Pei Te Hurinui Jones was a New Zealandtribal leader, interpreter, land officer, writer, translator and genealogist. Of Māori descent, he identified with the Ngati Maniapotoiwi. He was born in Harataunga, Thames/Coromandel, New Zealand, on 9 September 1898. Jones had very limited formal education and was largely self-taught. The famous Waikato Kingitanga leader, Te Puea, referred to Jones and his brother Mick as "those bloody Hurai", as their father, Daniel Lewis, was Jewish. Both Jones and his older brother, Mick, and friend Leslie Kelly were at one time close associates of Te Puea of Turangawaewae. He considered himself senior in his genealogical ties to Te Puea with whom he worked. He wrote the first history of the Tainui people, having gathered the information for many years with the help of Kelly. In 1940, when Jones was suffering from cancer and expected to die, Kelly took the material to a publisher and had it printed under his own name as "Tainui" but Jones had an operation and lived to an old age. Jones was a strong National Party advocate. He stood for Parliament several times between and. In 1930 he stood as an Independent in the for Western Maori. In the, when he stood as an Independent in the Western Maori electorate, he came second after Labour's Toko Ratana. He stood as the National Party candidate for Western Maori in,,, and, although a newspaper report said he was "Unofficial Labour" in 1943. Jones was one of the Kingitanga actively involved in getting compensation for the confiscation of land in 1863 after the defeat of the Kingite rebellion. He was involved with the Maori Land Court, and with the consolidation of Māori land, and with the development of Māori land in the King Country. He was awarded an honorary degree by Waikato University in 1968 to recognise his major contribution to Waikato Tainui literature and development. In the 1961 Queen's Birthday Honours, Jones was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for services to the Māori people.
