Maori Place Names - 100

North of New Plymouth

Taranaki

2010 Ajr

Portrait - 45

Tamaki Maori Village

Rotorua

May 2010 Ajr

From the Kete Files

Two Kete

Waiting for a New Home

Village Life Re-Enacted

Tamaki Maori Village near Rotorua is an excellent place to see how a traditional Maori village may have looked hundreds of years ago. The night tour takes you south of the city and into the brooding darkness of a small forested site, where the Tamaki brothers have re-created a traditional village, complete with contemporary lighting and local Maori dressed as they would have been in the old days. The local people reenact the various traditional tribal roles including the arts of tattoo, weaving, song and dance and story telling.I was amused by the number of international tourists on the night I visited, who thought this was a real village and that the 'actors' always dressed this way.

Maori Place Names - 99

Ratana

Near Whanganui, North Island

2010 Ajr

From the Kete Files

When Traditional Kete

Meet Photographic Technology

Exploring Maori Rock Art

I travelled down to Timaru and South Canterbury in February, to visit the new Te Ana Ngai Tahu Rock Art Centre. I've written about the centre itself previously (click on Te Ana Rock Art Centre in the label line below), so this time I'm focussing on one of the many South Canterbury rock art sites, that you can now tour through the Rock Art Centre.

This is a well known site on Craigmore Station at Maungati - that can only be accessed via the Te Ana tours.

The landscape is impressive - rolling green hills and craggy limestone outcrops as far as the eye can see.

We were taken to the location by Ngai Tahu Rock Art Trust curator, Amanda Symon, who spoke of the enigmas of rock art discovered so far, in over 500 South Island locations - 95% of them on private land. She led us down steep paths and into a large overhang, where rock drawings completed hundreds of years ago are still clearly visible.

On this particular site, some of the ancient drawings were 'enhanced' during the 1940s by well known artist, Theo Schoon. Schoon, born in Java to Dutch parents, emigrated to New Zealand with his family in 1939. During the late 1940s he began observing and cataloguing many of the South Island rock art sites and, in some cases, he drew over them to enhance them. Wherever he did this, he also left his signature. On Craigmore, that signature (above), is tucked around the corner from the main cavern - as hidden as the drawings themselves would once have been.

As well known as some of these sites now are, visiting them is still a special experience. Sitting there, in the deep and all-pervasive silence, it's hard not to wonder about the lives and times of the original Maori travellers who created these enigmatic marks and symbols on the limestone cave walls.

If you're in Timaru, the Te Ana Rock Art Centre is definitely worth visiting - and, if you have the time, take one of the tours for a first-hand look at these precious taonga.

http://www.teana.co.nz/

Conserving Taonga For the Future

Back in February, several Awarua runanga members gathered at Te Rau Aroha Marae at Bluff to attend a two-day workshop on taonga and korowai conservation, run by Wellington-based freelance conservator, Rangi Te Kanawa (Ngati Maniapoto), who is on leave from her role as Textile Conservator at the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa

Stories of treasured taonga being stored in unlikely and often very damaging places are not new to Rangi Te Kanawa. She’s spent twelve years visiting iwi all around New Zealand in the hope of saving as many taonga as she can.
“Whanau usually keep their taonga close because they know they’re precious but I’ve heard of them being folded and tucked away in the back of cupboards or under beds. I remember one case of a Rarotongan cape – now in Te Papa’s Pacific Gallery under push button lighting – coming to me for restoration. It had been folded and folded and stored in a Griffin’s biscuit box but the rats had gotten into it.”

Gavin Reedy (Ngati Porou), is Te Papa’s National Services Te Paerangi Iwi Development Officer, who coordinates workshops like these all around New Zealand and often travels with Rangi. He too, has seen taonga emerge from unexpected places.

“This workshop is all about helping iwi take care of taonga that are held in homes, on marae, stuffed in boxes, or in attics. One lady up north brought in a beautiful kahu kiwi stuffed in a rubbish bag. Rangi has seen a 300 year-old cloak in the Far North but you only see those sorts of things if the iwi and whanau trust you. That’s why we see these workshops as a cornerstone, a beginning. It’s about building relationships with iwi, to see where they’re at in relationship to their heritage and culture and, depending on their needs, we then run workshops in either textile conservation, digital photography (so iwi can record and preserve their marae photos in case of fire), building a taonga database, or paper conservation to protect things like whakapapa papers, kaumatua diaries and Maori Battalion souvenirs,” he says.

