Museums and Maori: Heritage Professionals, Indigenous Collections, Current Practice

By Conal McCarthy

This ground-breaking book explores the revolution that's transformed New Zealand museums in recent decades, and is influencing how museums worldwide care for indigenous objects.Drawing on practical examples and interviews with professionals from all kinds of institutions, Dr Conal McCarthy lifts the lid on current practice. How do museum professionals deal with the indigenous objects in their care from day to day? How do they engage with tribal communities? How do they meet the needs of visitors, as well as these communities?The first critical study of its kind, Museums and Maori is an indispensible resource for professionals, students, academics, and museum supporters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Te Papa Press
• Release date: Apr 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9780995103184

Book preview

Front Cover of Museums and MaoriHalf Title of Museums and MaoriBook Title of Museums and Maori

First published in New Zealand in 2011 by

Te Papa Press, PO Box 467, Wellington, New Zealand

© Conal McCarthy 2011

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism, or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, without the prior permission of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.

TE PAPA® is the trademark of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Te Papa Press is an imprint of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

National Library of New Zealand Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

McCarthy, Conal, 1961-

Museums and Māori : heritage professionals, indigenous collections, current practice / Conal McCarthy.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-877385-70-4

1. Maori (New Zealand people)—Antiquities—Collection and preservation.

2. Maori (New Zealand people)—Material culture.

3. Museums and minorities—New Zealand.

[1. Whare taonga. reo 2. Mana whakairo hinengaro. reo] I. Title.

993.004994420074—dc 22

Cover design by Sarah Healey

Typesetting by IslandBridge

Front cover image: Auckland War Memorial Museum

Back cover images: Exhibits at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, c. 1870s and kaitiaki Māori Lisa Ward at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

Maps by Geographx

Digital imaging by Jeremy Glyde

Printed by Printlink, Wellington

Contents

List of illustrations

A note on the Māori language

Map of New Zealand

Simplified iwi map

He mihi

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction: Museums and indigenous people

Part one: From monoculturalism to biculturalism

1 Before Te Maori

2 The Te Maori exhibition

3 After Te Maori

Part two: Biculturalism in practice

4 Into a new century

5 Reforming museology at Te Papa

6 Evolving museum practice

Part three: Beyond biculturalism?

7 ‘A new net goes fishing’

8 Biculturalism and its discontents

Conclusion: The future behind us

Afterword: Pacific voices in the bicultural museum

Appendix

Glossary

Bibliography

Illustrations

Figures

All images are owned by the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, unless otherwise credited.

Title page. Te Arawa warriors carrying Pūkākī upstairs at the Rotorua District Council building, 1997, New Zealand Herald.

