TRADITION vs THEORY

The genographic project financed by the National Geographic, in
collaboration with IBM is proving controversial already....
The problem is that many indigenous people are reticent to participate
because they feel their trust has been betrayed too often in the past
or that the results may be used to their detriment. In an article in
Today's Herald this issue is dealt with at some length.... but the bit
that caught my attention was a quote from Geoffrey Chambers of Victoria
University in Wellington.
As the head of a project that claims to have identified a DNA link
between indigenous Taiwanese and New Zealand Maori I must say his
comment is refreshingly honest.....
He wrote : "It is not my job to tell Maori or Pacific people where they
came from. We have been very careful to say our information is a
scientific account but that there are other accounts from traditional
knowledge, and the two do not interface at all."

This has always been the archilles heel of the 'orthodox' theory of the
peopling of the Pacific. It flies in the face of all the traditional
evidence that locates the original homeland (Hawaiki) in the East, in
the direction where the sun rises, the land from where they brought the
Kumara (sweet potato).

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