Cook Islands

Collection Manager Mama Grace Hutton talks about the Cook Islands collection here at Te Papa

Kaitiaki Taonga Collection Manager Mama Grace Hutton talks to Brian Sagala from the Pacific Days team at 531 PI about some of Te Papa’s Cook Islands collections.

Mu‘umu‘u styles from a Cook Islands mama

Pacific Cultures curator Safua Akeli talks about the mu‘umu‘u (dress) worn in the Cook Islands and those acquired by the Pacific Cultures collection in 2009 from Tepaeru Tereora.

The Cook Islands cowboys: Swagger in the Pacific

Was the ‘Cook Islands Cowboy’ merely a case of photographic staging or was there more to these island outlaws?

Browse the collections from the Cook Islands

From Tīvaevae quilts to the finely carved ceremonial adze – explore our Cook Island collections and stories.

Watch: Cook Islands Tīvaevae, stitched with love

Discover the art of tīvaevae (quilting) with Cook Islands women from the Wellington region.

Tīvaevae

Find out more about treasured quilts made by women in the Cook Islands.

Tivaevae tataura, anthuriums pattern, by Norma Iro

Tivaevae tataura, anthuriums pattern, by Norma Iro, photo by John Daley; photographer; about 1992; Cook Islands. Gift of John Daley, 2012. Te Papa (F.012398)

Read: Lifting the cloak of silence – Tuhinga 21

Lifting the cloak of silence: redramatising clothing as material culture, through an object analysis of Te Aia‘s cloak talks about how many museum collections contain historical items that have little remaining to link them to their original context, like the nineteenth-century blue wool cloak of Te Aia Matai‘apo from the Cook Islands.

Watch: Stories sewn in quilts – Tales from Te Papa

In the Cook Islands, quilts are not just used for keeping warm in bed. Tīvaevae play an important role in the narrative tradition of Pacific culture – Watch Collection Manager Grace Sutton talk about two of these beautiful quilts in Te Papa’s collection

Cook Islands Language Week resource

Early childhood, Primary, Secondary

Learn Cook Islands Māori words, phrases, and pronunciation, and explore aspects of Cook Islands Māori culture.

Pacific Cultures Acquisition: Te Mana o te Ura (The story of dance)

Curator Pacific Cultures Rachel Yates has a taratara with current staff member Kate Ngatokorua about her experiences as Miss Cook Islands.

George Crummer: Picturing the Cook Islands

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries George Crummer built up a business taking pictures of Cook Islanders and general scene photographs in Rarotonga, Aituaki, and Mangaia.

“Photoised”: Bicycle portraits in the Cook Islands

Te Papa has over 240 items from George Robson Crummer including 227 black and white negatives some of which are badly deteriorated. Other than his captions and a few dates we have little information about the images. Curator Nina Tonga looked inside the frame for clues that might help us understand the histories captured within them.

Were there Pacific Islanders at Gallipoli in 1915?

New Zealand recruited men from its colonies and the wider Pacific to fight in both world wars. In the First World War, men from the Cook Islands and Niue enlisted in the New Zealand (Maori) Pioneer Battalion. They were joined by recruits from Tahiti, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, and the Gilbert and Ellice Islands (Kiribati and Tuvalu).

Cook Island photographs and objects

Ruatangaeo: intricately carved ceremonial adze

Adzes with finely decorated shafts and intricate lashings, from the island of Mangaia in the Southern Cook Islands, are distinct to those found anywhere else in the Pacific. They were made in several styles and pedestal adzes, known as ruatangaeo, such as this one are said to be descended from or related to carved deities.

Jigsaw: Tīvaevae manu

Tīvaevae manu (quilt) and matching pillow cases, about 1980s, maker unknown, Cook Islands. Purchased 1995 with New Zealand Lottery Grants Board funds. Te Papa (FE010471)

Read: Rediscovering the collection: Cook Islands material culture in Te Papa Tongarewa – Tuhinga 21

Taonga (treasures) from the Cook Islands have been collected since the Te Papa’s predecessor, the Colonial Museum, opened in 1865. This Tuhinga article provides historical overviews of the Cook Islands collection, discusses its strengths and weaknesses, reviews some factors influencing its growth, and considers the possibilities for future collection development.

The Cook Islands language of kopu tangata (family)

Applied arts lecturer Tuaine-Nurse Robati discusses the meanings of the words Cook Islanders use to talk about immediate family and the wider extended family.

What’s in a name? Cook Islands Language Week 2020

The theme for Cook Islands Language Week 2020 was Kia pūāvai tō tātou reo Māori Kūki ‘Āirani i Aotearoa, That the Cook Islands Māori language may blossom throughout New Zealand. Kaitiaki Taonga Collection Manager Humanities Grace Hutton looks at some of the history of the names and languages of the different islands that make up the Cook Islands archipelago.