When we think about New Zealand’s national museum, we often think about Te Papa, with its enormous building on the waterfront and bicultural philosophy. ‘Our Place’. Or we might imagine the National Museum at Buckle Street with the National War Memorial or the carillon standing tall in front – a place you might remember visiting as a child. But our national museum’s history begins over 100 years before that, in 1865, to be exact. Curator Mātauranga Māori Amber Aranui takes us back to this creatively documented time.
Museum Street, Thorndon
Te Papa’s first predecessor was the Colonial Museum, which began as a small unassuming wooden building located on Museum Street, directly behind where the Beehive now sits. It began as a scientific museum whose principal role was to “facilitate the classification and comparison of specimens” collected from around the country as part of the New Zealand Geological Survey[1].
During its first year the museum accumulated over 13,000 specimens of rocks, minerals, fossils, shells and specimens of natural history, described as “Miscellaneous collections of woods, fibres, wools, Native implements, weapons, dresses, &c.”[2]
The museum was created by Scotsman James Hector, who arrived in Aotearoa in 1862, where he initially undertook a survey of the Otago Province before being appointed Director of the Colonial Museum and Geological Survey in Wellington in 1865. While his focus was on the geological resources of Aotearoa and the creation of a reference museum that illustrated the colony’s mineral resources as well as its natural history.
Natural history… and taonga Māori
Among the early acquisitions for the museum were also taonga Māori. These included the “prow of a Maori canoe” presented by Mr George H Wilson in September 1865, and “1 flax mat (kaituki) embroidered and 1 dog skin mat (Maori)” were received from the New Zealand Society via Mr Barton in November of the same year.
The Colonial Museum’s register lists over 30 entries containing taonga Māori by the end of 1869. By the early 1900s hundreds of taonga Māori filled the rooms of the growing museum.
Acquisition tracking
Hector had his own method of recording taonga and specimens that came into the museum. Each accession lot was given a number and the date of acquisition. For example, the waka prow was identified as the fourth accession to enter the museum in September 1865, so it might be seen as 4/65 or 4/1865. Similar numbers were given to accession lots that contain multiple objects, specimens or taonga. To some this might seem confusing, but as long as you had the number you could quite easily track down the associated information, such as provenance and collector/donor names.
In those early years it was quickly realised that keeping track of the growing collection was not always Hectors strong suit. He was often away on geological surveys so care of the museum was left to men such as Walter Mantell, Alexander McKay, and William Skey. This led to the neglect of the museum and the placement of taonga wherever they could fit. This no doubt led to the eventual display and cataloguing changes.
So why is this important today in 2024?
The Colonial Museum forms the corner stone of Te Papa’s collections and include a number of significant taonga Māori. But many of these have over time lost their provenance history and associated accession information due to the change in directorship from James Hector to Augustus Hamilton in 1904.
Hamilton was not happy with the current arrangement and went about undertaking a complete transformation of the registration and cataloguing process including the classification of collection items into various disciplines (i.e. Māori Ethnography (ME), General History (GH), and Foreign Ethnology (FE)). Prior to this everything was registered in one book in chronological order of accession.
Complex historical data
Sadly, this renumbering of the collection was not done chronologically and at times without the accession information being transferred over to the new system. This has caused many issues for the curators and collection managers who research and care for our taonga Māori.
In my previous role as a repatriation provenance researcher, I had come to find this was an issue when locating information about the kōiwi tūpuna (ancestral remains) obtained by the Colonial Museum. So, when I joined the Mātauranga Māori curatorial team, I knew I wanted to deep dive into this issue and see what can be done about reconciling the Colonial Museum register information with the current registration process developed by Hamilton and still used at Te Papa to this day. For me it was important to be able to reconnect iwi, hapū and whānau with their taonga, after all, wasn’t that one of our main priorities?
Acknowledging our Colonial past
I decided to create a project to deal with this issue and sought the help of Victoria University’s Museum and Heritage Studies students to delve into our colonial past and attempt to reunite these taonga with their original information. It must be noted that there are a number of taonga which have been reconciled, but there are many many more which have not.
This project ‘Acknowledging our Colonial past’ seeks to ensure that all taonga Māori collected during the time of James Hector’s directorship at the Colonial Museum have their provenance and associated information reconciled with their current ME numbers, and therefore made available to our visitors and those connected to them.
This will be a significant contribution the provenance of taonga Māori within Te Papa’s collection, of which a large proportion remain unprovenanced. This is a key factor in fulfilling our Te Papa Strategy, specifically our priority of Hāpai Ahurea, which states that we prioritise “transforming museum practice by centring Māori and communities in the care, understanding, and sharing of their taonga, mātauranga, and kōrero”. By working towards building provenance for our taonga Māori, we are better able to enable our iwi, hapū and whānau to reconnect with their taonga.
This project will also help to uncover the contexts in which taonga were originally obtained, this is essential in ensuring we are acting more openly and honestly in acknowledging our colonial past as a museum. The most exciting part of this project are the stories that will be uncovered. This is the first of a series of blogs that will be written to share with our visitors the progress and stories uncovered as part of this project.
Museums are proactively identifying taonga which should be returned to communities due to their questionable collection methods. This proactive stance demonstrates our commitment to honouring Te Tiriti and working in partnership with iwi and hapū to build a better and more mutually beneficial future. It is also hoped that this project will be of benefit to the wider collections here at Te Papa.
[1] MEMORANDUM CONCERNING THE COLONIAL MUSEUM., Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1866 Session I, D-09, pg3.
[2] Ibid, 1866, pg4.
This project will also be useful in reclaiming Māori art and human remains from the countries that took them away. There is in collecting a line and people to follow.
The men who bought and sold them, or just took them, could have listed the artefacts in overseas Museums such as London as well as the Colonial Museum.
Love these blogs/articles !