Dr Don Stafford: The Great Storyteller of Rotorua

The aroha (love) felt for Don Stafford is due to the real understanding and devotion he showed to the people of Te Arawa. This special affection went right back to his Rotorua boyhood when he began to learn the stories of the old Māori world.

He was admired by everyone as a respected authority on the history of this district. Because he was fluent in speaking te reo Māori, he had mana (standing) in the Māori world, and his remarkable skill with the English language and the knowledge he shared as a speaker has been recognised in Rotorua, all over New Zealand and across the world.

In 1967, Don Stafford published a very important history book called ‘Te Arawa: A History of the Arawa People’, which is still used today. You will find many of the topics in this website were originally documented by Don Stafford. Some people disagreed with certain versions of the historic stories told in the book, but Dr Stafford believed this was a healthy thing because it encouraged people to talk about the stories again and keep them alive in their own ways.

That book was followed by more than 22 other books about Rotorua. This was such a great accomplishment that he was made an MBE (Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) in 1982 and a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II in 1993. Also in 1993, he was awarded an honorary doctorate (a special academic degree only given to someone who has achieved a great deal in their area of knowledge) from the University of Waikato.

Due to his remarkable knowledge, Don Stafford became the first curator of the Rotorua City Museum in 1968, and you can still see the effect he had there in today’s Rotorua Museum Te Whare Taonga o Te Arawa. One of the places you can see his impact is the special photographic collection he created.

In 2011, the museum opened a new wing of the building and named it The Don Stafford Wing in his honour. Don had been part of the planning for the new part of the building and was looking forward to being there when it opened. Despite sadness that he passed away before the opening, museum staff and the whole community were thrilled it would carry his name as a remembrance for all he had done to preserve and share the stories of Te Arawa and the Rotorua region.

In 2010, the late Mauriora Kingi described Don Stafford as having been a “library of information on, and about, Te Arawa” and Te Arawa’s “Pākehā hero”.

This story comes from the original Great Te Arawa Stories website created by Ngā Pūmanawa e Waru (NPeW) Education Trust in 2018. To ensure consistency, minimal updates were made to the text before it was transferred to this new site.