Whiria Kia Tina – Making Reconnections

Whiria kia tina – making reconnections. The creation of a taonga Māori display in the new Perth Museum.

This video was recorded at a special Dawn Ceremony for the opening of the new display of Māori taonga in the new Perth Museum, on Tuesday 26th March, 2024. The displays were a collaborative project between Māori curators from New Zealand (Aotearoa) and the team at Perth Museum. A leading member of the Māori team, Awhina Tamarapa, recalls the occasion and its significance.

In the pre-dawn light, a group of Māori, cloaked in customary garments, walked across the wet, deserted streets towards the new Perth Museum. “We must look like an unusual sight”, we chuckled. This memory replays like a grainy movie reel, a quiet cusp on the edge of a big moment. That extraordinary moment was the ceremonial opening of the Māori display in the new Perth Museum. According to Māori custom, special rituals are performed at dawn when the spiritual world departs from the living.

Preceding this event was four years of exhibition planning, zoom meetings across time zones, and hundreds of hours of curatorial, conservation, liaison, project and collection management work. The project involved Perth Museum staff, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa staff, the Museum and Heritage Studies staff and post-graduate students of Victoria University of Wellington, artists, practitioners, videographers and cultural advisors. Significant work such as the Kahu Kākāpō conservation project between the Perth Museum and British Museum provided an important opportunity to integrate Māori values, ancestral knowledge, and ways of knowing and being. Ngāti Rānana London based Māori Club and Māori weavers guided key approaches, instilling cultural contexts into museum practice. A considerable amount of work was voluntary, driven by Kaupapa Māori (Māori aspirations, values and principles).

Opening Doors, Hearts and Minds

A Memorandum of Understanding between Culture Perth & Kinross and Te Papa Tongarewa was signed in August 2022. This agreement set out the depth and scope of a new, renegotiated relationship, focused on Māori reconnection, rights and responsibilities, to develop a “long-term agreement for living collections” (JP Reid, 10 Feb 2021). ‘Keeping taonga (highly valued Māori cultural heritage) warm’ is a concept that refers to taking care of taonga in museums through culturally appropriate actions. ‘Kaitiakitanga’, means to care for, to protect. Both concepts are fundamentally important to Māori. Our heritage in museums are pieces of us, that one way or another, represent survival in the face of loss, disconnection and assimilation. The love/hate relationship we experience with museums can only be tempered by opening doors, hearts and minds.

Making Reconnections

The ultimate transformation for a museum is to ask – what should our museum be? This question lies at the heart of decolonising practice, which is concerned with recognising injustice, and letting go of absolute power to reconstruct new relationships with origin communities. ‘Whiria kia tina – making reconnections’, the title of the taonga Māori display, aims to provide an understanding of Māori as the Indigenous, living culture of Aotearoa New Zealand, acknowledging connections across time and place. It was important to enable Māori perspectives, to tell our own stories and lived experiences.

The opening of the taonga display included the settling of the mauri (life force) of the taonga. This was imbued with ritual into a special stone, termed a kōhatu mauri, by elder and cultural advisor Te Kenehi Teira. The kōhatu mauri was sourced from an area located in the Nelson mineral belt and gifted by Teira to the Perth Museum. The location is connected to the Teira’s ancestor Captain Jock MacGregor of Cherrybank (Perth) and his first wife, Hinekawa of Rangitoto ki te Tonga. These rituals are an important part of Māori culture, binding the past to the present, the seen to the unseen, and the tangible to the intangible.

With thanks

We wish to acknowledge all those who contributed to the display and those who helped us open the gallery on the very special ceremonial opening. Special acknowledgements to Mark Hall, Anna Zwagerman, JP Reid, Ereti Mitchell MNZM, Kiwiroa Marshall, Ngāti Rānana London Māori Club, Pauline Reynolds, Te Kenehi Teira and Kararaina Te Ira.