1. Hei tiki, Te Papa. Photograph by Michael Hall.

2. Kahu huruhuru feather cloak, Canterbury Museum.

3. Papahou, Auckland War Memorial Museum.

4. The Auckland War Memorial Museum, Auckland War Memorial Museum. Photograph by Krzysztof Pfeiffer.

5. Exhibits at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, c. 1870s, Auckland War Memorial Museum.

6. Māori Court, 1960s, Auckland War Memorial Museum.

7. Nga Taonga Hou o Aotearoa: New National Treasures, 1984, National Museum. Photograph by Warwick Wilson.

8. Nga Tukemata: Nga Taonga o Ngati Kahungunu, 1986, Hawke’s Bay Museum and Art Gallery and Hawke’s Bay Cultural Trust.

9. Opening ceremony for Te Maori, 1986, National Museum.

10. Te Maori exhibition, 1986, National Museum. Photograph by Ken Downie.

11. Hei matau from the Te Maori catalogue, 1984. Photograph by Athol McCredie.

12. Māui Pōmare at the opening of Te Maori, 1986, National Museum. Photograph by Warwick Wilson.

13. Hirini Moko Mead during the Te Maori exhibition, 1986, National Museum. Photograph by Warwick Wilson.

14. Aunty Marj at an AGMANZ conference, 1988. Photograph by Alan Marchant.

15. Rhonda Paku at the National Museum, late 1980s. Photograph by Alan Marchant.

16. National Museum education team, 1991. Photograph by Alan Marchant.

17. Opening ceremony for Te Ao Marama: Seven Maori Artists, Sarjeant Gallery, 1985, Te Ara.

18. Te Hau ki Tūranga being carried to Te Papa, 1997, Alexander Turnbull Library (EP/1996/3124/24).

19. National Services Te Paerangi workshop, 2004. Photograph by Kate Whitley.

20. Māori collection managers at Te Papa, 2011. Photograph by Norman Heke.

21. Chanel Clarke at Auckland War Memorial Museum, 2008, Base Two. Photograph by Neil Pardington.

22. Lisa Ward at Te Papa, 2010. Photograph by Norman Heke.

23. Mātauranga Māori team at Te Papa, 2011. Photograph by Norman Heke.

24. Lisa Ward, Dion Peita and weaver Matekino Lawless at Te Papa, 2007. Photograph by Norman Heke.

25. Ngāi Tahu elders on the marae at Te Papa, 2009. Photograph by Kate Whitley.

26. The iwi exhibition Mō Tātou, Te Papa, 2006. Photograph by Michael Hall.

27. Meeting of Māori curators and other staff at Te Papa, 2009. Photograph by Norman Heke.

28. Repatriation ceremony on the marae, Te Papa, 2009. Photograph by Norman Heke.

29. The Canterbury Museum, 2008. Photograph by Conal McCarthy.

30. The Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna o Waiwhetu, 2008. Photograph by Conal McCarthy.

31. Te Rarawa festival, Northland, 2003, Nicola Railton.

32. Simon Lardelli at the Tairāwhiti Museum, Tairāwhiti Museum.

33. Te Takapou Whāriki at Puke Ariki, 2003, Puke Ariki.

34. Digital Marae 2001, Lisa Reihana, colour photographs on aluminium, vintage children’s leather shoes and ‘let there be light’ DVD. Courtesy of Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, purchased 2002.

35. Kaitiaki Māori at the Whanganui Regional Museum, Whanganui Regional Museum and Tapa whānau.

36. National Services Te Paerangi conservation workshop at Whakaoriori marae, 2009.

37. Reinterment of kōiwi at the Wairau Bar, 2009, Marlborough Express.

38. Museums Aotearoa Conference at Whāngārā marae, 2009.

39. Interior of Te Puia, 2006, Craig Turvey.

Boxes

1. International policy and legislation on indigenous people. Source: International Council of Museums 2006.

2. Fleras and Spoonley’s model of bicultural commitment. Source: Fleras and Spoonley 1999.

3. The bicultural continuum. Source: Durie 1998b.

4. Stages of the bicultural journey. Source: Eagle 2000.

5. The New Zealand museum sector. Source: ‘Sector Survey’ 2009.

6. Meanings of ‘practice’. Source: OED online 2010.

7. Changes as a result of Te Maori.

8. The Treaty of Waitangi. Source: O’Regan 1997b.

9. Bicultural initiatives in the 1980s.

10. Recommendations of the O’Regan Report 1997. Source: O’Regan 1997a.

11. Te Papa’s mission 1992. Source: Section 4 of the Museum of New Zealand Act 1992.

12. Te Papa’s concept 1989. Source: Annual Report of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 2008/9.

13. Te Papa’s corporate principles 2005. Source: Annual Report of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 2005/6.

14. Te Papa’s bicultural policy 2002. Source: ‘Kete: Intranet Resources for Understanding Biculturalism at Te Papa’.

15. Te Papa’s Mana Taonga policy 2005. Source: ‘Kete: Intranet Resources for Understanding Biculturalism at Te Papa’.

16. Te Papa’s Mātauranga Māori policy 2004. Source: ‘Mātauranga Māori Strategy: He Ara Whainga’ 2004.

17. Mātauranga Māori team Te Papa. Source: Job description for Curator Māori Te Papa 2009.

18. Changes in collection care and management at Te Papa. Source: ‘Kete: Intranet Resources for Understanding Biculturalism at Te Papa’.

