Mana Taonga and the public sphere: A dialogue between Indigenous practice and Western theory

Schorch, Philipp; Hakiwai, Arapata

doi:10.1177/1367877913482785

Cited by 22 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…This recognition accords rights and responsibilities, such as being actively involved in the care, interpretation, and display of taonga (McCarthy et al. ; Schorch and Hakiwai ) (Figures and ).…”

Section: Museology and The Articulation Of Māori Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…What is required, then, is a “double vision” (Thomas and Losche ) through which a Pacific collection held in Europe can be (re)approached by placing a dual focus upon the consideration of indigenous epistemologies and ontologies as well as the historicization of ethnographic knowledge (Glass ). Such “double vision” requires collaboration (Biersack ), that is, a cross‐cultural anthropology enacted not only through its analytical focus on cross‐cultural action and appropriation but, importantly, at the level of method, interpretation, and representation of the anthropological inquiry itself (Schorch and Hakiwai ; Schorch and Kahanu 2015b).…”

Section: Toward Reciprocal and Symmetrical Relations Among People Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Māori concept mana taonga , which recognizes the living relationships among objects, people, and mātauranga Māori (knowledge) (Hakiwai , , ; McCarthy ; Schorch and Hakiwai ; Smith , ), offers a fruitful approach for investigating these mutual negotiations. That is, we deploy mana taonga to (re)conceptualize the Cook/Forster Collection from a Māori perspective without, however, perpetuating skewed projections of “West versus Rest” from the other side.…”

Section: Toward Reciprocal and Symmetrical Relations Among People Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Globalizing Māori Museology: Reconceptualizing Engagement, Knowledge, and Virtuality through Mana Taonga

Schorch

McCarthy

Hakiwai

2016

Museum Anthropology

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This article sets out to globalize Māori museology through mana taonga, a concept that is historically grounded and articulated in contemporary museum practice. Mana taonga can be used to reconceptualize issues of engagement, knowledge, and virtuality by exploring ways in which the mutual, asymmetrical relations underpinning global, scientific entanglements of the past can be transformed into reciprocal, symmetrical forms of cross‐cultural curatorship and anthropology in the present. In doing so, the Cook/Forster Collection held at the Georg‐August‐Universität Göttingen, Germany, is being (re)approached from a Māori perspective. This collection embodies the first material evidence of the remarkable encounter between Pacific and European people in the 1700s and materializes the moment when two worlds of meaning became entangled and mutually constitutive with continuing significance for Pacific people and European understandings. Reconnecting both sides of the encounter through research on the history of the collection, its contemporary legacy, and Māori engagements with Western anthropology and museology allows us to correct lopsided (re)interpretations of indigenous cultures in exhibitionary projects and one‐sided accounts of museums and indigenous people that dominate the literature.

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Section: Museology and The Articulation Of Māori Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Toward Reciprocal and Symmetrical Relations Among People Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Toward Reciprocal and Symmetrical Relations Among People Thmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Globalizing Māori Museology: Reconceptualizing Engagement, Knowledge, and Virtuality through Mana Taonga

Schorch

McCarthy

Hakiwai

2016

Museum Anthropology

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“…More recently in NZ 9 Which have been described (Byrne et al 2011b, McCarthy 2011 and employed by numerous authors (for example, Brown and Peers 2006, Poignant and Poignant 1996, Sleeper-Smith 2009. 10 Such as Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision's practice for films with indigenous content (Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision NZ Archive of Film 2014), Te Papa's Mana Taonga principle which guides access and research for the collections (Schorch and Hakiwai 2014), and the Whanganui Regional Museum's policy for use of images of Māori people, places and objects (Whanganui Regional Museum 2009). 11 For a discussion of the principle Mana Taonga at Te Papa see Schorch and Hakiwai (2014).…”

