Author who thinks NZ settled by descendants of ‘red-haired Starwalkers’ to give talk

A Nelson venue is departing from its usual music offerings with a talk by a United States author who believes New Zealand was settled by the descendants of “tall, fair-skinned, red-haired Starwalkers”.

At a sold-out event at Room Twenty5 on Saturday, Freddy Silva, who specialises in “alternative history”, will discuss “Waitaha tradition and the Egyptian-Andean connection”, sharing “new discoveries based on Waitaha lore”. These include “the dating of monuments at Kura Tawhiti [Castle Hill] and their relationship to Egyptian pyramids”.

According to Silva, Waitaha were the earliest people to settle in Aotearoa. Their ancestors were: “Starwalkers, long distance voyagers who settled on Easter Island and intermarried after a global flood consumed their land.”

However, an archeology expert, historians and descendants of the Waitaha have all discredited the theories and variations of them as myths.

READ MORE:
* Fact or fantasy? The battle over the Polynesian Antarctica discovery
* Museum’s Waitaha collection naming decision pleases iwi

Silva’s work also includes books on crop circles, and purports “human-like” gods “taught humans the roots of civilized society” thousands of years ago.

Dr Ian Barber, a specialist in Māori archaeology, said there is no question the Waitaha existed: they were an “authentic entity”, ancestors of Ngāi Tahu iwi, he said.

“But the Waitaha myth is something else: it takes the authentic tradition and given it a mystical, new-age expression.”

The myth was sparked in the late 20th century by academic and field archaeologist Barry Brailsford, Barber said.

Brailsford’s 1994 book, Song of Waitaha, purported to be a historical account of the first people to settle in Te Waipounamu (the South Island). Brailsford claimed Waitaha elders had revealed to him their secret history, which told of a people imbued with psychic powers and advanced technology.

Despite the publication being widely challenged and discredited by both historians and Waitaha descendants Ngāi Tahu, who say the narrative undermines their own histories and whakapapa, the myth lives on. Last year, the book inspired a “freedom group” who occupied part of Christchurch’s red zone.

Barber said the myth’s appeal tied in with a “larger scepticism … in what the establishment say”.

“Some people are fundamentally sceptical and distrusting of central government, and what they see as societal engineering and political correctiveness narratives; ideologies being foisted onto people.”

On the other hand, he’d fielded emails from people who were “genuinely confused”.

“There’s lots of information out there, some narratives look convincing and compelling.”

Geoff Sherlock of Room Twenty5 said the 80-seat venue was trying something different with a series of speakers.

“We pick and choose; looking at the stuff you can’t usually find.”

Sherlock agreed Silva’s ideas were “very much not the mainstream narrative”.

“But it’s not made up; it’s just not something that was in the history books that we were taught.

“Your typical, traditional archaeologist doesn’t want to subscribe to it because it challenges the paradigm they are tuned into.

“People can make up their own minds, yes there’s a body of people that say this, somewhere in the middle lies the truth. No one will ever know, it can’t be proven.”