19. Tikanga Taonga. Source: ‘Kete: Intranet Resources for Understanding Biculturalism at Te Papa’.

20. Karakia for those entering the wahi tapu. Source: Kukupa Tirikatene.

21. Iwi exhibitions at Te Papa. Source: Te Papa website 2010.

22. Iwi Relationship Strategy. Source: Annual Report of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 2005/6.

23. Diagram of Te Rangimārie model. Source: ‘Te Rangimārie Document’ 2002.

24. Guiding principles for the Trust Board’s relationship with the Taumata-a-Iwi. Source: Tumahai 2002.

25. Tairāwhiti Museum Vision and Mission. Source: Tairāwhiti Museum website 2009.

26. ‘Te Korowai Atawhai’ section 2.1: Defining Taonga Māori. Source: ‘Te Korowai Atawhai’ 2006.

27. ‘Te Korowai Atawhai’ section 1.3: Custodians – Ngā Kaitiaki Policy. Source: ‘Te Korowai Atawhai’ 2006.

28. ‘Te Korowai Atawhai’ section 1.4: Access Policy. Source: ‘Te Korowai Atawhai’ 2006.

29. Summary of Māori visitor attendance at New Zealand museums.

30. Diagram of Whanganui Regional Museum governance. Source: ‘Wānanga’ 2000.

31. Whanganui Regional Museum strategic goals: Source: ‘Te Pou Ārahi’ 2002.

32. Kaupapa Māori iwi development outcomes 2004–5. Source: Tātai Kōrero.

33. Whāngārā Cultural Centre objectives. Source: Johnstone 2008.

34. Biculturalism, binationalism and multiculturalism. Source: Fleras and Spoonley 1999.

A note on the Māori language

Many Māori words are in common usage in New Zealand English. Where they are not translated in the text, the reader is referred to the glossary. Translations are the author’s own, except where otherwise stated. Māori texts have been edited to conform to modern conventions, including the addition of macrons, except in the appendix where the Treaty of Waitangi has been left in its original form.

Macrons indicate a double vowel in te reo Māori (the Māori language). Māori words in book and exhibition titles and in names of organisations have been left in their original form. If they did not have a macron historically, macrons have not been added.

‘He taonga te wareware’

He mihi

‘He whare tū ki roto i te pā tūwatawata, inā te tohu o te rangatira.’

Kaati, e hika, Konere, tēnā koe. Nāu ra ēnei kōrero i tuhi hei whakaaroaro mā te katoa, huri noa i te ao. Ae, titiro mai e te iwi whānui tonu: anei a Aotearoa me āna nei kōrero mei kore pea he painga o roto whāngai atu. E ora ai ngā iwi taketake o te ao, e huri pai mai ngā mana whakahaere i te kaupapa toko i ngā tikanga ā iwi. Kaati, anei ētahi kupu mā te tangata koi hei ātawhiriwhiri, he tapuwae nō rātau mā.

Ngā mihi hoki ki ngā kaiwhakautu i o pātai, tū ki roto i āu ngā mahi rangahau. Tēnā koutou kei ngā kaimahi, kei ngā kaitiaki e whakatinana nei i ēnei kaupapa taukite, ngā kōrero e mārama mai ai ngā hikoinga o nehe, o nāianei, tēnā pea mo te wā ka tū mai.

Tēnā tātau e te iwi; tātau katoa ahakoa nō whea, huri noa te ao, tēnā tātau e rapu nei i ngā ara tōtika e mau ai te mana, te tau, te mīharo ō tātau taonga – tōna kite, tōna hanga, tōna whakaatu, āna kōrero, te tuku, te tauawhi, te whakahau rangatira. Te tūmanako ka puritia ēnei tūāhuatanga. Anei ētahi tuhituhi whakaohooho i te ngākau pūmahara, i te ringa kakama, i te kaitiaki, he ahakoa nō whea mai. Kei te tautoko ake i ngā whakaaro kia anga nui ake tātau ki tō tātau tino rangatiratanga e puawai ai ēnei kaupapa i a tātau anō – tā te ngākau Māori, ta te ringaringa Māori anō hoki.

Mauriora ki te iwi.

Haere e te pukapuka, haere me te manawaroa.

