Stories and Taonga: Presented by Joseph Potangaroa and Haami Te Whaiti
Toi Wairarapa Creative Winter Workshops
August 2011
Aratoi Wairarapa Museum of Art & History
“Discover ways to conserve and enliven for future generations objects, artefacts, marae, legends, whanau heirlooms: all that is tangible and in-tangible treasures. See some of our regional museum’s collection.”
Joseph Potangaroa can remember as a boy playing with a ancient pouanamu (greenstone) mere in the backyard of the family home, and cringes at the thought of whacking it into fence posts – the same mere that is now a precious object held at Aratoi.
But looking back, he sees that act as another “story” in the life of the toanga (treasure).
It is the intangible value of historical objects that Potangaroa primarily addresses during his half of the talk – what one might call the relationship between an object and its stories.
Taonga, like people, have a life story.
They are born of human creativity, and eventually they die when humans choose to ignore or destroy them (or destroy them through ignorance).
Between their beginning and end, a third fate can befall a taonga, and that is becoming “lost.”
Sometimes this segues into finality. Other times it is a matter of years or generations till the object is “rediscovered.” The taonga of Wairarapa Maori have experienced both.
The cultural reawakening of the past few decades has lead to efforts to re-build the bridge to the past, especially through oral histories of which Potangaroa has played an important part.
But, as anyone who has conducted oral histories with old people knows, the past is often second-hand even to them.
Which is why Potangaroa’s separation of taonga preservation into “the practical and the sacred” is significant.
While preserving their stories may seem less significant than the preservation of the objects themselves, both are taonga in their own right and each brings life to the other.
We normally associate taonga with stories from the past, but objects only keep their vitality with regular retelling of their stories, and the addition of new ones.
Potangoroa illustrated this point with a photo of himself, friends and their children at Castlepoint Beach (Rangiwhakaoma).
They were there not just to have fun but to pass on the stories of Rangiwhakaoma.
The day itself created a new story for the children who will inevitably look back with fond memories to the experience.
The past always begins with the present.
At the end of the day, despite all our modern technologies, the past slips from our fingers just as much as it ever has.
After its conquest by Alexander the Great, Egypt’s new Greek ruling class adopted the country’s ancient religious practices including mummifying their dead, but whereas the faces of the mummies in earlier ages were stylised, Greek artists were employed to paint portraits of the deceased.
After a few generations, the memories of the individuals themselves were inevitably forgotten, (much like people in old family photographs) and the mummies were put out of the way where they were eventually covered by the desert sands.
During the nineteenth century these mummies were rediscovered and collected, and given the name Fayum Portraits after where they were found.
The only knowledge which remains of these unique individuals is contained within the faces of these amazingly realist portraits.
The Wairarapa is full of portraits too, the facts of which have been lost in time.
These come in the form of stories which have been passed down for 28 generations.
One is the story of Kupe and the Octopus who battled along the Wairarapa coast from Rangiwhakaoma to Palliser Bay (Kawa Kawa), a story which Potangaroa will have told to his children on their day out.
Wherever the Octopus touched the shore is recognised today as being a dangerous place – a sort of Maori OSH, as Potangaroa put it.
But the purpose of such tales is more than just pragmatic, they are awe inspiring.
But there is also a place for the small myths which are passed on from generation to generation and this is what, I think, Potangaroa is attempting to touch upon – some memorable individual or family anecdote that inspires retelling from one generation to the next, because of its humour, humanity, poignancy etc.
Times Past - 100 Years Ago Wairarapa Times Age March 31 2011
Few of the 45,000 people who live in the Wairarapa and many more who visit it, know that Kawa Kawa was home to some of the first Polynesian settlers.
The area between Lake Onoke and Cape Palliser was the subject of one of the most comprehensive archeological research projects ever carried out in New Zealand.
The Otago University Archeological Research Study 1969-1972 covered 1700 square miles and 400 archeological sites.
There had always been a sense, Haami Te Whaiti says, that Maori had settled in the Wairarapa some time after the first migrations.
However, this research proved that Kawa Kawa was inhabited almost right from the beginning, (with the valleys inland from the beach being considerably warmer than one might expect, one participant pointed out).
