Move to prevent auction of head

Press, 15 June 1983, Page 1

Move to prevent auction of head

PA Wellington The Government will try to halt the sale by auction in London later this month of the preserved head of a Ngati Porou chief, says the Secretary for Maori Affairs, Mr Kara Puketapu. The head, to be auctioned at Sotheby’s, is owned by an English peer, Lord Tavistock. Mr Puketapu said he would ask the New Zealand High Commissioner in London, Mr W. L. Young, to try to stop the sale. The head should not be treated as an artefact, he said. “It is most distasteful,” he said. “We have people living today who see this as an ancestor.” Mr Puketapu wants the

head, which is expected to fetch about $13,000, returned to New Zealand. After a long legal battle lasting five years, New Zealand unsuccessfully tried to prevent the sale of Maori pataka by auction by Sotheby’s, asserting that under New Zealand law the artefacts were taken from New Zealand illegally. The pataka were offered for auction by a Bolivian millionaire, Mr George Ortiz, to raise ransom money for a. daughter who had been kidnapped. The case went to the House of Lords which ruled in May of this year that it had no power to - stop the sale because New Zealand law could not be applied in Britain.