Mina McKenzie photographed ahead of her speaking appearance at a symposium in Germany in 1993. (Photo: Manawatū Standard)

A small exhibition in Palmerston North remembers a big leader — Mina McKenzie, the first Māori woman to become a museum director.

In early May, literally driven out of Te Whanganui a Tara by an autumn storm, I arrived at Palmerston North’s Te Manawa Museum glad to be under cover. From the reception desk, where I was warmly greeted, I wandered into the exhibition space.

The display of taonga I was looking for was not obvious at first sight. There was a lot to see between the entrance area, the tangata whenua gallery, and the stories of European settlers in the Manawatū.

Among all that was an unassuming display of taonga, celebrating a wahine toa of museum history, Mina McKenzie.

Mina was the first Māori woman to become a museum director, and she held this post at Manawatū Museum (now Te Manawa) from 1978 to 1994.

The exhibition, still on at Te Manawa until mid August, presents the material legacy that Mina left behind when she passed away in 1997.

Among the objects on display is a tokotoko from the early decades of the 20th century. Mina inherited the carved walking stick from her father, who received it as koha from hapū from the Whanganui River. On the label next to the tokotoko, I am informed that “before Mina handed it down to its current kaitiaki, she determined the new guardian must whakapapa to Whanganui iwi, use it for whaikōrero, and carry the mana to match this impressive taonga”.

The way Mina related to this taonga is an example of how she brought taonga tuku iho into the museum or, as in this case, helped pass it on within her own whānau.

The taonga hint at her career of advocacy for museums that valued whakapapa and promoted manaakitanga. But the display is just part of the story. Much of Mina McKenzie’s legacy is intangible. It exists in the way museums today work to keep taonga warm — by connecting with tangata whenua, and understanding that communities are as important as collections.

Mina as a hands-on musuem director, getting stuck into in all aspects of the work. (Photo: Te Manawa Museum)

Mina Louise McKenzie, née Gillespie, was born in Palmerston North on February 2, 1930, the only child of Arnold Gillespie and Nukuteaio Selina Potaka.

Mina’s mother was of Ngāti Hauiti, Ngāti Raukawa, Te Ati Haunui-a-Pāpārangi and Rangitāne o Manawatū descent. On her father’s side, the family had German origins.

Mina actively participated in the revitalisation of her family marae at Rātā during the 1970s and 1980s. From her mother’s side also came Eastern European Jewish connections. Mina’s grandmother Esther Lyons Caselberg was the daughter of the first shopkeeper in Mangaweka, Eli Caselberg. A strict Orthodox Jew, Eli, along with his brother, had emigrated from Poland to England and then New Zealand in the quest for a better life.

Mina’s grandmother and great-grandmother ensured that the Jewish connections stayed alive during her childhood. In the late 1970s, Mina became an active member of the Palmerston North branch of the Union of Jewish Women, connecting with other Jewish families and celebrating Jewish festivals.

Through her father, Mina was also a member of the Seifert family, prominent in the local flax industry. At the time of her birth, her father, Arnold, the son of German-born Louisa Fredericke Seifert and John Gillespie, was manager of the Miranui flax mill.

In the late 1970s, Mina started working at what was then the Manawatu Museum. At that time, the appropriate care for Māori tāonga held (legitimately or not) in museums in both New Zealand and overseas was still very much in its infancy.

“Keeping the taonga warm” became the central kaupapa of her work, a concept that was quite revolutionary for non-Māori spaces. At the international Museums in Dialogue conference held in my own hometown, Berlin, Germany, in 1993, Mina explained the idea in the following way:

“Maori believe that when the treasures are identified, recognised, guarded and thus connected to their people, the tangible object or special knowledge remains alive and therefore ‘warm’. The so-called ‘warmth’ signifies that there is an unbroken thread between the people and their past, present and future. When the people are alienated from their taonga, the thread is broken and the taonga are ‘cold’.”

By the time Mina presented at the Berlin conference, she had already been very influential at home.

She had led the transformation of the local museum by embedding tikanga Māori alongside western museological concepts, and she encouraged a new generation of museum studies students to embrace this combination.

