Remarks at ‘Heritage in Trust’ Seminar, 19951

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 30, 1 January 1997, Page 65

Janet Davidson

Remarks at ‘Heritage in Trust’ Seminar, 1995 1

These remarks by Janet Davidson, concept developer and curator of Pacific collections, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, were presented at a seminar on ‘Heritage in Trust: the future of European and Maori material in New Zealand public collections’. The seminar was held in connection with Treasures in Trust, an exhibition celebrating the 75 th anniversary of the opening of the Alexander Turnbull Library.

I was not going to bring a large paper, but a couple of days ago my colleague lan Wedde told me he’d wiped his large paper from his computer and I panicked and thought, if he’s written a large paper and he’s such a fluent speaker, I had better write a large paper as well. Some of what I have written has already been overtaken by events, which is inevitable in a discussion session such as this, so I will partly refer to my large paper and partly perhaps diverge from it to comment on some things that have already been said today.

As an archaeologist working on Maungarei in Auckland a number of years ago, 1 was asked by a group of New Zealand school children, some distinctly brown of face, ‘Gee, did the Maoris use to live here? When did they die out?’ This same question - ‘When did the Maoris die out?’ - has been asked in very recent times in some of our museums. I hope that we would be unlikely to hear it asked today in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa or in the

Auckland Museum, but it might still be asked in some of our institutions that hold significant Maori collections. It arises partly from the tendency to display Maori collections as if they belong to some unspecified time in the past and partly from the absence of Maori staff in those institutions. It’s a question that must not continue to be asked if Maori collections are to have a secure and vibrant future as part of our national heritage. It’s customary today to point to the Te Maori exhibition as the beginning of the great awakening. I knew I would hear it said, and it has been: ‘Out of the dusty basements and into the world of light’. Pakeha curators who had cared for Maori collections, sometimes with great dedication and aroha, if perhaps mistaken directions, sometimes find this attitude a bit trying. If our aroha for those collections is real, we can only be delighted that they are receiving greater appreciation and being reunited with those to whom they truly belong.

At the same time there is inevitably a feeling on our part, my part, of dispossession or loss as we see the taonga being reclaimed by their own people - and ourselves being marginalised. Maori can rightly say that our feeling of loss must be extremely trivial compared with the feeling of alienation of Maori from their taonga in museums, but it is nonetheless real. I am speaking today about museum collections because these are what I know best. To discuss the future of Maori collections in museums we do need to know something of their past and it is not a simple story. The reasons why taonga came to be in our museums are many and various. At one end of the scale was rape and pillage - at worst, theft and the desecration of burial caves; at second worst, taking advantage of people in weak positions to wrench from them things they did not want to part with. At the other end of the scale was honourable gift exchange on important occasions. Even here, however, the Maori who gave a significant item to someone like Sir Walter Buller to mark the conclusion of an important land deal probably did not expect Buller to take the item completely out of the Maori exchange system and give it to a museum.

In between these sorts of ways by which museums acquired collections there were a whole raft of commercial transactions, some of which, such as the trade in preserved heads, are abhorrent today. Yet I suspect that some nineteenth-century Maori would happily have sold heads directly to museums if they had had the means for doing so. Different again was a genuine wish of some Maori to ensure survival of taonga in an uncertain world by placing them somewhere for safe keeping. And I think now, particularly, of the tremendous resource of Maori language papers that Shane [Jones] has mentioned which are in this institution [the Alexander Turnbull Library], I think it is very hard for young Maori today to understand the circumstances in which their tupuna sometimes gave away things which in their view should never have been alienated. It is hard for me to understand, when I look at the photos of the house my

mother grew up in, why I am confronted with a refrain from her along the lines of‘that was a lovely vase; I’ve no idea what on earth happened to if. She doesn’t remember how it went out of the family and I can’t understand why it didn’t come down to me. It’s helpful to try and understand why people gave things away when they did, when you are thinking about how to try, if possible, to get them back. Understanding how things came to be where they are has been central to some of the discussions before the Waitangi Tribunal about taonga. For example, the Te Roroa claim about the waka tupapaku in the Museum of New Zealand. Let me go back to my original question about when did Maori die out. The future of Maori collections in our public institutions has to depend on the active involvement of Maori people with them. This should mean Maori staff within the institution as well as ready access for Maori outside the institution who, nonetheless, know of the existence of the collections, are involved with them, and feel empowered to feel responsible for them.

