Captain Cook statue to be removed from hill in New Zealand after Maori protests
A statue of Captain Cook will be removed from a hill in New Zealand following protests by the local Maori community ... The council in Gisborne on the North Island said it will relocate the statue, which was erected in 1969.
Leaders of the local Ngati Oneone tribe say historical records show that Cook’s crew shot nine of their people, killing six. They say Cook’s arrival was eventually followed by European settlement, which led to their dispossession and the demise of their culture.
Meredith Akuhata-Brown, a Gisborne councillor, said the council voted unanimously to move the statue, which stands atop a local ancestral hill known as Titirangi, to a museum as part of the 250th anniversary commemorations of Cook’s arrival. She said it might be replaced by a statue of Raikaitane, the Maori chief at the time of Cook’s landing.
The statue has long been controversial, not least because it was apparently made by an Italian sculptor in Sydney who attired Cook in Italian clothing.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/10/02/captain-cook-statue-removed-new-zealand-mountain-maori-protests/
Who was Captain Cook?
Captain James Cook was an eighteenth century British explorer and navigator who made numerous celebrated voyages across the Pacific Ocean before he was killed by islanders in Hawaii in 1779.
Born in Yorkshire in 1728, Cook grew up on a farm before his mathematical and navigation skills helped him climb the ranks of the Royal Navy and eventually to lead three celebrated Pacific voyages.
Regarded as a humane explorer, he set numerous records, including becoming the first European to land on Australia’s east coast in 1770 during a secret expedition to confirm the existence of a southern continent. He also led the first voyage to circumnavigate New Zealand and was the first European on record to discover Hawaii.
It was this last voyage that led to his death after tensions broke out between his crew and the locals.
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