70th Annual General Meeting

Recently the Whakatane Historical Society held its 70th Annual General Meeting.

Guest speaker was Society Patron, Emeritus Professor Dame Anne Salmond, who gave a very interesting address about her Grandfather James McDonald’s involvement as a professional photographer to the ethnological expeditions of 1919-1923, which were inspired by the determination of visionary Maori leaders (Apirana Ngata, Te Rangihiroa and Maui Pomare) to save their people and ancestral ways of life from extinction by capturing ancestral tikanga feared to be fast disappearing.

Afterwards Dame cut the cake and members enjoyed supper.