I haven’t written anything about what’s happening in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and it’s not really my place to talk about it; we should have Cliff Whiting or Joe Doherty to tell you about the changes in governance, the changes in staffing, which really mean that at long last the national institution, at least, is putting a bit of its money where its mouth should be, so to speak, to really do great things about building up a Maori department and Maori relationships outside the institution. All this means a complex partnership or series of partnerships.

For most public institutions this is only beginning. It’s appropriate that it should begin, in some cases at least, with truly major taonga, and in our case, at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, it means the sort of involvement that has been set up with Rongowhakaata over Te Hau ki Turanga, with Ngati Pikiao over Te Takinga, and, on a much smaller scale, with people over in Pirinoa about a reconstruction of an old house from their area. But it also means developing our database so that any individual whanau, hapu or individual person can readily discover what, if anything, we have in our dusty basements from their special part of the country, so that they can have access to it. New Zealand museums are currently in the phase where affirmative action is desperately needed. Maori staff must be found, trained, and empowered. So then what happens to Pakeha staff like myself who have had many years of experience with certain kinds of taonga but find no home in the new structure? I hope that we are in a passing phase which is necessary, but transient. I’ve slipped sideways; I am no longer involved with the Maori collections, although I am delighted when Maori staff ask my opinion about things. At the moment I’m responsible for the Pacific collections, but I can see the same thing happening to me again. I have three very talented people of New Zealand Pacific Island descent with me and they will soon be ready tp fly without me. When that happens, I would rather like to go back to what I know best and sneak back into

the Maori department, and I hope that in some years time that may be possible. Maori collections in museums, like the Pakeha collections, are there for several purposes. This is stating the obvious, I hope. We are trying to preserve something of the past and the present for future generations. We want these things to be there for future generations to enjoy, to marvel at, to be amused by, to draw strength and confidence from. And we expect that this can be achieved in several ways.

Firstly, of course, is exhibition. And Maori collections have always been proudly exhibited in our museums, often not by Maori and not for Maori, and that is something too that is changing and must change more. Some things will be exhibited more or less permanently - the great carved works can survive long-term exposure to light and the pressure of people. Others must be exhibited from time to time, things like textiles, which have to rest between periods of exhibition. There are many items in the basements or storerooms which are of particular or local significance and find a place in temporary or changing exhibitions. Some things may not be exhibited because they are too fragile, or too sacred, but they may be also kept as long as possible under the best possible conditions so that people with a particular interest or relationship can see them. What about all those other things? All those rows and rows of taonga in the basements. They have always been accessible to people in the know, as Shane mentioned. Museum professionals, academics, people who know how to get behind the double doors of the museum.

One of the significant changes in philosophy in recent years is towards much greater accessibility, and to me this is an amusing part of a long cycle. Originally museums displayed almost everything they had for the public. As the collections grew this became impossible. Trends developed towards displaying less and less and perhaps interpreting that less more and more. The idea of exhibiting rather little as well as possible remains. But now we also plan areas of ‘visible storage’ or ‘display storage’ to bring more things out again into the public view. And we also plan better ways of enabling more people to access the things that are not on display. I think where Maori collections are concerned, and also Pacific collections, we have to be very proactive about going out and inviting people in, involving them with their taonga, their heritage, and I was fascinated this morning that the Pakeha speakers all talked about their alienation from their heritage in museums too. And the need to reunite the people with the collections.

