モー リス・レーナルト（Maurice Leenhardt, 1878-1954）はフランスの民族学者でありプロテスタント牧師（宣教師：la Société des missions évangéliques de Paris）。ニューカレドニアに25年間滞在して、カナク人の間で布教に務めると共に、詳細な民族誌記述を残した。またメラネシア人の人格・身体・思惟 の概念に関する独特の分析をおこない、文化人類学の歴史のなかでの貢献をもたらした。フランスの高等研究院の「宗教史ならびに非文明化の人びとの研究」講 座担当者（1935-1950）。前任者は、マルセル・モース（Marcel Mauss, 1872-1950）。交流のあった研究者としてはレヴィ＝ブリュル（Lucien Lévy-Bruhl,1857-1939）、ミッシェル・レリス（Julien Michel Leiris, 1901-1990）： など。

"Leenhardt was born in Montauban. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Protestant authorities concerned themselves with the evangelisation of the Kanaks, in competition with the Marist Brothers. Maurice Leenhardt was named pastor in 1902 in New Caledonia where he founded the "Dö nèvâ" mission in the valley of Houailou. Going beyond his role of pastor, he applied himself to understanding the mentality of these people. When he arrived in New Caledonia, Maurice Leenhardt was welcomed by these words from the mayor of Nouméa: What have you come to do here? In ten years there will be no more Kanaks. He applied himself to the fight against this slow genocide; he combatted the alcoholism that slowly ravaged the Kanak people. He translated the New Testament into the Houaïlou language with the help of his first students. He returned to France in 1927 where he founded the Société des Océanistes and the Musée de l'Homme, and took the chair of Lucien Lévy-Bruhl at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Following a second stay of nearly ten years in New Caledonia, he began teaching Oceanic languages at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales in 1944. He died in Paris. Leenhardt's daughter Stella married the historian of religions and theologian Henry Corbin (1933).Maurice Leenhardt's contributions to ethnology are considerable, though he did not frame them theoretically. Before Bronislaw Malinowski, he practiced the ethnology advocated by Marcel Mauss from his office in Paris. For twenty-five years he practiced participant observation and active research, the virtues of which were not rediscovered until the 1960s. Maurice Leenhardt was not a dogmatist and through all these contributions, he never sought followers. He was nevertheless one of the first to consider social phenomena in their totality and to study the art, myths, and customs of the Kanak people as well as their language."

• 1878　フランス、モントーバン（Montauban）に生まれる
• 1902　ニューカレドニアに赴任（24歳頃）
• 1902 : Le Mouvement éthiopien au sud de l'Afrique. (rééd. 1976, Académie des sciences d'outre-mer)
• 1909 : La Grande Terre. (Brochure, Société des missions évangéliques, Éd. augmentée en 1922)
• 1920　一時帰国：現地人宣教師の養成を申し入れるが却下され宣教団との折り合いが悪くなる。
  
• 1922 : Traduction du Nouveau Testament en langue houaïlou.
• 1926　帰国
• 1930 : Notes d'ethnologie néo-calédonienne. (Institut d'ethnologie)
• 1932 : Documents néo-calédoniens. (Institut d'ethnologie)
• 1933　モースに代わって、高等研究院で民族誌学の授業担当。
  
• 1935 : Vocabulaire et grammaire de la langue houaïlou. (Institut d'ethnologie)
• 1937 : Gens de la Grande Terre. (Gallimard)
• 1938 : Alfred Boegner. (Société des missions évangéliques)
• 1946 : Langues et dialectes de l'Austro-Mélanésie. (Institut d'ethnologie)
• 1947 : L'art océanien. (Éd. du Chêne)
• 1947 : Do Kamo. La personne et le mythe dans le monde mélanésien. (Gallimard, 1947, 1971, 1985)『ド・カモ』坂井信三訳、せりか書房、1990年
• 1958 Notes de sociologie religieuse sur la région de Canala (Nouvelle-Calédonie), Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie (FRA), 1958, Vol. 24.  L'article est téléchargeable sur le serveur de l'IRD (Institut de recherche pour le développement)

文 献

• Clifford, James, Person and myth : Maurice Leenhardt in the Melanesian world. Duke University Press 1992.
• 坂井信三「訳者あとがき」『ド・カモ』坂井信三訳、せりか書房、Pp.349-373、1990年
• レヴィ＝ブリュル（Lucien Lévy-Bruhl,1857-1939）