Repatriation of Tiki

Tu Tangata, Issue 18, 1 June 1984, Page 35

Repatriation of Tiki

On 19 May at Turangawaewae an ancient greenstone tiki was returned to the Maori people in a presentation to the Maori Queen, Dame Te Ata-i----rangikaahu. This voluntary repatriation of a cultural treasure concluded a long search for its former owners.

It is hoped that this donation by Mr Carlo de Marchi of Lausanne, Switzerland, will encourage the voluntary repatriaton of other maori cultural treasures now overseas. Media support is being sought in New Zealand and overseas for this purpose.

In 1971 Mr de Marchi visited New Zealand. Later upon hearing how much the de Marchi family enjoyed their holiday visit, a close friend who was an art collector gave Mr de Marchi a magnificent old greenstone hei tiki a treasured maori neck ornament from pre-European times.

Mr de Marchi recognised that such a hei tiki might have a continuing special meaning among New Zealand’s indigenous maori people. Therefore, and in order to show his appreciation for the friendliness of the maori and european people he had met in New Zealand, he decided to donate it to the country of its origin. He gave it to Mr Rhys Richards, former New Zealand Consul General in Geneva, to return to New Zealand as he saw fit.

Mr Richards recognised that the tiki was very old and had been made without metal tools in the pre european

style. He also realised that such a cultural treasure had probably been given as a formal gesture of appreciation and respect to whoever took it away from New Zealand. Given the importance attached to such a gift, it might still be known among the tribe of its original owners. After further discussions with the de Marchis, Mr Richards undertook to try to establish its tribal origins and to do all he could to ensure it was returned correctly to the appropriate tribe.

He began his search with an initial examination of the document of authenticity which accompanied the tiki. This stated it had been the property of “Sir George Grey” and in the Pitt Rivers Museum. However, Mr Richards soon

established that the document had been tampered with. Its owner had not been the George Grey who was the Governor of New Zealand from 1845 to 1848 and Premier from 1877 to 1879. Rather it had belonger to Mr George Grey, a private art collector and a curator of the Pitt Rivers family museum in Taunton in Somerset in 1904. He was famous for pioneer research on Stonehenge.

A series of letters to several descendants of the Pitt Rivers family provided no clarification except that their family collections had been sold in recent years and that no further records remained of this tiki. Mr Richards next visited Oxford to check with the Pitt Rivers Museum there, which confirmed this tiki had never been part of their collection. Independent checks with the two largest British dealers in antique and cultural art indicated it had not been sold by them. How it left the United Kingdom and reached Mr de Marchi’s friend in Italy is also not known.

Mr Richards then brought this cultural treasure back to New Zealand in 1983. He next consulted maori friends and museum ethnologists. After careful deliberation it was concluded that it had formerly been owned by Wiremu Pou of the Ngati Pou tribe at some stage before 1858. It is believed to have been made by Ngawaitangata of the Tuwharetoa tribe for Witipuna of Tuwharetoa, which tribe subsequently gave it as a koha, a special symbolic gift of respect, to Wiremu Pou.

(Others important items by Ngawaitangata are in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, and in the Ballantrae Collection. The latter was given by the maori people to honour General Sir Charles Fergusson, Third Governor General of New Zealand.)