Week 6, pt. 2 - Hirimihi, the Maori Meeting House

Hinemihi is a Maori meeting house built by Tene Waitere in 1880. It originally stood in Te Wairoa which is a buried village between Rotorua and Mount Tarawera. Hinemihi served as an attraction for tourists visiting the landmark famously known as the Pink and White Terraces. When Mt Tarawera erupted in 1886, Hinemihi saved a mare few people from the tonnes of ash and mud that rained down on Te Wairoa. In 1893, Governor General William Hillier Onslow purchased the hut for 50 pounds as a memento of his visit to New Zealand. He had it shipped back to England where is currently still stands at Clandon House in Surrey.

The history of this little marae is rich with matauranga (Royal, Politics and Knowledge: Kaupapa Maori and Matauranga Maori). It contains a lot of traditional knowledge because of all it has seen in the time it has stayed standing strong. Many New Zealand people believe this piece of Maori ancestry should be brought back to Aotearoa where it belongs, but due to it now being owned by the UK’s National Trust, all that can be done is wait until it is offered back. New Zealander’s want to be reconnected to their roots and have their history on Aotearoa soil again. Jim Schuster works for Heritage New Zealand and works in marae restoration. His great grandfather was Tene Waitere, Hinemihi’s carver.

This of course is not a new issue. New Zealander’s are always wanting to get back to their origins and learn as much as they can about the foundations that made them, especially the Maori people due to the colonization of the European in the 19^th century (Walker, Coming of the Pakeha). Even back then when Maori and Pakeha fought, they were fighting for land and anything on it. “If you are … occupying indigenous lands you are … a colonizer” (Indigenous Action Media, 7). Even now, elements of this conflict still exist and Hinemihi is one of them. Maori and European, still debating over who has the rights to aspects of New Zealand culture.

This also relates back to art. Take the carving on Hinemihi for example. They tell a story of our country and its people, as does colonial art. Art is informative, and Maori people see Hinimihi as being a piece of traditional knowledge. The Matauranga Maori that is represented through this piece of art means something to the people of New Zealand and bringing it back to Aotearoa soil is looked at as a way to reconnect with an ancestral past.

Works Cited:

McKee, Hannah. “Hinemihi, the Maori Meeting House far away from home.” Stuff, 22 Oct 2016, http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/arts/85241386/hinemihi-the-maori-meeting-house-far-away-from-home

Royal, Charles. "Politics and Knowledge: Kaupapa Maori and Matauranga Maori." New Zealand Journal of Educational Studies, vol.47, no.2, 2012, pp. 30-37.

Walker, Ranginui. "Coming of the Pakeha." Tauiwi, 1990.

Indigenous Action Media, “Accomplices Not Allies – Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex,” version 2, 05 Feb 2014.

Week 6, pt.1 - Take Me Away ... In Search of Original Dwelling

‘Take Me Away … In Search of Original Dwelling’ by Engles-Swartzpaul and Wikitera is bringing light to the poor and unethical employment that Westerners are giving Maori and Samoan people. The resorts that make up majority of what tourists see when they stay in the Pacific Islands are owned by Europeans, but made and maintained by locals who aren’t getting what they should be when it comes to wage and treatment. They are hired to sell an ideal, western tourists have a “desire to experience authenticity, to escape to Paradise” (Engles-Swartzpaul and Wikitera, interstices 10) which in reality isn’t all that. In the process of trying to please white men, culture has become disconnected from its roots due to the commercialized history and origins of the Islands.

Works Cited:

Engels-Schwarzpaul, A.-Chr., and Keri-Anne Wikitera. 'Take me away ... In search of original dwelling.' A Journal of Architecture and Related Arts, vol. 10, 2010, pp. 42-54.

Week 5 - Colonial Art

The image below is an artwork ‘Tame Iti’ by New Zealand Maori artist Sofia Minson. She uses the traditional western practise of oil paint on canvas inspired by C.F Goldie and Gottfried Lindauer (western artists in the 19^th – 20^th centuries) who created artworks that depicted the colonisation of Europeans in New Zealand, and the vanishing race that Maori quickly became.

Organised European settlement started in 1840, and “within twenty years the European population outnumbered the Maori” (Bell, 142). This would have had a huge impact on the indigenous culture. Their practises and traditional values and beliefs morphed with those of the western world, which is what Minson portrays in her work. Her being a Maori artist and painting Maori people is where her work differs from that of Goldie and Lindauer in the time of colonisation. By Minson having the subject looking straight out into the eyes of the viewer with such mana, the gaze is now between Maori people, not Maori and Pakeha.

Bell points to a number of attitudes and ideologies that westerners had about establishing themselves in Aotearoa and states that art created during this time is “contributing to the ‘takeover’ of New Zealand” (Bell, 142), but art from today is doing just the same. Maori artists such as Minson now have more of a voice to speak on behalf of their people and show that yes, Maori have been influenced by westerners, but they still have a strong presence in Aotearoa today.

Sofia Minson, Tame Iti, 2012, Oil on canvas, Parnell Gallery, Sofia Minson New Zealand Artwork, http://www.newzealandartwork.com/product/tame-iti

Works Cited:

Bell, Leonard. 'The Representation of Maori by European Artists in New Zealand, ca. 1890-1914'. Art Journal, vol. 49, no. 2, Depictions of the Dispossessed (Summer 1990), pp. 142-149.

Minson, Sofia. "About Minson's Maori Oil Portaits." Sofia Minson New Zealand Artwork, 2017, http://www.newzealandartwork.com/contemporary-maori-portrait-series