It is with great pleasure that I write these few words in acknowledgement of this publication. In thanking the author for his scholarly discourse, I am mindful of the global interest that these views invoke. I am grateful as a Māori for being able to read something of ‘our story’, something we share dearly and generously with other indigenous nations from a position of relative advantage, but nonetheless shared concerns.

May I also extend gratitude to those who have assisted Conal in this research-based publication. Thank you to our workers and guardians, for all that you accomplish on a daily basis, and in a way that honours past duty and stewardship, as well as provides exciting potential for the way ahead.

And to us all, wherever we may be, let us continue, with the assistance of the sort of ideas expressed herein, to revere the heritage of the taonga that has been given to us in our time. By a shared and collaborative effort we may assist one another to retain the genius, the creativity and the wonder of our treasures. I welcome the discourse around self-determination in regard to taonga Māori. Our awakened presence is, I believe, the most fruitful way forward for now: this, plus the opportunity to participate fully, with humility, in a way that enables deep consideration of the ideas presented in this book.

Life to the people.

Professor Piri Sciascia

Pro Vice-Chancellor (Māori)

Victoria University of Wellington

Aotearoa New Zealand

Preface

E tipu, e rea, i ngā rā o tōu ao

Ko tōu ringa ki te rākau a te Pākehā

Hei oranga mō tōu tinana

Ko tōu ngākau ki ngā taonga o ōu tūpuna Māori

Hei tikitiki mō tōu māhanga

Ko te wairua ki te Atua

Nāna nei ngā mea katoa

Grow and flourish during your days on this earth

Your hand grasping the material things of the Pākehā

[to sustain your body]

Your heart buoyed up by the treasures of your ancestors

As a diadem for your head

And your spirit with the God who made all things

Āpirana Ngata, Ngāti Porou

Translated by ‘Aunty Marj’ (Marjorie) Rau-Kupa, Ngāti Mutunga

(Rau-Kupa 1988, 22–3; ‘Ngata’s last message’ 1958; Mead and Grove 2001, 48)

Acknowledgements

Waiho mā te tangata anō e mihi, mā te whakamā e patu.

Leave it to others to praise, and for shame to strike you down.

Many people helped with this book in one way or another. My thanks to Claire Murdoch and her team at Te Papa Press for proposing the idea, offering advice and feedback at every step, supporting the book’s production and making the process such a pleasure. I offer heartfelt thanks to the many museum professionals, community leaders, academics and other people whose interviews form the basis of this research, and all those other people who shared memories, stories, images and information. The people who gave a direct input into the book deserve thanks as do those whose research, feedback, advice and commentary was of immeasurable benefit: especially Dr David Butts, Sean Mallon and Arapata Hakiwai. Thanks are due to my partner Bronwyn Labrum, who accompanied me on the long journey of completing this project – with patience, help and ready wit – while being busy herself on her own book.

I also thank several organisations for their assistance. I am indebted to the Research School of the Humanities at the Australian National University in Canberra, where I was able to complete the research as a Visiting Fellow in 2009. The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington provided a research grant that made my travel and interviews possible. Thanks to Emma Meyer for help with the bibliography and to Rosina Hickman, Ana Sciascia and Tanja Schubert-McArthur for transcribing the interviews. Thanks also to my colleagues in the School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies for help of various kinds, not least to Dr Lee Davidson in the Museum and Heritage Studies programme for covering my teaching while I was on research and study leave. I would like to thank the students on the programme, those future professionals in the museums of tomorrow, who are currently grappling with the issues presented in this book, and whose thoughts, questions and experiences were in many ways the sounding board for Museums and Māori.

