Pei Te Hurinui Jones

Pei Te Hurinui Jones (9 September 1898 – 7 May 1976) was a New Zealand Ngati Maniapoto leader, interpreter, land officer, writer, translator and genealogist. Of Māori descent, he identified with the Ngati Maniapoto iwi. He was born in Harataunga, Thames/Coromandel, New Zealand on 9 September 1898.^[1] Pei had very limited formal education and was largely self-taught. The famous Waikato Kingitanga leader, Te Puea, referred to Pei and his brother Mick as "those bloody Hurai" (Jews), as their father, Daniel Lewis, was Jewish.^[2]

Both Pei, his older brother Mick and Kelly were at one time close associates of Te Puea of Turangawaewae.^[3] He considered himself senior in his genealogical ties to Te Puea with whom he worked.^[4] He wrote the first history of the Tainui people, having gathered the information for many years with the help of his friend Leslie Kelly. In 1940, when Jones was suffering from cancer and expected to die, Kelly took the material to a publisher and had it printed under his own name as "Tainui" but Jones had an operation and lived to an old age.

Pei was a strong National Party advocate. He stood for Parliament several times between 1930 ^[5] and 1963. ^[1] In the 1938 election, when he stood as an Independent in the Western Maori electorate (with National Party support), he came second after Labour's Toko Ratana. He stood as the National Party candidate for Western Maori in 1943, 1957, 1960 and 1963. ^[6]

Pei was one of the Kingitanga actively involved in getting compensation for the confiscation of land in 1863 after the defeat of the Kingite rebellion. He was involved with the Maori Land Court, and with the consolidation of Māori land, and with the development of Māori land in the King Country. He was awarded an honorary degree by Waikato University in 1968 to recognise his major contribution to Waikato Tainui literature and development. ^[7]

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