There have been enormous strides in this area as far as the Maori collections are concerned in my working life in museums, and nothing to do with me, I hasten to add, but just the change in emphasis and will. A notable example of this in another connection was the Turnbull Library’s involvement with the Fijian community over their Hocart exhibition, which put us to shame as far as involving Pacific communities with aspects of their heritage was concerned. The other major reason for having collections at all, in my view, apart from exhibiting them and letting people come in and see them, is for research. And I was

delighted to hear Jenny Harper speak so positively about scholarship, research and publication. But here, too, I think, we are on the threshold of a new era. With a few outstanding exceptions, research on Maori collections in our museums has largely been the prerogative of Pakeha in the past. Te Rangi Hiroa [Sir Peter Buck], of course, is the classic exception. More recently Sid Mead pioneered the way for a new generation, some of whom are here today. But many of the standard works on Maori art and material culture are the works of Pakeha. From Elsdon Best to Roger Neich, from H.D. Skinner and Roger Duff to myself. The intellectual tradition in which we have all worked, including Te Rangi Hiroa and Sid Mead, is the western academic tradition. Today there are all kinds of stirrings about matauranga Maori - what it is, what it means, what its place is in the museum world. It’s an issue of great importance for the future of Maori collections in museums, and for New Zealand cultural heritage generally.

I’ve been struggling to understand what is meant by matauranga Maori and, like many other concepts, I think it means different things to different people. But as it’s evolving in our institutions, it seems to be existing knowledge held by Maori about taonga or whatever, which can be shared, argued about, discussed or transmitted in a Maori context, and particularly on the marae. It can greatly enhance taonga in museums, but there are all kinds of issues to be worked through concerning intellectual property rights, copyright and so on. All this is part of the excitement and struggle of learning to be bicultural in our institutions, rather than just talking about it, and in our lives and in our nation. On any major issue there is a range of opinions. After 35 years of working in museums on and off, and working with archaeological collections during most of the off periods, I can’t personally accept the view that only Maori can relate to, care for, or understand taonga. I do accept that I can never feel towards taonga in the same way as people from their own iwi, or indeed any Maori people who become involved with them. But I’d like to be able to think that I can contribute a tiny bit to understanding some of them, and I have a considerable commitment to their physical, if not their emotional, well-being.

My vision for future research about Maori collections, therefore, is tripartite. It involves the continuation of scholarly research by Pakeha, but with concern and active support from Maori. It involves expansion of research by Maori scholars trained in western traditions, but increasingly blending this with a stronger Maori perspective. And it involves a whole new era in which the role of matauranga Maori in the museum context is explored and developed. I’d like now to turn briefly to two kinds of Maori collections in our museums. I may have been seeming to take the view that the reuniting of iwi with taonga is what it’s all about. And a flippant phrase of Jamie Belich’s - that this takes place in a context of ‘peace, love and mixed flatting’ - comes to mind, which perhaps isn’t

quite appropriate. But there are, as Shane has said, many urban Maori who are divorced from their iwi who need to relate to these things and there are some things that most Maori probably won’t want to be very interested in. When I was carrying out my archaeological surveys in Muriwhenua many years ago, which I know Shane would relate to and I hadn’t realised that Jonathan [ManeWheoki] would also relate to, I tried to locate and record every piece of surface evidence of past activity that had modified the landscape. That project subsequently supplied a little bit of evidence in support of the Muriwhenua claim by showing just how extensively the total landscape had been used over and above the important named sites that were remembered in oral narratives. But at the time I was doing it, most of the people at Te Hapua thought I was crazy. Viv Gregory turned up to spy on me and became converted. And I think Shane had something of the same idea but unfortunately we never managed to be there at the same time.