“The important thing about all the workshops is that we teach our people to teach others. We can’t go to every marae, so we tell them how to get the funding, where to buy materials and then we visit them with the best tutors we can find to teach them the skills they need to pass on.”

Rangi Te Kanawa says iwi react to the workshops with intense interest. They share their experiences; they talk of taonga and whakapapa; and they leave with a renewed sense of pride.

“It’s lovely to go onto marae and have people bring in their taonga – which we often transform from stressed, tired or damaged treasures into a piece that looks like new. I’ve seen tears fall when cloaks have been cleaned and repaired, and put into their new boxes. Most whanau truly care about their taonga but they don’t always know how to physically care for them. My job is to get the word out there – roll, don’t fold and don’t use handles to hang garments; and store your cloaks, piupiu, kete and whāiki in acid-free boxes.

“There are those who want to have their treasures on display, not shut away in boxes; but the majority, once they see the cushioning, safe environment of the boxes, accept that this is the best way to give their treasures a much longer life – sometimes fifty to a hundred years longer life. People can always put photographs of the items on the outside of the box, or have a replica made that they can use and display, knowing the original will last for future generations to enjoy.”

Rangi comes from a long line of traditional Maori weavers. Her mother was Diggeress Rangituatahi Te Kanawa (1920-2009) and her grandmother was Dame Rangimārie Hetet (1892-1995) – both of whom dedicated their lives to the promotion and preservation of traditional Maori weaving arts. Diggeress Te Kanawa was also one of the co-founders of the Aotearoa Moananui-a-Kiwa Weavers Association in 1983, which was the driving force behind Rangi’s own conservator’s training.

“It all happened after the Te Maori exhibition in the early 1980s. There was a growing awareness then, of the need for Maori to be involved in the preservation and conservation of taonga, and Aotearoa Moananui-a-Kiwa were approached to find someone to train. They found me,” says Rangi.

“I was at home in Oparure, near Te Kuiti and in my early 30s at the time and when my mother got the call, she nominated me. I grew up surrounded by weavers and I also weave, so I took up the challenge.”

After studying conservation at Canberra College of Advanced Education in Australia, Rangi’s passion for conservation was ignited. She speaks of “a tremendous feeling of accomplishment” that comes with every successful project or workshop.

“Conservation makes for fabulous before and after treatments but more than that, you know you have helped arrest the degradation of a treasure, that you’ve upheld the integrity of the taonga and its wairua, its history, its stories. There’s a very real sense of pleasure of giving and iwi receiving, of them grasping the idea that if they roll a garment, it won’t be damaged by fold lines.

“That’s like an awakening and when they rest their cloak into a box they’ve made themselves, there’s a feeling that the taonga has been given the special attention it commanded, that it’s become a part of them and an item of even greater value for that. It gives them peace of mind knowing that the archival box they’ve created has provided the best storage that can be had and that their taonga can now safely be handed down through the generations. The workshops also bring communities together and the kaupapa is great. I love it.”

From the Kete Files

Kete of Many Colours

Portrait - 44

Ngai Tahu Hui-a-Tau

Karitane

November 2010, Ajr

From the Kete Files

A Break from Tradition

Many Coloured Kete

Visiting Palmerston North

Te Hoto Manawa o Rangitane o Manawatu

July 2010 Ajr

Traditional Kai - Karengo

Karengo is a member of the Porphyra species of edible seaweeds and is eaten throughout the world. It is closely related to Japanese nori and Welsh laver and is highly prized by South Island Māori. It is listed as a Ngāi Tahu taonga in the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998 and during World War II, dried karengo was sent to the Māori Battalion in the Middle East and soldiers chewed it while they were on the march.

 I visited Onuku marae, near Akaroa recently, where karengo is a seasonal delicacy.

Every spring, between July and september, the locals on the kaik, go down to the rocky shore and gather the brown seasweek off the rocks. A bulk harvest of karengo was traditionally dried in the sun. But if they want to eat it the same day, they pan dry it. To cook it hinu (mutton fat) or butter, is added and it's cooked slowly,  with small amounts of water added over a two hour period. “Karengo is not easy to cook. It’s tough and it takes a long time to make it soft but it’s worth the effort,” the locals say.

The day I visited, they added cream to the cooked karengo mixture for extra richness and flavour and this is placed in the tiny filo cases and set aside.

Eel, or tuna, was also on the menu, along with titi (mutton bird), and both were given a modern twist in sushi.

