Inside our meeting houses, our orators will often use this saying to bring those gathered together as a single group reinforcing the Māori concept of tatou, tatou-we are one people. Indeed, our ancestral narratives chart the ongoing importance of both people and the land. These values were made manifest through the creation, reception, and circulation of our taonga tuku iho (treasures handed down from our ancestors). These were not merely objects-they were conceived, named, and treated as actual people. This essay will address how biography was articulated in a number of different ways within Māori art, both in the physical sense but also in the concept of the biography of an object (Kopytoff; Tapsell, "Flight"). In doing so, it sheds light on the evolving nature of Māori art through periods of distress and celebration, and the ongoing importance and relevance of taonga tuku iho for Māori today. HE WHAKAPAPAMāori identify ourselves as tribal peoples by reciting our whakatauki, which provides our specific connections to the land and through that our whakapapa. In my case I say: Ko Rakaumangamanga te maunga Ko Ipipiri te moana Ko Ngāpuhi te iwi [Rakaumangamanga is my mountain / Ipipiri is my ocean / Ngāpuhi are my people.] Ellis, Te Ao Hurihuri O Ng ā Taonga Tuku Iho 439 Ko Hikurangi te maunga Ko Waiapu te awa Ko Ngāti Porou te iwi [Hikurangi is my mountain / Waiapu is my river / Ngāti Porou are my people.]In this way I lay out my ancestral links with mountains, rivers, and oceans, and through that to my tribes, both of which (as with other Māori groups) are named after a single eponymous ancestor. Apirana Ngata described whakapapa as "the process of laying one thing upon another. If you visualise the foundation ancestors as the first generation, the next and succeeding generations are placed on them in ordered layers" (6). Indeed, Ngata offers no less than five methodologies in relation to whakapapa, each one presenting different layers of ancestors.Our history stretches back some fifty generations to begin with Te Po, the Night-time, when all was dark, before the primal parents Papatuanuku and Ranginui were separated by their children, and the world of light-Te Ao Marama-emerged. Our whakapapa also stretches back some eighteen to twenty generations to the Pacific, to our homeland of Hawaiki, which is generally believed to be somewhere in the Eastern Pacific, around the Cook Islands perhaps. Our ancestor Kupe traveled to this land around the period 1200-1400 (around the same time others were leaving the area to travel to Hawai'i), which spurred others also to make the voyage here, taking about a week and using ocean-going waka. These series of migrations were primarily one way, with no evidence (yet) of any return voyage back to the Pacific. The names of the waka, as well as their navigators and captains, have been passed down orally through the generations, and remain vital tenets of Māori individual and community identity.Once here, our ancestors spread through the new land fairly rapidly, from the top of the N...

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Ki tö ringa Ki ngä räKau ä te PäKehä? 1 Drawings anD signatures of MoKo by Mäori in the early 19th Century ngärino ellis (ngäpuhi, ngäti Porou) university of auckland Ko räkaumangamanga te maunga, Ko ipipiri te moana, Ko te räwhiti te marae, Ko ngäti Kuta te hapü, Ko ngäpuhi te iwi, Ko te nana te tupuna, Ko ngä taiapa rino o te Poka o Whata Paraua ahau. räkaumangamanga is my mountain, ipipiri is my sea, te räwhiti is my marae, ngäti Kuta is my sub-tribe, ngäpuhi is my tribe, te nana is my ancestor, ngä taiapa rino o te Poka o whata Paraua (ngärino) is my name.in May 2013, on a beautiful Monday morning, around 150 members of hapü 'sub-tribes' from around the bay of islands, including ngäti Manu and te Kapotai and the two hapü of te rawhiti (ngäti Kuta and Patu Keha), boarded a hired ferry at opua. along with members of the waitangi tribunal and their retinue, the group visited sacred and important hapü sites. we began on our precious moana 'ocean' and ended up travelling by bus inland to marae 'ancestral community hubs' at waikare and Karetu. this was to be a historic moment as we heard from our kuia 'female elders' and kaumätua 'male elders' about the effects of te tiriti o Waitangi (the treaty of waitangi) 1840 and its insidious legacies for us today. the next day our kaikörero 'speakers' began four days of hearings, in which they frequently referred to documents which our tüpuna 'ancestors' had signed. in their briefs of evidence, they referred to the sacred marks their ancestors had made from their moko 'tattoo' on those documents, especially te tiriti and te Wakaputanga (the Declaration of independence) 1835. it is one thing to study such moko designs on paper or in theory, but it is quite another to see the way that they come alive in the voices of our kuia and kaumätua. so while this article began in a small office at the university, it ended on the sea in the bay of islands.

