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The authors behind Hei Taonga mā ngā Uri Whakatipu | Treasures for the Rising Generation: The Dominion Museum Ethnological Expeditions 1919–1923, discuss their work with Te Papa Press
Publication: November 2021
Pages: 368
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 978-0-9951031-0-8
RRP: $75.00
Buy Hei Taonga mā ngā Uri Whakatipu
From 1919 to 1923, at Sir Apirana Ngata’s initiative, a team from the Dominion Museum travelled to tribal areas across Te Ika-a-Māui The North Island to record tikanga Māori (ancestral practices) that Ngata feared might be disappearing.
These ethnographic expeditions, the first in the world to be inspired and guided by indigenous leaders, used cutting-edge technologies that included cinematic film and wax cylinders to record fishing techniques, art forms (weaving, kōwhaiwhai, kapa haka and mōteatea), ancestral rituals and everyday life in the communities they visited.
The team visited the 1919 Hui Aroha in Gisborne, the 1920 welcome to the Prince of Wales in Rotorua, and communities along the Whanganui River (1921) and in Tairāwhiti (1923). Medical doctor-soldier-ethnographer Te Rangihīroa (Sir Peter Buck), the expedition’s photographer and film-maker James McDonald, the ethnologist Elsdon Best and Turnbull Librarian Johannes Andersen recorded a wealth of material.
This beautifully illustrated book tells the story of these expeditions, and the determination of early twentieth century Māori leaders, including Ngata, Te Rangihiroa, James Carroll, and those in the communities they visited, to pass on ancestral tikanga ‘hei taonga mā ngā uri whakatipu’ as treasures for a rising generation.
Highly commended in the main book category at the 2022 MAPDAs (Museums Australasia Multimedia and Publication Design Awards). The judges said: “Successful and honest design. Beautiful.”
Longlisted for the 2022 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards – Booksellers Aotearoa New Zealand Award for Illustrated Non-Fiction.
New Zealand Journal of History, reviewed by Angela Wanhalla. “… a generously illustrated and beautifully designed book… It offers a history of anthropology, collecting, material culture and museums which readers will find fascinating. It also tells a story of photography and scientific experimentation. Most importantly, it offers a model of collaborative research in which Māori set the agenda, something Apirana Ngata aspired to a century earlier.”
Journal of the Pacific Society, reviewed by Rowan Light. “The accumulative impact of the book’s threads is to recognise the potential of taonga to reshape museum spaces and practices of translation, interpretation and transportation in their material and spiritual dimensions.” Read the full review (PDF 2.8MB)
Kete, reviewed by Kennedy Warne. “ … a volume that is as much a treasure as the taonga it records.”
NZ Geographic, reviewed by Vaughn Yarwood. “… a landmark account of the expeditions compiled by an impressive team of contributing editors, among them James McDonald’s great-granddaughter Dame Anne Salmond. Generously illustrated with McDonald’s photographs, Treasures overflows with detail.”
New Zealand Arts Review, reviewed by John Daly-Peoples. “… a significant book recounting remarkable times in the history of New Zealand revealing some remarkable people who attempted to understand and record the history, skills and tikanga of Māori.”
Co-author Dr Billie Lythberg in the University of Auckland UniNews
Dame Anne Salmond on RNZ Nights
Wayne Ngata on Māori Television’s Te Ao Tapatahi
The authors on NZ Herald Local Focus
Publication: November 2021
Pages: 368
Format: Hardback
ISBN: 978-0-9951331-0-8
RRP: $75.00
Buy Hei Taonga mā ngā Uri Whakatipu
The authors behind Hei Taonga mā ngā Uri Whakatipu | Treasures for the Rising Generation: The Dominion Museum Ethnological Expeditions 1919–1923, discuss their work with Te Papa Press
This exhibition provides a broad experience of hīnaki (eel traps). As well as displaying these taonga, it focusses on two early museum expeditions, Māori relationships with two significant rivers, and contemporary artworks related or responding to hīnaki.
Closed
10 Jun 2023 – 19 May 2024
Exhibition Ngā whakaaturanga
Of all Māori personal adornments, the human figure pendants known as hei tiki are the most famous, highly prized and culturally iconic. This book celebrates the long history of hei tiki and the enduring cultural potency of these taonga.
