Museum & Heritage Essay
Māori & Museums
Roimata Sinclair
Outline the origins, development and current issues facing Maori in their relationship with museum and heritage institutions in Aotearoa
New Zealand history shows that from first contact the British and other Europeans who came to Aotearoa were on a mission to acquire, usually on a non-consensual basis, tāonga Māori. Everyone from sailors to ‘collectors’, such as Andreas Reishek, perceived artefacts, marae, moko mokai, and indigenous flora and fauna as fair game.
The insatiable penchant for collecting reached a cynical high when so called “Christian collectors” generated a demand that saw Māori, who were often slaves, being killed and tattooed posthumously to meet the growing demands for these items in Europe. ‘The origins of Museums in New Zealand has not been unlike that experienced overseas, with their early beginnings and associations with the wealthy, the scholarly and the early literary and scientific societies. The motivations for collecting so called curious and mementos was varied. A prime motivation was to acquire objects from what many Europeans believed was a dying race’ (King, 1981).
Through the enduring networks of Europe and its colonies, artefacts have been bartered, purchased, gifted, stolen and otherwise exchanged in the course of imperial expansion. Such objects can be seen as representations of the historical processes of colonialism, as well as a representation of the individual histories of their makers, owners and collectors. These objects also play a role in current constructions of the past and ideas about the present. ‘An examination of how objects interact with people, mediating relationships between peoples, places, and times reveal complex historical processes in which social relationships of the past can endure in present social interactions’ (Cory-Pearce, 2005).
Through the process of colonisation, Europeans gained the power to study the pasts of others who were distant from themselves both culturally and geographically. ‘Anthropologists and archaeologists utilised Western epistemologies to view the practices and lives of others, carried out for the benefit of Western Scholars, taught in Western public audiences’ (Atalay, 2006). Rarely were the subjects of the research considered to be the recipients of the information generated (Said, 2003).
The dominant society often perceives museums as the keepers of culture and a place where heritage can be preserved for future generations. The question that needs to be asked is preserved for whom? Hill says that:
‘Indians are often seen as a people caught between the cultural void of the romance of the good old days (pre-1492) and the realities of the modern, ‘civilized’ world. We hardly think of Indians as a significant constituency of museums, we see Indians as suppliers of artifacts, crafts, paintings and an occasional dance or two.’ (Hill, 1988:32)
New Zealand has several parallels. The romanticized ‘noble-savage’ often became the norm in the 19th century and still persists among many museums and people at the present time. This ‘twilight zone’ or arrested time appears to be intensely compelling for many NZ museums and can be clearly seen in their ethnographic exhibitions and in their collection and acquisition policies. Post-early 19th century, the lack of any modern or contemporary Māori treasure is very noticeable. In NZ museum environments there was and perhaps still is the view that the ‘real’ Māori is gone. In response, Māori are saying to museums: We are not dead. We did not die before the turn of the century and are not a diluted form of the supposed ‘real’ and ‘authentic’ Māori. We still speak the language, we still have our traditions, our stories, our myths – our culture. Māori are saying our present and future is inseparable from the past, our past is our present and future.
Museums are presently entering what is called the ‘age of information’ – an age where we see societies dependent on the flow and transmission of information. To many people, information is often associated with knowledge, and by implication, power. For Māori, there has been a great ambivalence towards museums. They are important and respected places because of the cultural wealth they possess, but concurrently, many feel anger and resentment in the way museums have acted as ‘experts’ and managers of cultural heritage and knowledge systems. Most museums in New Zealand are run by non-Māori people, staffed mostly by non-Māori and organized according to western academic practice. Māori are passive observers in the play, while the dominant group writes the script and dictates how it should be acted out.
Source communities are challenging the central purpose of object preservation in museums. According to source communities, the purpose of the objects is the preservation of the specific cultures themselves, rather than the culture’s material remains (Nicks, 2003). An example of this is the Te Māori exhibition that toured the US in 1985-1986, which highlighted a number of inadequacies and problems with NZ museums Professor Sid Mead, the co-curator and himself Māori, poignantly stated that this exhibition contrasted with the general trend in the past, where plainly it was the Pakeha (European; non-Māori) who drove the bus, while the Māori rode as passengers (Mead, 1986:103). What was plainly obvious at that time, was a move towards repossessing one’s own cultural heritage. By owning their own cultural heritage, Māori made a move towards controlling it. Te Māori has proved to us that a museum’s interpretation of the ‘culture’ of a country needs to be something more than a lifeless collection of dusty artefacts (P. Tapsell, Minister of Internal Affairs and himself Maori).Māori art was transformed and in a sense ‘released’ and ‘freed’ from the history and intellectual context in which our artworks had been ‘imprisoned’ (Mead, 1985c:3-5).
