Collecting our loss

Matariki Williams bemoans the loss of mātauranga Māori since colonisation, evident in the majority of taonga stored in national collections, and the lack of writing about ngā toi Māori (Māori art).

Her essay is extracted from Books of Mana: 180 Māori-authored books of significance edited by Jacinta Ruru, Angela Wanhalla and Jeanette Wikaira.

 

One of my favourite places to be is at the tables of my nans and koros. There are cups of tea, parāoa rēwena with butter and jam, biscuits, maybe some other leftover kai.

Mostly, though, there’s kōrero.

Slipping between te reo and English, I consume their kōrero more voraciously than the biscuits — kōrero falling from the mouths of my nans and koros like crumbs for me to pick up.

These kōrero ramble all over the place, talking about people I’ve never heard of, or gossiping about whānau. At times, it turns to memories — of their childhoods, of their own nans and koros — and I imagine versions of these table kōrero stretching themselves back into the past.

There is only one other place where I’ve had the same feeling I get sitting at their tables, a feeling that is just that: feeling. It is of feeling history and feeling whakapapa. This is within the storerooms of collecting institutions, specifically those with taonga Māori. When I walk into these storerooms, history is tangible, and the kōrero associated with each taonga being housed and cared for awaits visitors.

In a previous role as a curator in the Mātauranga Māori team at Te Papa Tongarewa, I had access to two of the museum’s taonga Māori storerooms, Te Ahuru Mowai and Te Whare Pora o Hineteiwaiwa.

I was struck by how much mātauranga was in those storerooms, abundant yet latent. Easily, I would be drawn to the taonga with storied histories, such as the kākahu gifted by the Tūhoe rangatira and my tipuna Tūtakangahau to the Pākehā ethnographer Elsdon Best, after the death of Tūtakangahau’s granddaughter, Marewa-i-te-Rangi.

However, the reality for this collection of taonga Māori, much of which came from non-Māori collectors of taonga, is that the overwhelming majority of the collection is unprovenanced, meaning there is little or no information recording where the taonga came from, who they belonged to, who made them, what their names were, or how they were used. Even for the taonga mentioned above, the maker’s name remains unrecorded.

It is sobering to contrast the rich history I felt at those tables with whānau, where names, events, dates and places were easily recalled, with the taonga where that information is not available. It is a realisation that I have taken to extrapolating to all mātauranga Māori and the immense loss of knowledge that has occurred in the centuries since colonisation.

Collections of taonga underline that loss by reminding us, en masse, how life was once lived by our tīpuna, with their innate understanding of their environs, from which they harvested materials to make into clothing, homes, garden tools, bird snares, te mea, te mea. Everything needed for living could be found in the environment, and was made, used, and returned to the environment.

The taonga that are revered in collections because of what they tell us about the past include the most quotidian of objects, like cooking implements. Perhaps some of that reverence is precisely because of what we now don’t know.

Which brings me to the Te Takarangi list. As a counter to our absence of knowledge, this list of Māori-authored books raises the visibility of the mātauranga that has been written about.

One of the books on the list, Whaikōrero: The world of Māori oratory by Poia Rewi, mentions the mnemonic skills that Māori were renowned for. While studying at the University of Waikato, Rewi was told by his former Māori language lecturer, Tīmoti Kāretu: “Whakairohia ki tōu rae, ki ōu toto,” which Rewi translates as “to carve it into your forehead with your blood”.

This book is a veritable pātaka kōrero, assembling perspectives on the art of whaikōrero from multiple iwi and communicating about it in illuminating segments.

Rewi ends with a list of recorded whaikōrero that are in the collections of public institutions. These whaikōrero have been transcribed, and data, including the speaker, rohe, occasion and choice of waiata tautoko, are all given. When reading through this selection, I am struck with that feeling — as many researchers will be — of being in an archive and encountering taonga, and I am so grateful that the author has chosen to share these with readers.

I also understand the need for preserving these recordings, to capture examples of an artform that Rewi describes as being in a state of flux, if not decline.

Related to my kitchen table experience, and my understanding of taonga as conveyors of knowledge, is the kōrero shared with Rewi by Mehaka Herewini on the use of the tokotoko (also referred to as tiripou, turupou or rākau) in whaikōrero:

. . . he homai whakaaro ki roto i te kaikōrero. E kī ana rātou, mau ana koe i te rākau kua riro mai ngā āhua katoa o koro mā ki a koe. Pēnā ko koe te kaiwhakapapa, ngāhorohoro mai te whakapapa . . .

Rewi writes that Herewini’s kōrero states how the older people believed that using a tokotoko during whaikōrero would aid in their recall of whakapapa links. Here again is the connection between person, taonga and memory, with the taonga itself being the mnemonic enabler of the person.

