Overview
Nīkau Wi Neera comes to Cornell from Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, where he earned a Bachelor of Music and a Postgraduate Diploma in Anthropology. His specialism was the preservation, reconstruction, and practice of tāonga puoro, the ancient musical instruments of the Māori.
Wi Neera's MA thesis involves dendroclimatological temperature reconstruction using Hemlock (tsuga canadensis) samples collected from Upstate New York. He hopes to match temperature anomalies with moves in Hodinǫ̱hsǫ́:nih maize-based settlements during the Little Ice Age, offering another potential driver for human settlement decisions.
Wi Neera has conducted fieldwork in New York, Alberta, and England. His current projects include dendrochronology of wood samples collected from UNESCO World Heritage Site Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, summer flow reconstruction of the Danube river in Imperial Roman Pannonia, and a contribution to the theory of indigenous archaeology in Oceania.
Nīkau's tribal affiliations are to Ngāti Toarangatira, Kāi Tahu, Ngāpuhi, and Ngāti Pāhauwera.