David Roy Simmons MBE (6 September 1930 – 30 November 2015), also known as Rawiri Te Puru Terehou, was a New Zealand ethnologist, historian and author.
[1][2] Simmons was a co-curator and a member of the organising committee for the international exhibition Te Maori, which toured the United States and New Zealand from 1984 to 1987.
[4] He served as a council member of the Otago Institute, the Polynesian Society and the New Zealand Archaeological Association, and as secretary of the Umupuia Marae Trust.
[1] Simmons wrote many books relating to Māori art, culture and history, including: He is credited with effectively demolishing Percy Smith's "great fleet" hypothesis.
[1] In the 1985 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services to ethnology and the Māori people,[7] and in 2013 he was awarded the Auckland Museum Medal and appointed an associate emeritus of Auckland War Memorial Museum.