The museums of New Zealand were willing participants in the research, and welcomed my investigation, even when my questions were probing, my visit came at a busy time, and the topic was challenging. I am grateful for the generous support of Michelle Hippolite, Kaihautū and then-acting CEO of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, for making it possible for me to conduct research within the institution by talking to staff, consulting policies and documents, and gaining access to archives. I am also grateful to Dr Vanda Vitali and Antoine Coffin of the Auckland War Memorial Museum for their readiness to take part in the research and for allowing me to undertake a case study of the institution. My heartfelt thanks to the directors of other museums around the country examined in the study: Anthony Wright at the Canterbury Museum, Jenny Harper at the Christchurch Art Gallery, Peter Millward at the Nelson Provincial Museum, Wallis Barnicoat at the Whanganui Regional Museum, Greg McManus at the Rotorua Museum, Steven Fox at Te Manawa, Palmerston North, Douglas Lloyd Jenkins at the Hawke’s Bay Museum and Art Gallery, Napier, David Butts at Tairāwhiti Museum, Gisborne and Kate Vusoniwailala at the Waikato Museum, Hamilton.

A personal note of thanks goes to those Māori people, many of whom have now passed on, who helped me along my personal journey – the long and unfinished process of educating a nosey Pākehā about things Māori. To Ani Wātene, Godfrey Pōhatu, Hinemoa Hilliard, Puti Mackie, Peter Adds, Aunty Bessie (Irihāpeti Walters), Aunty Betty Rewi, Uncle Fisher (Te Ikanui Kapa), Hema Temara, Rawiri Hindle, Haniko Te Kurapa and Awhina Tamarapa: ka nui ngā mihi ki a koutou katoa.

Introduction:

Museums and indigenous people

While working at the National Museum in Wellington in the 1980s, I learned a lesson I have never forgotten. There was a social function and I was carrying a tray of food. The route to my destination passed through the Māori Hall, the cavernous space in the centre of the building that contained the Māori taonga, or treasures. These carved and woven artifacts are revered for their spiritual nature. As I entered the door to the hall, I stopped suddenly. I recalled something about food but couldn’t remember it exactly and didn’t know what to do.

I was, I suppose, a typical Pākehā, a New Zealand European, in a predicament not uncommon for many museum professionals in a Māori situation. I did not want to offend. I wanted to do the right thing but was not sure what that was. I was brought up in the South Island without much contact with Māori people, until I went to university in Christchurch and then taught in a high school in the suburb of Porirua outside Wellington. Someone had told me that kai, or food, and taonga shouldn’t go together, but I had to get the kai to the function, and I couldn’t see any other way than through the hall.

I stood there awkwardly, looking around for help. One of the security guards, Peter Rewi, walked along. A gruff man then in his sixties, Peter and his wife Betty had been a forceful Māori presence among the Māori exhibits for several years. I spluttered out my dilemma – what should I do? Peter looked at me gravely, and then said quietly but firmly: ‘Just do it with respect.’ He walked off, leaving me to get on with it. No big deal, no mucking around. Slightly chastened yet relieved, I covered the food, and walked quickly through the hall to my destination.

This is a simple story but what struck me at the time and has stayed in my memory ever since was the pragmatic solution to a difficult predicament. What I learned from this incident was a feeling for doing the right thing according to the situation, and not to over-analyse it. This book seeks to do the same thing: to provide practitioners from differing backgrounds with a framework to think critically about their practice in relation to indigenous peoples. All over the world, cultural organisations are having to take account of native and tribal peoples in what they do. Museums and Māori is intended to empower museum professionals to work in a way that is informed by Māori perspectives. It is also a piece of research in its own right for students who are learning about the industry they want to work in, and for scholars who are interested in the relationship between museums and indigenous people everywhere, but particularly in former settler colonies.

Scenarios such as the following occur every day in New Zealand museums:

You are a collection manager and you have Māori objects in your storeroom. How do you care for and manage them in accordance with Māori values?

You are a candidate for a museum job in a region where there is a large Māori population and significant Māori involvement in the museum’s activities. How do you prepare for the interview and what questions do you expect to be asked?

You are a curator developing an exhibition on a Māori topic. How do you engage with the local Māori community to secure their input?

How do professionals today deal with indigenous objects in museums on a day-today basis? How do they engage on a practical level with indigenous communities? There is intense international interest in issues such as representation, cultural property and the politics of display, but little work on museums and source communities is thoroughly grounded in current museum practice or includes the voices of indigenous people.

