Newly Digitized Records Reveal How Indigenous People Shared Their Knowledge of New Zealand's Plants With Captain Cook's Crew

"Now, a new initiative has digitized the documents, which have been stored in the archives of the Natural History Museum in London since 1881. Researchers hope the project will shine a spotlight on the moment when Māori and Western knowledge systems came together for the first time, as well as raise awareness about the significance of this exchange among global readers, including Indigenous Māori and Polynesian people.

“We hope that people across the Pacific will engage with this resource and find it useful for understanding the complex cultural relationships their ancestors had with the botanical world, before European contact,” says Edwin Rose, a science historian at the University of Leeds who led the project in collaboration with the Natural History Museum’s Library and Archives."