Life for southern Māori changed forever in the late eighteenth century with the arrival of European explorers and subsequent sealers and whalers.
Māori-Pakeha relations got off to a sometimes rocky start. Misunderstandings and disagreements led to a series of killings and reprisals that wracked the southern coast for more than twenty years.
By 1840 southern Māori were well used to European ways and signed the Treaty of Waitangi. This opened the way for colonisation and the arrival of the Otago Association settlers in 1848. Encounters looks back to this period of first contact, tells the story of Johnny Jones and other pre-1848 settlers and sets the scene for the founding of Dunedin.