Regardless of their geographical settings, museums are at the centre of arguments about culture, identity, history, restitution and social inclusion. Debates about the ownership, collection and display of material culture are an unavoidable reality in countries with multicultural populations affected by colonisation, migration or conflict. Working in an environment that operates according to different cultural norms is complex, and while it may seem a simple solution to follow rules and protocols, there are underlying principles that can guide professionals in devising, modifying or maintaining museum practices in ways that validate indigenous perspectives on cultural heritage and museums. Museums and Māori addresses these generic problems through interviews with and documentation and observation of the work of indigenous professionals and community representatives who were and are involved with the transformation of New Zealand museum practice in the last three decades.

As New Zealand society went through a process of internal ‘decolonisation’ in the 1980s, once monocultural museums were transformed into avowedly ‘bicultural’ institutions. The famous Te Maori exhibition played an important role in this transformation. In recent years, further changes have occurred due to external pressures from tribal development, and internally from the ‘new museology’. Now indigenous professionals along with their colleagues are moving from ‘biculturalism’ to ‘binationalism’, exploring ways in which Māori as a ‘nation within’ can manage their own heritage either inside or outside the walls of museums.

Figure 1: New Zealand museums hold rich collections of Māori material culture, including objects in wood, bone, stone and fibre. These hei tiki, human figures carved in pounamu or greenstone, are worn as pendants.

When referring to the changes that museums make in order to incorporate Māori values and practices, many people use the term ‘biculturalism’. At its most simple level it means two cultures or ways of doing things within a museum. Despite problems with the concept of biculturalism, I employ the term because it is what most practitioners use on a regular basis. This study is a critical analysis of a biculturalism whose time has passed but which nevertheless retains useful elements. Museums and Māori is an historical assessment of biculturalism’s legacy in the museum context, and an assessment of what might come next as the relationship between museums and Māori moves into a new phase.

International context: Museums and source communities

The relationship between indigenous people and museums is part of a worldwide debate that has been the subject of much discussion, research and writing in the last 30 years. These debates are briefly surveyed here to provide a context for local issues and to point out how a detailed case study investigating the complexities of museum practice can actually contribute to the international literature. Museums in plural democracies, and particularly in former settler colonies, have a lot to learn from New Zealand.

Museums and Māori takes as its focus internal museum practices, especially management, collections and display – the things that actually drive innovation on the ground. Simply put, radical changes in governance, exhibition development and collection management in New Zealand museums did not come out of the blue, but as a particular response to a transnational phenomenon – namely a debate about the politics of collecting and exhibiting the culture of colonised peoples.

From the 1980s, scholars in anthropology and cultural studies carried out postcolonial critiques of the ways museums collected and represented the material culture of the ‘Other’.¹ The issues were familiar then to many New Zealanders because the successful Te Maori exhibition on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art was caught up in a debate raging in the New York art world about the infamous exhibition ‘Primitivism’ in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern held at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). While downtown at MOMA ‘primitive’ art was hung alongside modern masters like Picasso to suggest ‘affinities’ between the tribal and modern, on the other side of Central Park, Pacific material was displayed in the American Museum of Natural History as ‘art/artifacts’ in the Margaret Mead Hall of Pacific Peoples. Were these objects ‘art’ and should they be displayed in museums frozen in an ethnographic past or ‘liberated’ in art galleries by being placed on par with Western fine art? Whether displayed as art or artifacts, anthropologist James Clifford was critical of both art museums and anthropology museums for overlooking the ongoing existence of tribal cultures ‘in the name either of constituting authentic, traditional worlds or of appreciating their products in the timeless category of art’.²

Meanwhile, back at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, critics were divided about the reclassification of wood carving as art in Te Maori. A lot of New Zealanders were flattered by the attention from American media, but others were not so sure. Canadian museum director Dr Michael Ames described the exhibition as an example of ‘romantic primitivism’ due to the fact that it did not pay attention to the ‘continuing existence of Maori people’.³ The remarkable thing about the Te Maori exhibition, which had the input of Māori leaders like Kara Puketapu, scholars such as Dr Hirini Moko Mead, and extensive community participation in opening ceremonies, was that the experience went far beyond the limited critical analysis of the politics of display to result in real, concrete changes in New Zealand museum practice in terms of collaboration, staffing and decision making.