Many of the Onuku whanai have been going to nearby Te Roto o Wairewa between March and May since hthey were young and they're  familiar with all the old ways of tuna gathering.

“We hook them out of the canals into the pararu and on a good night we’ll get around 200. They’re gutted, washed in the sea and then hung by flax threaded through their gills. With their tails cut off they bleed out; then they’re deboned, salted and dried on hooks in the whata above the beach by the marae. These days the eels are then frozen or smoked and stored ready for use,” they say.

From the Kete Files

Colourful Kete

On Display

Portrait - 43

At the Opening

Rapaki Marae

Lyttelton Harbour

Nov. 2010. Ajr

Visiting Murihiku

A few weeks ago, I flew down to Invercargill to interview one of the kaumatua at Murihiku Marae.

It was a perfect day and the marae looked a picture, perched on its rise, overlooking the surrounding countryside on the outskirts of Invercargill city.

For a long time, there was no marae here, but in 1983, local Maori were delighted to open their new Whare Kai, Hine o te Iwi. A few years later, in 1990, they opened their new Wharenui, Te Rakitauneke, which features beautiful carvings inside and out.

The marae sits on ten acres of land.

From the Kete Files

Kete = Basket

The House That Came Home

Every so often I come upon a story so wonderful, it gives me goose bumps. That's what I felt when I discovered a small news clipping about the return of the historic Mataatua Wharenui to the Ngati Awa people of the Whakatane area in New Zealand's North Island..

This is a Maori wharenui (meeting house) with a fascinating history. When it opened in 1875, it measured 79 feet (24 metres) in length, 41 feet (12.5 metres) in width and 24 feet (7.5 metres) high, which would have made it a colossal wharenui, even by today's standards. It was and still is, the only wharenui in existence with two sets of twins depicted in the two carved, upright supports (amo) on the front gable of the house.

In 1879 however, the wharenui was seized by Europeans for a Bristish Empire exhibition in Sydney. It was dismantled and sent across the Tasman on the steamship,  SS Staffa, where it was rebuilt inside-out (top image), exposing the precious carvings of iwi tupuna to the elements. Incidentally, the steamship it travelled on was of smaller dimension than the house itself and could have fitted inside the fully erect Mataatua.

From Sydney, the house travelled on to London in 1883. King George V and Queen Mary (second and thrid image from top) visited the wharenui during the 1924 British Empire Exhibition; and it was finally returned to New Zealand in 1925 - to the Otago Museum in Dunedin - but not before it had been 'repaired' by Auckland (European) carver, T Chappe Hall, who took it upon himself to add a sequence of carvings depicting Phar Lap's winning of the 1930 Melbourne Cup. The wharenui then spent 70 years in Otago Museum.

The 1996 Waitangi Tribunal Special Deed of Settlement finally saw Mataatua returned to the Ngati Awa people and over the last 15 years, a dedicated team of artists, originally led by the late Ngati Awa Master Carver, Te Hau O Te Rangi Tutua,  has been restoring it to its original magnificence.

And on September 17th, 2011, 130 years after it first left new Zealand shores, Ngati Awa and the Mataatua confederation of tribers will celebrate its return and reopen 'the house that came home.' It will stand once again as the icon of a united, strong and resilient Ngati Awa, who have waited a long time to share their wharenui with the pride it deserves.

Three above images - restored wharenui carvings

The September reopening of Mataatua Wharenui with provide a rare opportunity to see a contemporary application of ancient Maori traditions.  The rarely witnessed ceremony - known as Kawanga Whare, or Te Tai I Te Kawa - begins at dawn, before the rising of the sun and was traditionally undertaken to lift the tapu (sacredness, spiritual restriction), of a house so that it could be used socially in comfort and confidence. It is a long process that follows strict traditional protocols and customs.

I was lucky enough last year, to experience this traditional dawn ritual at the opening of the new Ngai Tahu wharenui at Rapaki Marae in Governor's Bay, near Christchurch.

The future for Mataatua looks bright.

Te Runanga o Ngati Awa have worked closely with a number of design and architectural partners to create a new tourism venture based around the Mataatua experience. The latest interactive digital technology has been employed to help tell the traditions and histories of Ngati Awa, beginning with the epic voyage of the Mataatua Waka, the ancestral canoe that brought the Eastern Bay of Plenty tribe's forebears to New Zealand more than a thousand years ago. Visitors will have the opportunity to visit the wharenui and to interact with the descendants of those early Ngati Awa chiefs.

http://www.mataatua.com/

http://www.ngatiawa.iwi.nz/