Anyway, I can well remember the Maori foreman of the afforestation project on Te Hapua 42 Block saying to me quite kindly, but with real perplexity, ‘What do you wanna feel sorry for those old holes for?’ Now, ‘those old holes’, we thought, were the remains of former kumara stores but, whatever their exact function, they were certainly powerful evidence of the total involvement of the people of the land, with the land, in the past. I mention this experience because I think there are quite a lot of little scrappy things in the Maori collections in our museums which, for many but not all Maori, probably come into the same category as ‘those old holes’. Now, there will be a few people like Des Kahotea, here, who wil 1 love them as much as I do, but a lot of people probably wouldn’t. The old stone chips, the broken bits of bone fish-hooks, needles and so on, which have something to contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the past but don’t have the emotional power of carvings or weavings. They are often not exhibitable, but sometimes they are eminently researchable. They are part of Maori heritage, but if Maori do not find them interesting and are unimpressed with the sort of knowledge that Pakeha research derives from them, what is their future? It’s my hope that, as we strive to forge our bicultural partnership, it can be accepted that the Maori collections are part of our national heritage and a wider international heritage of human achievement.

The other group of things I wanted to mention were the very beautiful and powerful taonga that have lost their connection with their relatives. These are often things that have been bought back overseas, sometimes with no history at all, sometimes with the name of the collector but no hint of what area they are from. They are as dispossessed as the urban Maori who have no iwi, and it may never be possible, even through the best possible scholarship, to identify their tribal affiliation in some circumstances. As I said, scholarship can go only so far in identifying their origin. When we were preparing the Taonga Maori exhibition which went to Australia,

we wanted, if possible, to send taonga with known tribal affiliation, but there were some outstandingly beautiful and rare works with no history at all. We cautiously and secretly consulted Roger Neich, Jock McEwen and Sid Mead on separate occasions and got either no opinion at all or very cautious and conflicting opinions about the tribal affiliation of those things. I should also say, without naming names, that there have been occasions when knowledgeable people have confidently provided tribal identifications (and I don’t mean Maori, I mean Pakeha scholars) on stylistic grounds for unprovenanced works, and these identifications have later been found to be completely wrong when actual historical information was unearthed in museum or other archives.

These tribeless taonga are nonetheless taonga and deserve to be cherished even in an increasingly iwi-oriented world. And I think that we have to be very careful about claiming or identifying things without very good grounds. You’ll probably have gathered by now that I believe in a very positive future for Maori collections in our public institutions. I’m expecting that the majority of them will remain for most of the time where they are, and will be joined by more, but this does not mean that I am opposed to repatriation under any circumstances. On the contrary, I think that there is a whole range of potential partnerships between public institutions and iwi or other Maori organisations. These should benefit the public institutions, the Maori institutions, and the taonga themselves, but I absolutely support what Shane said about the need to put money into these sorts of ventures. My husband is today at a hui at Pirinoa about the desire of people over there for the return of Te Heke Rangatira, the waka that was in the Canterbury Museum for many years. There is a real financial viability problem about finding people to maintain an iwi museum or hapu museum in the Southern Wairarapa, which has to be addressed for these things to work, but I strongly feel that they should be possible and that effort should be put into them. It is important to embark on these partnerships in a spirit of cooperation and not in bitterness or reluctance. Public institutions need to be forward-looking and eager to take part.

Turnbull Library Record 30 (1997), 65-72

Reference 1 The seminar was held in the Auditorium of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga on Saturday 9 September 1995. The whole programme comprised: Session One: European material. Chaired by Sharon Dell, Director, Whanganui Regional Museum. Panelists: Jenny Harper, Head of Art History, Victoria University of Wellington; lan Wedde, concept developer, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; Walter Cook, collector and

authority on decorative art and staff member of the Alexander Turnbull Library Photographic Archive. Session Two: Maori material. Chaired by Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, art historian, University of Canterbury, member of Te Waka Toi and Vice-President of The Humanities Society of New Zealand/Te Whainga Aronui. Panelists: Shane Jones, lecturer in Maori Studies, Victoria University of Wellington; Vicki-Anne Heikell, paper conservator, Maori, Conservation Services, National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa; Janet Davidson, concept developer and curator of Pacific collections, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa.