Watch: Kōrero with Moana Parata

Watch Moana Parata recall how Te Maori helped change perceptions of taonga Māori, opened doors, and influenced further international exhibitions. Moana also recalls the impacts and gifts working as Kaitiaki Taonga has brought her, and remembers what it was like in the Dominion Museum, the predecessor of Te Papa.

Transcript

Migoto Eria: Hey Mōrena, Moana, first, I’ll get you to introduce yourself, and explain to us your role.

Moana Parata: Āe, oh well, nei rā te mihi ki a koutou, ki a koe,

Nō ngā uri ahau, ō Ngāti Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Mutunga hoki, te kainga nei ko Hongoeka Marae.

Te whare tū mai rānei, ko Te Hekenga Mai Raro, ko Te Rauparaha te tangata, ko Moana Parata tōku ingoa.

He kaimahi ahau ke roto o Te Whare Taonga Tuku Iho o Te Papa Tongarerewa.

Nō reira, tēnā koe, tēnā koutou.

Migoto: Ko te pātai tuatahi, Moana, he whakamārama ki a rātou kaore te mōhio ko wai rānei, he aha Te Maori? What is Te Maori for those who don’t know?

Moana: Ah, Te Maori. Te Maori is a cluster of taonga tuku iho tūpuna, whakapapa, belonging to kei a rātou mā o tēnei motu.

It’s a whare, really, that houses a lot of taonga Māori.

Taonga Māori that have been put in a place in a whare that a lot of our people would never know they’d been there.

It’s also a place where it was unknown to whānau, hupū, and iwi, they’d been put away for such a long, long time, that it was just to see the day of light, really.

Meaning that before they came together, collectively, I think people didn’t realise – the collectors of that time didn’t realize what they really were – they knew they were something of significance, [but] didn’t really know that they had a connection to the land and the people, and being in a whare of no fixed abode was the telling of Te Maori itself, so, Te Maori was hidden away for a long, long time and the discovery of that was how Te Maori was actually born into Aotearoa, especially here into Te Whanganui-a-Tara, Te Upoko o te Ika.

It has a long, associated history of the unknown.

Migoto: Awesome. We’re just going to ask you to just take us back a little bit, Moana, to give us a snapshot of the time at Buckle Street in the time that Te Maori was touring. If you could just tell us what it was like.

Moana: For me especially, I had no idea of museums at that time, or the Dominion Museum.

So back in 1986, I fell in hapū with my first child and at that time, it was quite – it was – Wellington was alive, actually, it was all talking about Māori this, Māori that – interesting thing was what is it, in my own mind.

So, Te Hokinga Mai was out there at that time, it was noticeable, but to our pakeke it was more than that.

For me, I was quite young, and at that time, carrying my first child, I came into the museum to have a look for myself, and I couldn’t believe it, because you could actually feel – you could feel it before you even walked through that door um through the tomokanga, the waharoa of Te Maori.

And it was, you know, mixed emotions without even knowing. And so walking around and just seeing kaimahi, for me, the reo was right there, right then and there. it was the birth of our kohanga, it started to slowly come into the fold of what was brought out from back of house to the front of house.

And I’ve never seen anything so magnificent in all my life.

It really – for me, I knew I felt connected, but I was uncertain, but I knew they belonged to us, to me – I felt it.

So, during that time of Te Maori, 1986–1987, [I] went back and had a look.

Because the Dominion Museum of that time, it felt old and kind of lonely – I suppose the word would be – and lonely meaning that here we are sitting behind a frame, or a glass case, or, you know, the people working in there at that time probably thought they were doing the right thing of bringing collections or taonga out on the floor but not realizing the position, the mauri, all of these things that was borne of that time to our kaumātua, our pakeke.

And then as time moved on, it became more familiar and that from 1986 to 1990s it was pretty well – things were starting to shift – that time of our kohanga coming alive, ah, kura, you hardly heard of kura at all, our language of te reo Māori wasn’t spoken enough, and it was a time of bringing them out, and it was the surface of opening up those doors for taonga Māori.

So that’s a kind of reflection I had from 1986 up to the 1990s.

Fortunately, by then I had all my children, all four of them, and in 1994, I had an opportunity to come in and do some mahi.

I had no idea what I was walking into, but I thought I’d give it a go because, you know, I’ve gone from an administrator coming straight into a museum.

And my first mahi was registration well, registration books.

So, I was cataloging – the new database had come up – and I was cataloging and I was reading that these kupu, and I thought, geez...

The style of writing was old, the spelling wasn’t very good, in terms of te reo Māori, but, you know, who am I to judge that at the end of the day, when it was quite new to me.

I think the most important thing was bringing our people into an environment to actually pick up and work in a place to make the movement.

Because without our own people, our Māori people coming in, you know, we wouldn’t be here today because it was so important that the taonga where were actually making us move to reconnect to them without even realising it at the time.