The critique of museums as instruments of colonial power and nation building has obscured a long history of indigenous adaptation and exchange while inhibiting museum professionals’ engagement with contemporary indigenous societies because of the dangers of theoretically incorrect ‘isms’, including essentialism and nationalism. Recent scholarship on the Pacific moves beyond the politics of identity and representation, providing more useful models for former settler colonies to make sense of their multiple and contested pasts, particularly through an awareness of the productive interaction of indigenous people with Western cultural practices.⁴

Figure 2: This kahu huruhuru, feather cloak, comes from the collection of the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch. New Zealand museums sometimes loan cloaks for use in important ceremonies and events.

Museum history in New Zealand is characterised not just by its implication in the colonial project and the resulting alienation of indigenous land and culture, but also by a paradoxical resistance to and collaboration with this process. Likewise, academics Ruth B. Phillips in Canada and Howard Morphy in Australia recognise how indigenous peoples engage with European institutions and use them to their own ends.⁵ Fred Myers has written persuasively about the process of ‘culture making’ with reference to the Aboriginal acrylic painting that has moved from the margins to the centre of the Australian art world, an analysis that avoids the radical scepticism of art critics who undervalue indigenous creativity and agency.⁶

In contrast to the separation of settler and native in many studies, James Clifford’s idea of museums as ‘contact zones’ is useful in taking account of the constant interchange of Māori with European heritage organisations both in the past and today. Clifford’s concept of contact zones, as adapted from Mary Louis Pratt is:

… the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, racial inequality and intractable conflict.⁷

As opposed to the view that museums are simply powerful institutions of Western empire and native peoples merely passive victims, this analysis suggests the museum is a ‘space where different cultures and communities intersect, interact and are mutually influenced by the encounter’.⁸ Despite the inevitable conflict in such asymmetrical situations, Clifford shows how these relations can be productive, as seen in tribal museums in the United States and Canada, where ‘newly traditional’ cultures have been reinvented from museum resources.⁹ In post-settler states this mutual engagement is even more marked because indigenous peoples are not distant in time and space, ‘over there and back then’ as it were, but assertively present in the here and now.

Another important contribution to recent scholarship on contemporary relations between museums and native peoples is Laura Peers and Alison Brown’s concept of ‘source community’.¹⁰ They argue that it is important to acknowledge source/originating communities not only as the groups in the past from whom objects were collected but also their living descendants today who are often the audiences for exhibitions of these very same objects. Increasingly, the relationship between the museum and source communities has moved beyond consultation and collaboration to explore new ways of working that ask ‘for partnership rather than superficial involvement’, in which both parties share power. Rather than the traditional curatorial and managerial approach that maintains power within the authoritative institution and its disciplines, in this scenario the community are seen as ‘heritage stakeholders’ in a negotiated process that has mutual benefits for both.¹¹

Peers and Brown’s invaluable survey of new developments highlights an urgent need for further research:

More publications, which both reflect and explain the new ways of thinking about and working with collections, are needed by museums as a starting point to begin developing relationships with source communities … These relationships are the most important manifestation of the new curatorial praxis, but the process of establishing them has not received much attention in the critical literature.¹²

Museums and Māori responds directly to this call for new research to fill gaps in the literature. Most existing accounts of these topics are positive, tend to skip over problems and omissions, and do not deal frankly with failures that are perhaps even more instructive than successes. Despite a dearth of serious literature, there has been some new work that grapples with issues of knowledge, tribal museums and curatorial practice.¹³ The most common articles and books deal with cultural property, protests about particular exhibits and other controversial issues, but these outsider accounts are usually not grounded in current museum practice. Reforms within the museum sectors of Australia and Canada have been formalised in important policies, but often these well-meaning statements are not accompanied by meaningful change at institutional level (see Box 1).¹⁴ There is a substantial amount of unpublished ‘grey’ literature in the form of institutional documents and policies that are confidential or not widely disseminated. Peers and Brown point out that relations between museums and source communities have changed most dramatically in countries ‘where indigenous populations now live among settler-founded, modern nation-states’. This includes Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.¹⁵ It is important to recognise that many of these changes in practice are significant not simply in their own specific locations but in the broader context of museums themselves. Peers and Brown note that the shift to recognising source communities results in a ‘radical re-envisioning of the nature of museums’.¹⁶ Anthropologist Christina Kreps goes further and argues that:

