[comment caption=Do you think 60 minutes was wrong to examine Maori bones?] A Northland hapu has laid a complaint with the Broadcasting Standards Authority over a 60 Minutes television story on Maori cannibalism.
Matarahurahu leader David Rankin said in a statement the programme, which screened on TV3 last night, showed footage of interference in Maori burial sites.
Mr Rankin said the programme showed mistreatment of the remains of the ancestors of the region.
"For us as Maori, to tamper with the remains of the dead is sacrilegious - worse than grave robbing.
"TV3 was irresponsible in encouraging this and in getting a Maori from outside the area to violate the mana of those bones.
"These ancestors were treated like a dog on national television."
As well as laying the complaint with the authority, Mr Rankin is considering taking the matter to the Waitangi Tribunal.
"This is the most serious example I have ever seen of pakehas interfering in our world. TV3 is trying to return to the 19th century."
The report followed publication of a book by Auckland University of Technology Professor Paul Moon, a Pakeha , which said Maori cannibalism was widespread until the mid-1800s but had largely been ignored in history books.
Moon's book, This Horrid Practice, looked at the Maori tradition of eating each other which lasted until the 1830s, although there were a few isolated cases after that.
