Nā Tō Hoa Aroha

The correspondence between Tā Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hīroa) is a three-volume chronicle called Na To Hoa Aroha, From Your Dear Friend. Ngata and Buck met as young men at Te Aute College, becoming lifelong friends and intellectual counterparts. During the 1920s they began research into Māori art and technologies, with aspirations of sharing arts-based knowledge amongst iwi. As a Member of Parliament, Ngata passed the Maori Arts and Crafts Act 1926, establishing the Maori Arts Board, and a Māori art school. In 1929 Ngata writes to Buck, ‘It is all very well for the artists to talk about the principles of art . . . but our young folk have first to recover some of the lost knowledge. Nor can they be expected “to develop their innate artistic genius” unless they have some kicking-off point.’¹

Ngāti Porou artist Natalie Robertson has made the recovery, and revitalisation, of knowledge into her kicking-off point for her recent exhibition . Robertson observed her rohe (tribal territory) through every means her Ngāti feet allowed. As Uri,