After the spectacular success of the Te Māori exhibition, NZ museums were not quite the same. They appeared to be inadequate, unsatisfactory and totally detached from the reality of the Māori people and culture. Their legitimacy for many Māori people was fiercely debated and severely criticized, as they were seen as empty shells without heart and wairua. Koro Wetere, the Minister of Māori Affairs at that time quite rightly said that:
“Te Māori showed the world of art and museum presentation that treasures like these are still part of our present and living culture. To the unknowing, the pieces by themselves are merely made of wood and stone, but when the elders with the young come together to chant the rituals of yesteryear, and to sing the songs that recount the history, the hopes, the hurts, and the aspirations of the people – the exhibition lives. The people are the living culture, and they breathe life into the taonga -and when the two come together the exhibition becomes a living and new experience for the uninitiated (Wetere, 1986)”.
Another great quote by Hirini Moko Mead supports this idea:
“Before Te Māori, the study, the protection, the care and the speaking about Māori art was largely the province and domain of the dominant culture. Māori art was a captured art and museums could be regarded as repositories of the trophies of capture. Up until very recently there was no Māori curators or cultural officers employed at museums and art galleries. The scholars used the terminology, the categories and the theories of Western society to describe Māori art. The Māori people whose traditions were being studied were not an important part of the scholars’ world except in the sense of being informants. It was assumed that everyone belonged to and believed in the world of the dominant group” (Mead, 1992).
In terms of current issues, there appears to be historical and cultural cringe when it comes to the appointment of the chief executives/directors of our major museums. There seems to have been a covert bias towards non-New Zealand non-Māori appointments with somewhat disastrous results. For example,, Vanda Vitali, a Canadian, was Director of the AWMM 2007 – 2010, ‘Dr Vitali took over from Dr. Rodney Wilson following his retirement in September 2007 and found herself courting controversy within a matter of months. Plans to install a bronze memorial sculpture honoring veterans of the World War II Bomber Command were scrapped on the eve of Anzac Day in 2008’ (“Controversial Museum Chief Quits”, 2010). Another example is Michael Houlihan, who was British and CEO of Te Papa Tongarewa 2010 – 2014. ‘While Houlihan was at the helm of Te Papa, the museum was poised to post a $12 million loss for the year ending June’ (Burgess, 2014).
It could be argued that the management of museums is an internationally based profession. But it begs the question – why hasn’t, since the creation of early museums in this country, there been a strong development of skills such that we can run our own major museums? Demonstratively, there has only ever been one Māori head of institution at Te Papa and AWMM , albeit on a temporary basis,(Michelle Hippolite following the sudden death of Seddon Bennington).
We have to make sure that these CEO and partnership roles are not used as a mechanism to ring fence and restrain Māori aspirations for the kaitiaki, management and control of the museums and what lies within. While the main emphasis of the museum is business enterprise, meaningful relationships will always be ill fated. There has to be a fundamental understanding of the true mana and cultural connectedness of what is inside and around the museum, along with who is the lead kaitiaki. As museums strive to be more relevant and engage with the source communities that have relationships with the cultural treasures, ‘accepted’ museum traditions and practices often collide and, in some cases, conflict with the cultural values, practices, and traditions of indigenous peoples. There continues to be opportunity for a self-reflective examination of past circumstances, which can inform our current responsibilities in museums and those of the future.
Atalay, S 2006, ‘Indigenous archaeology as decolonizing practice’, American Indian Quarterly, vol. 30, nos. 3 & 4, p. 311.
Burgess, D. (2014, August 27). Former Te Papa boss quits NZ. The Dominion Post. Retrieved from http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/arts/10427002/Former-Te- Papa-boss- quits-NZ
Controversial Museum Chief Quits. (2010, March 16). Nzherald.co.nz Retrieved from http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10632399
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Phillips, W. J., 'REISCHEK, Andreas', An Encyclopaedia of New Zealand, edited by A. H. McLintock, originally published in 1966. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 23-Apr- 09 URL: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/1966/reischek-andreas
Professor Sidney Mead, ‘Te Maori comes home: The Walter Auburn memorial lecture,’ presented to the Friends of the Auckland City Art Gallery, Jul. 31, 1985, 4.
Sully, D. (Ed). (2007) Decolonizing conservation: caring for Maori meeting houses outside New Zealand. University College London Institute of Archaeology Publications . Left Coast Press: Walnut Creek, US.
Said, EW 2003, Orientalism, Penguin, London.