Liberating culture is not only about giving back or restoring a people’s right to or control over the management of cultural heritage. It is also about liberating our thinking from the Eurocentric view of what constitutes a museum, artifact and museological practice so that we might better recognise alternative forms. The liberation of culture allows for emergence of a new museological discourse in which points of reference are no longer solely determined and defined by the west. This ‘new inclusiveness’ acknowledges that those who have been marginalised as ‘the others’ are central to the creation of new museological paradigms.¹⁷

Box 1: International policy and legislation on indigenous people

United States: Native Graves Protection and Repatriation Act 1990

Canada: Joint Task Force Report on Museums and First Peoples 1992

Aotearoa New Zealand: Mataatua Declaration 1993 [see Appendix]

Australia: Previous Possessions, New Obligations 1993, Continuous Cultures, Ongoing Responsibilities 2005

United Nations: The UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People 2004

Source: International Council of Museums.

National context: New Zealand and/or Aotearoa?

Museums need to be placed in both national and international contexts. New Zealand’s history is short but dramatic, especially that of the last 150 years, which echoes major world developments. The indigenous Māori people had been living in Aotearoa New Zealand for perhaps a thousand years when Europeans began making regular contact in the late eighteenth century. New Zealand became a British colony with the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between the Crown and Māori chiefs in 1840. This founding document importantly recognised Māori rights and guaranteed a measure of self-government (see Appendix). After land wars and gold rushes in the 1860s and 1870s, the predominantly English and Scottish settler society expanded rapidly, and by the early twentieth century New Zealand had become an affluent agricultural producer for the ‘Home’ market – Britain. New Zealanders saw themselves as the ‘better Britons of the South Pacific’. An independent national identity did not emerge until the 1960s and 1970s when the UK joined the European Economic Community and thus denied New Zealand a guaranteed market. Since then, New Zealanders have gone through a process of external disconnection from Britain and an opening up to the world, which occurred at the same time as a turbulent internal crisis of identity brought about by economic change, new constituencies, migration and other social forces – or what historian James Belich calls a ‘domestic process of decolonisation’.¹⁸

Māori people and culture, and the Māori experience within New Zealand history, have been described at length by many scholars.¹⁹ There is no denying the pain, loss and destruction of the colonial period, which had a devastating impact on land, language and culture, so it is little wonder that academic Dr Ranginui Walker’s history of Māori New Zealand is titled Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou: Struggle Without End. Nevertheless, the story is neither one way nor one-sided. The literature on museums has sometimes overstated the impact of colonisation while understating the Māori response. James Belich warns us not to overlook the ‘great survival story’ of ‘Māori resistance to, and cooperation with, British colonisation’.²⁰ The surprising history of Māori interaction with museums and exhibitions, which has been brought to light in recent scholarship, suggests that just as Māori were remarkably successful in mounting a spirited resistance to assimilation and maintaining a degree of autonomy in colonial New Zealand, so a small group of Māori politicians, artists and academics ensured that the majority culture’s display of the native culture was not uncontested.²¹ Māori displays in museums may have been expressions of European power, but they were at the same time the products of Māori agency.

The ‘Māori Renaissance’ saw a marginalised ethnic minority moved from the wings to the centre stage of national life. This recent and eventful period of New Zealand history, when important gains from the 1980s went some way towards the ultimate goal of self-determination, forms the setting for the events described in this book. Biculturalism emerged at a particular moment in New Zealand society when a variety of factors converged in an unprecedented period of social change: a growing Māori population shifting to the cities, increasingly strident Māori politics, progressive legislation such as the Treaty of Waitangi Act of 1975 and a liberal fourth Labour government.²²

It is only possible to sketch the briefest historical context here, so readers are referred to the general histories of New Zealand in the bibliography.²³ What should be remembered is that New Zealand history and society were at once typical of other colonies of the British Empire and yet different, with peculiar