A photo from the Mina McKenzie exhibition opening at Te Manawa in February 2025. The photo shows Te Manawa heritage curator Karis Evans in conversation with Bruce McKenzie, the late Mina McKenzie’s husband. Behind them Cassandra Archer is talking to Roma Potiki, Te Manawa curator. (Photo: Te Manawa)

Part of the current display at Te Manawa is The Mina McKenzie Kete, made with muka and pheasant pelt by Cassandra Archer (Rarotongan, New Zealand Pākehā).

I spoke to its 37-year-old weaver, and mother of four, in early April to understand why she dedicated the kete to Mina.

During its creation, Cassandra explained, she had been studying towards a Master of Museum and Heritage Practice. In class she “needed to keep her hands busy”. Because of its small size, the kete project was handy to take on her daily commute from Rongotea near Palmerston North to the university in Wellington.

Mina McKenzie’s thinking on “keeping the taonga warm” was discussed in class. The concept aligned with her weaving practice and her own feeling that “it can be such a cold space out the back in collections”, partly due to the low temperatures required for preservation, but also, Cassandra found, due to the absence of a kaitiaki or iwi Māori input. “So, it’s a real cold space.”

Mina became a huge source of inspiration for her, especially after learning that, like herself, she was from the Manawatū and a woman from a diverse cultural background. Cassandra soon learned that Mina was not only the first Māori museum director but an influence in the global museum sector too.

Mina was a member of the Te Māori exhibition management committee, the groundbreaking exhibition that, in 1984, for the first time, showcased Māori taonga under the direction of Māori.

After touring the US, the exhibition came home and travelled the country, changing many people’s perceptions of Māori tradition and material culture.

Mina then exercised her influence on the development of Te Papa Tongarewa, which opened in 1998 as the new national museum, a year after her premature death from a heart condition, aged 67. In 1985 she had worked on the museum’s development team and contributed to Ngā Taonga o Te Motu Treasures of the Nation. This report was both a plan for the new national museum and a statement of ideals for museum practice in a bicultural society.

In her many roles, she brought people together to advance the decolonisation of museum practice. She focused on “confounding the stereotype” (the title of one her lectures at Massey University) to “find new ways of interpreting and exhibiting Māori material culture.”

As chair of the Cultural Conservation Advisory Council between 1987 and 1991, Mina also initiated training for Māori conservators. The inaugural Kaitiaki hui was held at Te Hou Hou Marae, Mina’s home marae at Rātā, in 1989. Her manaakitanga extended far and wide, and included providing detailed practical advice to smaller, volunteer-run institutions such as the Wairoa Museum.

Undoubtedly, Mina’s whakapapa and diverse ancestry was pivotal in her pioneering of a museum practice model that focuses on mātauranga Māori. Her family history, traversing various cultural, religious and at times geopolitical boundaries, is likely to have shaped her ability to communicate, connect and build lasting relationships across cultural boundaries.

In the Waitangi Tribunal’s Ko Aotearoa Tenei report on the place of Māori culture, identity and taonga in contemporary society that was published in 2011, Justice J V Williams notes that it would be far better for New Zealand to lead the international debate on the protection of “traditional cultural expressions”, known as mātauranga Māori and taonga works in this country, than simply be the passive recipient of its results. Mina McKenzie would wholeheartedly agree.

On leaving Te Manawa Museum into the wet and cold air of Palmerston North that morning I felt energised.

Visiting the exhibition of Mina’s taonga not only brought her story closer to me, I also left encouraged to find out more about how her work has inspired museum practitioners beyond Te Manawa, Te Papa and other large museums, in the many museums of provincial Aotearoa New Zealand.

Tanja Rother. (Image supplied)

Dr Tanja Rother is an independent researcher, historian and writer based in the Eastern Bay of Plenty. She currently works on a self-funded research project titled “Making public memory. Stories of small museums in Aotearoa New Zealand”. She has also written historical reports for the Waitangi Tribunal and Te Arawhiti, a unit in the Ministry of Justice.

Keeping the taonga warm – The legacy of Mina McKenzie is on display at Te Manawa Museum of Art, Science and Heritage in Palmerston North until August 18, 2025, Tuesdays to Sundays, 10am – 5pm.

E-Tangata, 2025