Read the article below. Your work should be on a separate sheet of paper with an appropriate heading. Please write in your own words and proofread your work. This assignment was designed to give you information, but also to see how well you can understand the information and follow directions.

1. Summarize the first paragraph about Paikea in no more than three sentences.

2. Summarize the information from the rest of the article in exactly two paragraphs. Think about how you will organize the information.

The following is an excerpt from The Whales' Tales by Jonathan Altdorfer, from Carnegie Magazine, Fall 2009. The original article is about a museum exhibition about whales.

"Somewhere between the time Jonah ended up as Biblical fish food and an obsessed Ahab chased his Great White nemesis across the pages of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, a Polynesian tribal leader named Paikea jumped on the back of a whale known as Tohorā to escape a death plot hatched by his murderous brother. With a group of faithful followers—the Mäori—paddling a great fleet of canoes behind him, Paikea traversed the South Pacific along whale migratory routes to find refuge in the place the Mäori christened Aotearoa, or modern day New Zealand...

...a profound natural connection exists between these sea mammals and human beings, especially the Mäori.

'The whale is the carrier of our culture,' says Derek Lardelli, a Mäori ta moko—or skin-marking—artist... 'If you follow the migratory patterns of the whale from the warmer waters of Hawaii to the shores of New Zealand, you’ll find the path that my ancestors traveled to get here,' says Lardelli, who also teaches classical Mäori literature.

Once in their new homeland, the Mäori mainly searched for food in New Zealand’s lush forests instead of hunting whales, either out of respect or because of the whale’s overwhelming size. However, the Mäori did take advantage of stranded whales as a food source, considering such events as gifts from the gods. Then, another group of seafaring people “discovered” New Zealand, and everything changed.

With the coming of Western colonizers in search of riches, the Mäori joined whaling ship crews and earned the respect of their European bosses as hard-working, expert sailors and hunters. As the result of such close working relationships, the Mäori and non-natives also formed personal connections. Intercultural marriages were common, which helped to create a new culture unique to New Zealand.

Though that blending of different civilizations helped ease tensions between the nation’s indigenous people and Westerners, it also quickly eroded the traditional Mäori culture and the population itself.

At the turn of the last century, the Mäori were considered a dying race. But those trends have been reversed, and now we are once again well-earthed in our traditional culture, including the importance of the whale in the lives of all the people of New Zealand.”

Altdorfer, Jonathan. "The Whales' Tales." Carnegie Magazine Fall 2009: Web. 11 Oct 2010.