The movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened in New Zealand on 17 December. But did you know the franchise has a connection to the warriors of 19th century Fiji? Fijian weapons had a small role in the imaginings for one of the most successful science fiction films of allRead more

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giants with rachael-39

This is the third blog in our series about the real people behind the eight Weta Workshop-crafted models featured in Gallipoli: The scale of our war. The previous two blogs have been about Spencer Westmacott and Percival Fenwick. This one focuses on Colin ‘Col’ Warden, shown in this pre-war photograph,Read more

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Whale’s tooth on a braided necklace

Tabua (pronounced “tambua” – the b has a ‘mb’ sound) are pierced and braided whales’ teeth, originally taken from the lower jaw of sperm whales. Fijians consider them to be kavakaturanga (chiefly items). Pacific Cultures curator Sean Mallon highlights some personalised tabua from the collections.Read more

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This week is the first-ever Fiji language week with the theme Noqu Vosa, Noqu iYau Talei: My Language, My Treasure. The Pacific Cultures curators have been blogging daily with Fiji related stories from the collections and exhibitions at Te Papa. Today’s second to last blogpost is from Rachel Yates (Curator PacificRead more

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Whale’s tooth on a braided necklace

The first-ever Fiji language week begins today with the theme Noqu Vosa, Noqu iYau Talei: My Language, My Treasure. The Pacific Cultures curators will be blogging daily with Fiji-related stories from the collections and exhibitions at Te Papa. This is a tabua, a type of Fijian cultural valuable, made fromRead more

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In: Art, Pacific

An abundance of tree ferns is one of the botanical characteristics that New Zealand shares with many of the larger Pacific Islands. The number of different species is not especially high, but tree fern individuals feature prominently in many Pacific and New Zealand landscapes. Following my work in Fiji, I’veRead more

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In my previous post about the Fiji collections, I included a few images of Fijian weapons from Te Papa’s collections. In this blog post I thought I’d take the Fiji weapon story a bit further and into popular culture. Here, I just want to highlight the small contribution Fiji weapons offered toRead more

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Which vegetables do you think have charisma?  In Tuesday night’s television programme Radar Across The Pacific, comedian Te Radar was given “fiddle fern” to eat.  He seemed to be impressed by it, describing it as having charisma. Te Radar was eating the young, unfurling fronds of a fern.  These still-coiledRead more

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A highlight of our Fijian expedition was a trip to Kadavu, a medium-sized island south of Viti Levu. Kadavu is a priority for Conservation International.  Four species of bird occur there and nowhere else in the world.  However, little is known of Kadavu’s bryophytes, lichens, and ferns, and it was ourRead more

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