Nau mai haere mai - welcome to this week’s newsletter.

As New Zealand grapples with its border control and quarantine, and politicians score points in the first election skirmishes, it’s nice to share something completely unrelated to COVID-19. I’m sure you’ll agree the story of how two Australian scholars uncovered the earliest surviving photograph of a Māori is both extraordinary and moving. To say Hemi Pomara, the subject of that remarkable image, led an eventful life would be a criminal understatement, so it’s no surprise that he has inspired a great novel and one of our celebrated film maker Taika Waititi’s next projects. This saga has it all - art historical detective work, imperial exploitation, human resilience and the power of art to tell the truth. Enjoy.

Back in the present, however, our report on the latest research from Antarctica is worrying news. Once thought to be largely immune from warming, it now seems the South Pole is heating fast - three times more rapidly than the rest of the world. But it’s not a simple case of the pole reflecting climate change in general. More likely it’s a complex interaction between natural and human-made effects. As Kyle Clem, at Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington, writes: “Together they make the South Pole warming one of the strongest warming trends on Earth.”

And as we get closer to election day, there are other decisions we’ll be asked to make. We’ll soon be voting in the world’s first national referendum on a comprehensive proposal to legalise the recreational use of cannabis. Massey University drug policy researchers Marta Rychert and Chris Wilkins write about their research on an earlier law reform, aiming to regulate the manufacture of “low risk” psychoactive products, which ultimately suffered from poor execution.

There’s a lot more here and on the New Zealand page, so happy reading and thank you again for supporting The Conversation.

Noho ora mai.