Knowing that yes, they belong to me – but how?

So that was the kind of structure I sort of came into – an institution of white coats.

And back in those days, it was interesting because they still had – in the old Buckle Street Museum – they had ethnology.

They had all these foreign names on these doors, it was old school, it was like going back in time with the old library – that was your desk, you know, it was just the environment was amazing.

So, when I finally settled in what you call The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa at that time, from the Dominion Museum, it was all new, so, I was welcomed into what they called the Māori Department.

So, I was under a database structure that took me into the Māori Department and that’s when my whole world opened because I walked into this room and here are kaumātua and I just felt, I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, amongst all these old people’ – being very young – and that was my beginning.

Now, when I first came into that that room I had my colleague, Moana Davey, she was the Collection Manager of Taonga Māori – these were the names that were formally put there.

And then you had Arapata Hakiwai, at that time curatorial, Curator, Awhina Tamarapa, she was the other one – I thank her because she was the one that contacted me to say, “Hey, what are you doing? Come in here,” you know.

So that was my first introduction to Te Maori. This is with even without going into what they used to call the basement.

It took me a long time to go there because there was a workroom next to the office, we had a little library of all Māori books, we had just a desk, and next door was a glass room and that’s where Walter Waipara and Maui Pomare used to work.

And they were – it was a big bench – so there you had some taonga that came out and my job was to really catalogue them and put them onto the database.

That was my very beginning.

As time moved on, I carried on this mahi and I found myself up in – what would you call it? Working for the natural environment.

That was really interesting because I was working with bones, and the bones were moa bone, bird bones, and all these sort of things. And I took an interest in that because it was all about, again, our te taiao.

I was learning more of these scientists’ kōrero, ah, extraordinary names of a science perspective of what a kiwi is in the science language, oh, was just crazy.

So, I was up there for at least a year, and then I came back to the Collection Management area.

It took me, probably, just under a year for me to go into the basement, because that’s how heavy and taumaha the actual taonga were just in that one space.

So, Auntie Bessie – our beautiful Auntie Bessie – she took me in there, Auntie Bessie Walters – she was a kuia from Uawa, from Tolaga Bay, and I was under her wing for a very long, long time, so we spent hours together.

She took me into this room, and she made me sit there and then she left me there all by myself – well, I couldn’t move.

Because I was just sitting here feeling the mauri of the taonga, and I did – I just sat there all afternoon just looking around, just getting myself settled in a space of tapu, it was. And so that was my first lesson ever inside that whare taonga.

There were portraits that were kind of standing on the floor and I looked at that, and I thought, ‘Gee...’

Before my time it was a dirt floor and plus, the taonga used to be rested – well, all the cloak boxes used to be on a dirt floor just packed up and all mixed up together for a very long time.

So our mahi was really to start opening them up and placing them, separating them – but it’s funny because the more interaction you had with them, the more they were telling you what to do, that’s kind of how the mauri worked in that space.

You had to really have an open mind working in a space like that and to manage yourself really.

But I was very fortunate because I just had kaumātua around me 24/7 and so I was very privy to have that even though really not understanding that at that time, I had good guidance.

The old lady wouldn’t tell you everything but because she knew it was going to come eventually, and so that's how my life was.

I couldn't talk about it when I went home, I couldn’t talk about the work I did, because what could I say?

And everybody used to ask me, “Oh, how’s your mahi doing in the museum?”

“What’s it like – it must feel really old?”

And I just said, “I just love it." I said, “I’ve actually come to really like what I’m doing”.

So, from 1994, through that change, a lot of things were happening.

It was a moving time of aspirations to bring Dominion Museum out from an old space and move it into a new space.

So I was quite privy in Buckle Street from 1994 to 2000 – just before 2000.

We were slowly packing up – without even realizing – packing up all the taonga getting them ready to move. It didn’t feel like that, but that’s what we’re actually doing.

The kuia Auntie Bessie and Auntie Betty were the ones that nested most of them for the move.

We had iwi technicians that were brought in from Te Arawa, from Rotorua, to work on Te Tākinga with Rose Evans – at that time, she was our Māori Conservator, Rose, nō Te Āti Awa.

Moana Rose Acuabelna, Te Āti Awa she’s also affiliated to Te Awa Tupua, Te Maunga, the Turo whānau – so that’s her.

We were sort of – it was timeless. That’s how beautiful it was, it was very timeless how we moved around.

And Auntie Betty Rewi.

So, as this was all happening before us, through the hierarchy, it was working with the ministers and also with the Te Papa Board at that time and, of course, when I look and reflect back at the kaumātua – I didn’t have a lot to do with them at that time but it was negotiating the changes of that time and hanging on to our Māoritanga, at that time, where those kaumātua were actually foreseeing what our future would look like and they did a really good job of that – maintaining the integrity of our connection but ownership of taonga Māori that sit behind the walls of our whare taonga.