In contrast, I refer to the kōrero from Rangi Mātāmua, another Takarangi list author, who shared his process for publishing Matariki: The star of the year in Ngā Kete Mātauranga: Māori scholars at the research interface.

Much of Mātāmua’s book is informed by the manuscripts of his tīpuna — mātauranga that had been kept within the manuscripts due to the tapu of the contents. When it came time for him to inherit the manuscripts, Mātāmua was told by his koroua Timi to disseminate the knowledge, with the ōhākī: “Knowledge that isn’t shared, isn’t knowledge.”

The impact of the lack of sharing can be seen in the institutional collections mentioned above: the specifics surrounding many of the taonga simply are not there.

A similar situation is mentioned in later editions of Ngā Mōteatea/The Songs by Apirana Ngata, with notations by Ngata and Pei Te Hurinui Jones.

In the introduction, it is lamented that the waiata captured in the book were not passed on, noting that te reo was being displaced by English at an unprecedented rate, which affected the teaching of the waiata in ways that the composers and kaitiaki of the songs could not have anticipated.

The impact of this was that, by the time the waiata were starting to be recorded, much of the supplementary mātauranga had already been lost. As it stands, the composers, meanings and origins of the waiata in Ngā Mōteatea are not all known.

I mention these three books, and what I know of the writing of them, to spotlight the attrition of mātauranga Māori that has occurred since colonisation. Specifically, I chose these three as they underline the importance of knowledge transmission and the loss that can occur when this is interrupted. Here is where I see the role of publishing in getting information to paper.

With oral transmission, there is a physical proximity between speaker and listeners, and a catalyst by way of an event bringing people together. The kitchen table was one of my catalyst places, though I acknowledge that having predominantly lived the past 18 years away from my tūrangawaewae, my time at those tables has lessened. And as my old people pass or their memories fade, I find myself lamenting the loss of their mātauranga, too.

As an art writer, I find the absence of mātauranga related to ngā toi Māori (Māori art) has a direct impact on my work. Having fewer resources to work with means relying on the more ephemeral records of ngā toi Māori, and interviewing people.

When the exhibition Ralph Hotere: Ātete (to resist) opened at Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū in March 2021, writer Bill Manhire addressed the gathered crowd to reflect on his old friend’s legacy. As often happens with Hotere’s work, his infamous reticence to be defined as any singular kind of artist, or to speak about his work, was mentioned. Manhire referred to Hotere as a bricoleur, a gatherer of bits and pieces with an innate ability to turn them into something wholly new, and wholly Hotere.

Though he is arguably the most successful Māori artist of his generation, if not beyond, the archive of texts related to Hotere’s work is depressingly slim. As I prepared a paper to deliver at the opening of the exhibition at Dunedin Public Art Gallery (thwarted by a Covid-19 alert level change), I sought writing about Hotere. I shared a photo to Twitter of the few publications in the Te Papa library related solely to Hotere. Also in the photo were 14 brown envelopes containing all the ephemera collected over the years on Hotere’s work.

In response, I received a photo from Leanne Radojkovich, a librarian from the Angela Morton Room at Takapuna Library, showing their similarly slim collection of Hotere-related publications. Most of what is published are monographs created to coincide with exhibitions. Starkly absent were any critical tomes exploring and analysing Hotere’s mahi. Though he is firmly placed in the New Zealand art history canon, I couldn’t help but wonder why there are so few books about him, especially compared with other well-known figures of New Zealand art.

Hotere’s mahi is often interpreted through a lens of minimalism, an art movement that originated in Europe and America. This means he is considered alongside artists from far-flung shores, most commonly the American abstract painter Ad Reinhart. From a Māori perspective, this interpretation feels woefully inadequate.

However, any attempt to provide a Māori perspective on his work tends to be lopped away at the knees by curators and writers who repeat the tired line of Hotere’s that, though he is Māori, when it comes to his art, this is coincidental.

I see the repetitive use of this line as having done two things. Firstly, it has resulted in writers simply not considering Māori elements of Hotere’s work at all. Secondly, where Pākehā writers have considered these elements of his work, it has been surface level and disconnected from what Māori concepts feel like and how they are experienced.

To foreground a consideration of the latter point, here is some kōrero from Wayne Ngata:

Ko te mōteatea te mataaho ki te pā o te hinengaro Māori. The mōteatea is the window to the foresight of Māori. In order to understand and appreciate the psyche of Māori, if one was able to access the epitome of modern literature, then one can understand the thinking. That body of knowledge is very much encompassed in mōteatea.

In Ngata’s estimation, these waiata don’t just connect us to mental and physical understandings of our world, but they whakapapa right to our very origins.

