutakangahau of Maungapōhatu, Best of Both Worlds (Penguin, 2010). He lives in Christchurch.

See also: New Zealand Book Council page

Books

In 1895 a meeting took place in the rugged Urewera ranges - Tuhoe country - that would have lasting effects on our views of traditional Maori society. Elsdon Best, a self-taught anthropologist and quartermaster on the road past Lake Waikaremoana, was sought out by a leading Tuhoe chief, Tutakangahau of Maungapohatu. The stories he gave to Best to be recorded for future generations are with us today.

Best went on to become a noted Pakeha authority on a people he would style as the last of 'the oldtime Maori'. How much did the old man tell him? Was it freely given? Can Best's writings - so pervasive today in our understanding of Maori culture - be truly relied upon? In his unique examination of this historically significant relationship, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman poses such searching questions, further informing a vital national debate on the shared identity - and destiny - of Maori and Pakeha.