Story: Documentary film

In 1921 ethnologists Elsdon Best and Johannes Andersen, along with film-maker James McDonald, travelled to Koriniti (Corinth), Hiruhārama (Jerusalem) and Pipiriki in the Whanganui River valley, filming and photographing local Māori, as part of a Dominion Museum expedition. The film McDonald shot shows, among other things, people making and setting eel traps (hīnaki), cultivating land and playing string games. This photograph, from the same trip, shows women weaving flax outside a meeting house at Koroniti.