Bearing this in mind, and knowing that Hotere incorporated mōteatea into many of his paintings, including Godwit/Kuaka, I was interested to read what art critic Keith Stewart told a seminar in 1997, held to coincide with the Hotere exhibition Out the Black Window: “Hotere’s long-term refusal to reduce his art to tribally prescribed forms, or to serve anything but his art, could be argued as less than silence.”

When we know that mōteatea, one artform practised by Māori, provide an insight into Māori worldviews, how can other Māori artistic explorations that leap off from them then be considered a reduction?

At the same seminar, art historian and curator Rangihīroa Panoho referred to two Pākehā writers and art historians who questioned the “Māori-ness” of Hotere’s work. First was Rodney Wilson, who claimed that Hotere’s work has little, if any, reference to his Māori origins: “Certainly resurrection of pre-European and immediately post-European forms, from which he has been irreversibly severed, would not seem possible in anything but a slavishly imitative facsimile fashion.”

Second was Peter Leech, previously of the University of Otago art history department, who, according to Panoho, questioned why Hotere used so much kupu Māori in his work when most of his “gallery audiences” wouldn’t understand.

There are many assumptions in that comment, not least of all being that galleries are the only way for audiences to experience work, as it is abundantly clear that publications are also vehicles in which an artist’s work is not only reproduced but also critiqued and considered in depth.

In one of the brown envelopes, I found a newspaper article by Gerhard Rosenberg on Hotere’s Aramoana works: “Ralph Hotere’s protest is positive and creative, a happy sort of anger. As an artist he is established internationally; he is a Māori, and perhaps one may say that it is a Māori thing to turn anger and aggression into an artistic form, a haka.”

What struck me from sifting through the envelopes, and reading through the scraps of decades-old, photocopied newspaper reviews, was that I too felt like a bricoleur.

I felt the impact of an art history canon that has not valued ngā toi Māori and kaitoi Māori enough to publish about them. Among the envelopes, I also found writing from art critic Hamish Keith lamenting that Out the Black Window was the first time Hotere had been granted a retrospective. Twenty-six years later, we are still waiting for the book.

Te Takarangi is further evidence of how little writing there is on Māori art. Of the 180 books on the list, only around 13 have a focus on ngā toi Māori, and this is using a very broad definition of Māori art, including oratory, taonga tūturu and contemporary art. Of these books, only one focuses specifically on a single Māori artist, Ranginui Walker’s Tohunga Whakairo: Paki Harrison. It is also worth noting that many of the books on the topic are by the same writers: Ngāhuia Te Awekōtuku, Hirini Moko Mead, and Ngarino Ellis have each written at least two of the toi Māori-related publications on this list.

To return to the taonga Māori collection stores at Te Papa and the close to 30,000 taonga Māori there, I bemoan not only the absence of knowledge collected alongside the majority of the taonga, but also the relative lack of publications to elucidate their mātauranga. It is within this absence of knowledge that I believe writing sits. Just as the national collections of taonga Māori have been constructed by non-Māori, so too have epistemologies of New Zealand art.

What does this mean for ngā toi Māori and writing about it? It means fewer publications about our art and artists, fewer reviews of shows featuring Māori art and artists, less critical engagement with our art, less coverage of our art, less attention to our art in schools and tertiary institutions. Without the existence of this canon around Māori art and artists, our makers command lower prices and are less represented in public collections.

The legacy of others writing about us, writing about our taonga and ngā toi Māori, persists. A quote shared in an article by Te Awekōtuku from Te Rangi Hīroa, to his friend Apirana Ngata, shares this sentiment from 1931: “Kua mutu te wā kia Te Peehi mā, kua riro mā tāua, mā te Māori, taua kōrero.”

Te Awekōtuku gives the translation as follows: “The time for [Elsdon] Best is over, we as Māori should take responsibility for researching our world for ourselves. It is left to us to straighten up what has been written by our Pākehā pioneers.”

Straightening up is precisely what I see the Takarangi list as doing — providing mātauranga in our words and from our perspectives without the need for commuting to another’s understanding.

For me, I will seek out more tables to sit around, nohopuku, kanohi ki te kanohi, to listen to and feel the kōrero. Until then, these books are my table.

 

This essay is from Books of Mana: 180 Māori-authored books of significance edited by Jacinta Ruru, Angela Wanhalla and Jeanette Wikaira. It was published by Otago University Press, and is available now for $65.

Matariki Williams (Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Hauiti, Taranaki, Ngāti Whakaue, Te Atihaunui-a-Pāpārangi) is a freelance curator, writer and editor in the arts and cultural sector. Her previous roles include Senior Historian, Mātauranga Māori, at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, and Curator Mātauranga Māori, at Te Papa Tongarewa. She co-authored Protest Tautohetohe: Objects of Resistance, Persistence and Defiance with Puawai Cairns and Stephanie Gibson, and co-founded ATE Journal of Māori Art with Bridget Reweti.

E-Tangata, 2025