I’m not just talking about taonga Māori, I’m talking about all the collections because we have a connection across the directorate within Te Papa Tongarewa we've been fortunate also that some have gone home back home into their rohe – whether it's a museum, whether it's their own whare taonga.

The lifetime here that I’ve worked since having my children, are also part of that.

So they’re all in their late 30s, now, so you know when I think of the time ... I’m still here 30 years on, and there’s never a dull moment.

But to really appreciate our pakeke passing all this knowledge down and here we are in Cable Street. I think – The iwi technicians I was talking about, there wasn’t only Te Takinga, but it was Te Hau Ki Tūranga, and that was led by Walter Waipara, Tommy Ward, and the three technicians that they had, that was John Waipara, Regan Harrington, and Alli Brown.

So, a very huge impact of deinstallation of those taonga that have been sitting up in Buckle Street all these years since Te Maori and they’ve made a new home down here in Te Papa on Cable Street.

Migoto: Awesome. I just wanted to bring it back to specific taonga that went Te Maori that I know you’ve got quite a strong familiarity with, but also, the banner that you brought in from Te Maori and that reconnection of people and also the influence of Te Maori through our taonga, if you could talk about that.

Moana: Yeah, what the reflection of all of that is, it actually – we spend more time with our whānau, hapū, and iwi throughout the motu.

Interesting times, because, back in 2008, we were taking taonga out of the country, out of Aotearoa, and the interesting one was – the first one we were working on was Mauri Ora –which I didn’t go – to Japan – but a team went to Japan to take our taonga Māori tūturu taonga Māori of today over there to reconnect.

That was our very first, and then it came home.

And then when I look at other exhibitions following that, Mauri Ora turned into Tohorā,

And Tohorā – it’s first trip was to Washington DC This was really – it was a huge event because we had to liaise – and have permission from the whānau, hapū, and iwi, the descendants of these tūpuna to go. And we did – we got the permission, and the beauty about that – we didn’t know where it was going to take us. It was for 6 months, so it went to Washington DC there for 6 months, then we moved it to Kansas.

What this enabled us to do is to have relationships with the First Nations people and also it gave us access into collections of Smithsonian, some of the Indian reservations of their taonga tuku iho.

It’s amazing how much taonga Māori are in these collections overseas, but we know where they are.

Some we do know who they belong to, and that’s going to be the future, I guess, of how, maybe – Te Hokinga Mai – but we know.

The beauty of that is those relationships that we’ve built up in Washington.

Kansas was a bit different and it was all around whales from a Māori perspective to a science perspective, where we took two beautiful whales, Tū Hononga, a young adult male, sperm whale, and, of course, a beautiful kuia called Hinewainui.

So, these two led this beautiful, extraordinary, taonga Māori, from a te taiao to the science perspective, all around the world.

So from Kansas to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh to Boston, Boston to Canada, over there – and I’m just trying to think of the name it’ll come back to me.

From Canada to Chicago – and that’s where – you know, a lot of our taonga are there, Ruatepupuke is one of them – beautiful whare. Again, the old lady Auntie Bessie – she’s on a video there talking about the whare.

And of course, the staff I met there as we were actually installing Tohorā there – I came across a young man, he took me into his office, and the first thing I saw was the Te Maori banner on his wall.

Well, geez, I could – you felt connected straight away, you just want to have a tangi, all that kind of thing – and I went, “Oh gee!!” and he looked at it and goes, “Yeah, blah, blah,” you know, he was talking away about the exhibition.

And I said to him, “Oh gee, look at that, oh, all the way from home,” that’s all I said to him.

Well, while we’re there installing, after probably 6 weeks, the day before we’re ready to leave, we were just having a little bit of a poroporoaki there with the taonga, and he came along and had the banner wrapped up in tube, so...

He says to me, “Here you go, take it home,” and that’s what I did.

And so you know when I reflect back – and that was back in 2011, yeah 2011 I was in Chicago, and from there on in, you know, I think of all of these things, but that was Tohorā.

When you look at it E Tū Ake it was an exhibition on the old and the new around protesting, land, all of those sort of things, and we took that to Paris.

That was phenomenal because again I got access into the back of house and to view the taonga there, we also helped name them – shared the mātauranga around them and all those sorts of things so we have made all these relationships that we can still go back in and see them From the [Musée du] quai Branly in Paris we moved to Mexico and that was just – that was – man, that was just really out of it.

We have a similarity between our cultures the sun and the moon, so, you know, that was fascinating because you could feel it and also their āhua around their reo, their reo, and also their loss of their land – built on top – so we shared all these commonalities.

