I’m no defender of colonialism, but as with most subjects absolute statements like this miss a lot of the truth.

Cook was a complex person who lead an interesting life, and often defended native people’s culture and independence. His Wiki article is well worth a read, his opinion and beliefs in it are not a rewrite of history either, they are largely straight from his reports back to the British admiralty as they happened, and taken from his journals post-humously.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Cook_and_indigenous_peoples

Cook described the Māori as brave, noble, open, benevolent, devoid of treachery, and having few vices.[170][171] He believed that Aboriginal Australians were happier than the British because they enjoyed social equality in a warm climate and were provided with all the necessities of life, and therefore had no need of trade with Britain.[172] While such views partly reflected Enlightenment ideas of the noble savage living in a state of nature, they were contrary to the popular notion in Britain and among Cook’s crew members that indigenous people were savages living in societies inferior to British civilisation.[173][174] Thomas argues that Cook’s depiction of Aboriginal Australians was also an implied critique of his own mission to open up trade with new lands.[172]

Cook sometimes questioned the idea that contact with Europeans would benefit indigenous people. In 1773, he wrote: “we debauch their Morals already too prone to vice and we interduce among them wants and perhaps diseases which they never before knew and which serves only to disturb that happy tranquillity they and their fore Fathers had injoy’d. If any one denies the truth of this assertion let him tell me what the Natives of the whole extent of America have gained by the commerce they have had with Europeans. [sic]”[175]

Whereas his crew saw the cannibalism of the Māori as a sign of their savagery, Cook viewed it as merely a custom that they would discard then they became more united and less prone to internal wars.[176][177] He reported that the Polynesian peoples shared a common ancestry, a tradition of long sea voyages, and had developed into different nations over time. According to Thomas, his comments reflect a more historical and less idealised approach to understanding indigenous cultures than was common in this period.[178]

After his death in battle at Hawaii, he was worshiped (literally his bones at a shrine) for well over 50 years - multiple generations.

In Tahiti, after Cook’s death, he was venerated as an atua with rituals and offerings – but over time the rituals ceased and the memory of Cook diminished.[83] British visitors to Hawaii from the 1780s reported that Hawaiians regretted killing Cook and that he was regarded as a Lono-nui, or ancestral being, who would come again and forgive them. In 1823, the missionary William Ellis reported that Cook’s bones were still held in a shrine and used in ceremonies. However, by the 1830s, the influence of Protestant missionaries had led to a view, particularly among young Hawaiians, that god had killed Cook because he had spread venereal disease and allowed himself to be worshipped.