Many voices: Challenging colonial views of New Zealand and the Pacific

The complications of the word ‘traditional’? Why ‘reMāorification’ is a better word than ‘decolonisation’. How contemporary artists are retelling the inherited Pākehā-dominant histories of our nation. The collision of cultures. Read articles written by Te Papa staff.

Listen: The Politics of Collecting – from Banks and Solander to Today

Hear botanists and researchers discuss the shifting politics of collecting and classifying plants, from both Māori and Pākehā perspectives.

Tamatea ‘Dusky Sound’ revisited

Mātauranga Māori curator Dougal Austin offers an indigenous perspective on first contact between Māori and Cook's men in Tamatea (Dusky Sound).

Opinion: why we should beware of the word ‘traditional’

‘In 1994, Samoan novelist and scholar Albert Wendt was an advisor for the planned Pacific exhibitions. Senior Curator Pacific Cultures Sean Mallon describes how Albert Wendt requested that Te Papa abandon the use of terms like ‘traditional art’ in our labels and display signage. ‘Traditional means nothing to me!’ he said.’

‘Museums are dangerous places’ – challenging history

How do museums learn to tell the truth about what they hold in order to become “decolonised archives”?

‘Ahu ‘ula (feathered cloak)

On 26 January 1779, the Hawaiian high chief Kalani‘ōpu‘u took this cloak, which he was wearing, and draped it over the shoulders of the English explorer Captain James Cook. I was donated to the Dominion Museum in 1912 and in July 2020, it returned home to Hawai‘i.

‘Pacific princess’ – one painting, so many stories

‘The story of Poetua is one of encounters in the Pacific during the late 1700s – a time when very different cultures and different worlds met, or some would say “collided”.’