Oral tradition is not dependable when it comes to details and problems of translation (both into other languages and into later forms of the original language) further undermine accuracy. Here’s a possible interpretation: a pretty respectable boat might be made by lashing a framework of whale bones together and covering it with hide. I don’t know if they had hides of sufficient size or not and I doubt it would be seaworthy. Just thinking of the bull boats native Americans made with bison hide stretched over frameworks of willow branches that performed perfectly well on the lakes and rivers of the plains. Chances of really putting something like this to use in the more challenging marine environment is nil, but the legend could have some kernelof truth that, over time and under pressure to keep the story interesting enough to remember and pass along, became the absurdity with which we are now presented. That’s why writing stuff down is such a great thing.

You have just posted another comment with a different name, email address, but the same IP. You are feigning an identity and are thus banned from this website.

Is what you said about people getting more than one vote true?

Unfortunately New Zealand is an extremely racist society. It is nearly impossible to get grants to do research unless there is a benefit to one particular race – Maori. If you are Asian (of which there are nearly the same number as Maori) you may as well forget it. It’s as if you don’t even exist here. There aren’t many countries in the world where you get more than one vote in a general election based on race.

It looks like you are correct. On her personal web page she self-identifies as Pakeha (White). Her husband is Maori.

Surely the more mundane, and believable, explanation is that ancient explorers encounted a blizzard or iceberg. And that is assuming we accept the truth of the semi-mythical oral tradition.

“When you hear hoofbeats, look for horses – not zebras.”

The problem there is Moas only existed down here and this guy saw Antartica before the Māori settled here.
Sure Australia, Madagascar, South America and Africa also had big flightless birds of some shape or form though.

The best book on postmodernism in social science I know is this one:

* Susen, Simon. The ‘Postmodern Turn’ in the Social Sciences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

I agree with your point at the beginning and have known people who thought exactly like that. But “as much invented as found” is a fitting, if somewhat overblown description of much of traditional narrative historiography and of current events journalism. Which parts of reality to highlight, which to leave out, how to frame the whole, how to evaluate is very subjective. Even debunked falsehoods get repeated over and over again if they fit the currently received worldview, like the supposed massacre of students on Tiananmen Square that in reality never happened (it was a journalist’s honest mistake that became “history”), the 20 000 victims of the nuclear catastrophe at the Fukushima plant, or the supposed large public debt of the defunct German Democratic Republic (hardly any debt at all, far less than Western democracies of its day).