Traditionally, Taonga tuku iho (Māori ancestral treasures) circulated within complex political, social, and economic landscapes. From the late eighteenth century, however, the influx of Pākehā (non-Māori) resulted in tens of thousands of artworks moving out of Māori communities and into museums overseas. This article considers the dilemma of how to reconnect taonga Māori with whānau (family), hapū (sub-tribe), and iwi (tribe). A digital case study is presented as part of the Ngā Taonga o Wharawhara: The World of Māori Body Adornment project, as one strategy. We created a database we call the Rākai Register, and identified easy-to-use and cost-effective digital technologies such as Google Drive and Google Maps to store and display information about adornments either in public museum collections or which have been sold through auction. In the last section, we present the perspectives of Māori and Pasifika experts engaged with museum collections who reflect on the value and concerns of putting such cultural material online. Glossary of Māori terms: Atua: deity; Aurei: cloak pins of ivory or greenstone;Hapū: sub-tribe; Harakeke: Phormium tenax , fibre used extensively in weaving; Hei matau: fish hook-shaped greenstone adornment; Hei tiki: human-shaped adornment, usually from greenstone; He kupu hōu: some terminology; Heru: fine hair comb; Iwi: tribe; Kaitiaki: guardian; Kaitiakitanga: guardianship; Kanohi-ki-te-kanohi: face-to-face; Kapeu: a greenstone eardrop with the end curved; Kōrero: narratives; Kōrero pūrākau: knowledge review; Kuru: straight greenstone adornment; Mako: shark's tooth, used as an ear-ornament; Mana: prestige; Manaia: spiritual guardian, often shown as a beaked figure; Marakihau: carved figure with a fish tail, human head and a tube-like tongue; Mātauranga Māori: Māori knowledge; Mihi: greet; Pākehā: non-Māori; Papahou: rectangular-shaped carved wooden container for adornment; Pekapeka: a greenstone adornment representing two bats back-to-back; Pōria: an adornment made of pounamu or bone to mimic a ring worn on the leg of a captive bird; Powaka whakairo: box-like container for adornments; Pūpū harakeke: land snails; Rakau momori: Moriori tree engraving; Rākei: to adorn, bedeck; adorn oneself; Rei puta: whale tooth adornment; Tā: Sir; Tamariki: children; Tangata whenua: people of the land, Māori; Tangihanga: funeral; Taoka: Ngāi Tahu dialect version of ‘taonga’; Taonga/taonga tuku iho: treasure, anything prized; Tapu: sacredness; Te Ao Māori: The Māori World; Te Kore: The Nothingness; Te Reo me ōna tikanga: the language and protocols; Tikanga: protocols; Tino Rangatiratanga: sovereignty; Waiata poi: poi song; Waka huia: oval-shaped carved wooden container for adornment; Whakaaro: thoughts; Whakakai: straight greenstone adornment; Whānau: family; Whakapapa: genealogical ascent and descent; provenance; Whakataukī: proverb; Wharawhara: long plumes of the white heron, worn by chiefs on state occasions; Wheu...

Manawa: Pacific Heartbeat:. Celebration of Contemporary Maori and Northwest Coast Art by Nigel Reading and Gary Wyatt. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006. 170 pp. Ngarino Ellis is of Ngapuhi and Ngati Porou tribal descent, a lecturer in the Department of Art History at the University of Auckland, a Barrister and Solicitor of the High Court of New Zealand, an indigenous arts curator, and a writer on Maori arts, architecture, history, and culture. Her current research interests include Ngati Porou carving, moko, gender, and art crime.