Then from there it went to Quebec, which I wasn’t part of, that was another stage and then I was kind of taken off and come into repatriation so I’ve kind of moved around the world with kaumātua and Karanga Aotearoa to reconnect with tūpuna and kōiwi tangata, but also that gave us access into Europe where we did visit a lot of the taonga that are there housed in those institutions which are – which is phenomenal because this is what Te Maori’s done it’s opened up the doors mai rānō.

It’s taught us so much about us – who we are as a nation.

And who said that the reo was dying out?

And who said – you know? It’s all there it’s so strong that it’ll never die out.

We’ve got too many generations coming through at the moment, now, who are fully immersed not only in their reo, but their te taiao, their whenua, their marae, and all of this.

So, I’m in no hurry to leave Te Papa Tongarewa, yet, because I don’t think I’m ready, but I think it's good to sit here and tell the story reflecting back since Te Māori and since the day I started at – what would you call it? Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa – back in that time where we were influenced by our own kaumātua which was brilliant.

It wouldn’t have happened without Te Maori – Te Hokinga Mai but also with our kaumātua going – taking Te Maori off to Australia and visiting all these other places before, yeah.

Migoto: I just wanted to maybe whakakapi our kōrero, but I do have one pātai.

Moana: Āe.

Migoto: ...and this is about the mahi that you do now

Moana: Yes!

Migoto: ...and that the resonating nature of te manawa o te taonga and people and you’re right at that place where you’re reintroducing people with their tūpuna.

If you can just explain to us what that’s like reconnecting our people with their taonga on a daily basis here at Te Papa.

Moana: Really interesting, you know, taonga Māori, the whare taonga Āhuru Mōwai me Te Whare Pora o Te Hineiwaiwa – two rooms, one of whakairo and one of kākahu – and when I look at these two – the foundation of these two rooms they’re not everybody’s place to be.

And I say that really strongly, because it’s either you or it’s not.

And it’s not because I’ve worked in there for so long, it’s because you’re so connected that sometimes you’re driven by our tūpuna and our taonga.

They lead it, I don’t lead it.

My role as a Kaitiaki Taonga Māori Collections Manager Humanities – all these names that get tagged on – it’s more than that.

It’s– for me, my role is to really open those doors up for our whānau and hapū and iwi to reconnect, to research, to come in.

Our rangatahi especially, our rangatahi are so important.

You know, of all the years I worked in Te Papa and I still sit and I think, ‘Oh there’s something missing, what is that?’

It’s bringing our people in to work alongside me. I call it succession planning.

You can't get anything like that in the world without you being in it, and it’s not something that you can apply for, it’s naturally within yourself – with how you’ve been brought up, how grounded you are – it’s all of that.

Because that’s what that environment’s all about.

But like I said, it’s not for everybody but yeah, I’ve been saying, you know, succession planning is the most important thing to bring our people into our te taiao space to work and to research for our whānau, hapū, and iwi throughout the motu because the taonga will only connect to the people that descend from them.

And that’s really important because it’s what comes out of a person, your soul, into what you've made or what you’re making – it’s personal, it’s a very personal thing, and that’s why our old people were very strict [with] entry into a space like that, especially with mokopuna, our tamariki.

I so get that, because the mauri that sits in there is mai rānō, it’s tapu. Mate wāhine, wāhine hapū – all of that.

It’s about looking after ourselves and how we look after ourselves – our hinengaro, because it’s so important that we know what’s really in there, because there’s a lot of taonga that have been brought out of wāhi tapu, there are taonga – we don’t even know where they’re from.

But yeah, they talk to you.

I say that very generously because they do, because that’s how connected – I spend more time 24/7 in the whare taonga, with the taonga, every day more so than at my tari downstairs.

Downstairs, it kind of is a different environment but in a space like the Whare Taonga is home.

It’s beautiful – it’s a beautiful space to work in and that’s my mission at the moment is to work alongside our young people, which I’ve had in the past, and I’m, I’ve got one now, I have one now with me. She’s from Ngāti Koata, Ngāti Toa, and she’s brilliant.

So, that’s my giving back to our people, is that, and back-of-house tours.

We’ve got to find another name for that because it doesn’t sit right.

But when our people come in – it’s countless, I can’t even think – I would have probably taken a million people through our Whare Taonga since the day to Te Papa opened.

I say that generously, because we’ve had – to record all of that is just, you know, what can you say?

It’s just a beautiful place to bring our whānau and hapū and iwi into to learn who they are.

Even though they do know who they are, their whakapapa, but it’s what’s been sitting in our whare for over 250 years.

They’ve made their own whānau, hapū, and iwi amongst themselves.

They have their moments, yes they do!

I can tell you that.

Yeah, there’s never a dull moment.

So, some days I can go in and work in there, and some days I don’t.

It’s just the mauri of the whare at the time, yeah.

Migoto: Choice.