It is worth remembering that many of the tales of Kupe and the Octopus take place along the Wairarapa’s east coast and Kawa Kawa.
Discovered at one of these archeological sites, about two kilometres up the Makatukutuku Valley, was the oldest remains of a building in New Zealand - a sixteenth century wharepuni (sleeping house).
A recreation of this wharepuni can now be visited at Te Papa, constructed by Ngati Hinewaka, a hapu of Ngati Kahungunu, who are descended from the people who built the original.
But first they had to learn to build using traditional materials and building techniques.
While the recreation is a significant achievement, the original site, like many others, has been lost to the future, in this case after being planted with pine, (much to the obvious dismay of some of those present who had participated building Te Papa’s wharepuni).
“A Maori waka discovered rotting under trees on a Featherston farm, followed by years of exposure to the elements in a yard at Cobblestones Museum, is getting some tender loving care at Aratoi, Wairarapa's museum of art and history in Masterton.
The waka is the centrepiece of an exhibition for Matariki, the Maori New Year. It's on loan from Cobblestones and will be housed at Aratoi to help stabilise its condition.
Little is known about the waka and Aratoi director Marcus Boroughs says he'd love to hear from anyone who could give more details about the old canoe, presumably used to fish on Lake Wairarapa.” (Wairarapa Times Age 2005)
The waka now sits high up on a wall in the backroom at Aratoi. Little more is known about its history
One of Aratoi’s prized possession is a portrait of rangatira (chief) Tawhirimatea Ngatuere Tawhao. He was said to be 117 years-old when he died in 1890; if so, he was born as early as 1772.
“It is certain that his life spanned the whole period of Pakeha colonisation, and that he had to deal with its effects in Wairarapa when already an elderly man.
He showed a marked capacity to change in the face of the new. He was a strong character and asserted his traditional authority against both younger men and Pakeha newcomers.” (www.rangitane.iwi.nz)
It was Ngatuere, legend has it, who faced up to a Hau Hau war party in the mid-1860s, and convinced them to return north without making trouble.
His portrait, painted by Gotfried Landaur in 1880, passed through family hands till eventually no-one knew who the subject was.
Eventually it was rescued from being rolled up under a bed and an advertisement placed in the Women’s Weekly magazine asking if anyone knew the identity of the sitter.
By the time the painting was gifted to Aratoi, it had suffered, amongst other things, being glued to plywood and had a hole where a kitchen door handle had passed through it.
The family didn’t know what to do next till one of its members had a dream that it should be given to Aratoi.
For the first six months of its restoration, the painting lay flat on its face while the plywood was scrapped back to the glue, which was then carefully removed. It was only then that it was put on new canvas, stretched, and restoration of the actual painting begun.
One day when the gallery has money, Aratoi director Marcus Borroughs says, the original frame will be restored and reunited once more with the painting.
Burroughs slides open large drawers to reveal beautiful Maori cloak, including one made using Kiwi feathers which was supposedly given to a doctor for saving a baby’s life.
For years it hung on a stair rail so portions of the feathers have been worn down.
Another was made as a fundraiser at the ANZAC Hall in Featherston during World War I.
Among the more fascinating recent additions to Aratoi’s collections is the stone carving collection of Russell Broughton, a Masterton crayfisher, comprising objects he found himself and others he bought.
The huge number of bone fish hooks in the collection is a testament to the amount of activity by Maori on the Wairarapa’s east coast.
“In the Maori world view, all things were linked by genealogies (whakapapa). They included humans, gods, plants and animals.”(www.teara.govt.nz)
Perhaps two of the most special taonga in the backroom of the museum are a pair of huia, one male and one female.
Huia were the only bird in the world where the male and female had different shaped beaks.
The male would use his shorter, thicker beak to break into logs etc. The female would then use her longer, thinner beak to extract insects.
Huia were abundant throughout the Wairarapa in bush like that shown being decimated in a photograph taken by Charles Bragge at Eketahuna in the late 1870s.
The last confirmed sighting of a Huia was on 28 December 1907 in the Tararuas.
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