Section: Indigenous Community-museum Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…10 Such as Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision's practice for films with indigenous content (Ngā Taonga Sound and Vision NZ Archive of Film 2014), Te Papa's Mana Taonga principle which guides access and research for the collections (Schorch and Hakiwai 2014), and the Whanganui Regional Museum's policy for use of images of Māori people, places and objects (Whanganui Regional Museum 2009). 11 For a discussion of the principle Mana Taonga at Te Papa see Schorch and Hakiwai (2014). 12 For example, iwi exhibitions (Sciascia 2012), Ngāti Hinewaka's reconstruction of the Makotukutuku whare (Archibald 2007), Hakiwai and Te Whānau-a-Ruataupare's involvement with the Ruatepupuke whare whakairo at the Field Museum in Chicago (Hakiwai 1995).…”

Section: Indigenous Community-museum Engagementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Worlds Apart: Indigenous Re-engagement with Museum-held Heritage: A New Zealand - United Kingdom Case Study

Horwood¹

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<p>For several decades a decolonised museology has been manifest within Western museum practice through, among other things, enhanced indigenous engagement with museums. Even so, indigenous communities still fail to access their cultural heritage housed in museums at distance, when they have no institutional affiliation which can facilitate contact and communication, and because they are often disadvantaged in terms of resources. Furthermore, the museums’ lack of online collection databases, coupled with other practical constraints centred on resources and priorities, inhibits their ability to work with indigenous communities. In post-colonial settler nations the democratisation of museum practice for indigenous collections has been one outcome of the political presence of indigenous peoples and the assertion of indigenous autonomy, as well as the proximity of indigenous communities and museums. Innovative practice has therefore differed from elsewhere as a result of the need for negotiated relationships with indigenous communities and recognition of indigenous authority. This has been the case in New Zealand where Māori epistemological frameworks are acknowledged and there is effective Māori participation within museums. This research addresses this issue of access to indigenous collections when they are held in other countries, and a corresponding gap in the literature, by exploring ways in which Māori communities can negotiate ongoing relationships with museums that hold collections of their ancestral heritage, when they are geographically remote from these collections. Using an analytical framework drawn from assemblage theory, the research has focussed on a detailed, situated New Zealand-United Kingdom case study, and is the first contextualised study over time of a heritage assemblage, comprising a collector and his collection, an indigenous community and a museum. A kaupapa Māori research methodology has enabled the acknowledgement and incorporation of Māori values into the research strategy which is an interdisciplinary approach centred on museum studies, but drawing also on related fields, indigenous knowledge systems and my own professional experience as a curator in a regional museum. The research has also employed methods such as archival research, interviews and hui/focus groups. Through the disassembly of this research assemblage I was able to document the impact of different value systems and epistemologies on access to heritage objects and clarify their meanings for specific communities. A number of entities emerged from this disassembly which were temporally and spatially contingent, and manifest as power, agency and values. Analysis of these entities has revealed their potential for beginning the task of decolonising the museum when power and authority are negotiated within this network and our difficult histories are acknowledged and communicated. Analysis of the data gathered has also reinforced the idea that taonga objectify social relationships in which they are transformed from passive ‘things’ to active actor-entities and as such are capable of enacting relationships prompting contemporary responses from human actors. The research findings show the emergence of an indigenous engagement praxis in which actor-networks are ongoing and reassembling, a process which is visible in contemporary indigenous people’s re-engagement with their museum-held heritage at distance. This praxis combines a range of developments in contemporary museum practice for community engagement which have proved effective in New Zealand and other settler colonies and has potential application elsewhere for community members, academics and museological practitioners when forging relationships based around indigenous cultural heritage collections when distance is a factor.</p>

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Museum Encounters and Narrative Engagements

Schorch¹

2015

The International Handbooks of Museum Studies

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This chapter engages with examples from the museum visitor studies literature that epitomize “the turn to understanding” by investigating the meaning‐making processes of museum visitors through an analytical focus on encounters and engagements. The concept of narrative is introduced as a human meaning‐making tool through which museum encounters can be understood as interpretive engagements. Drawing on a long‐term study of global visitors to the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa), which followed a narrative‐hermeneutic approach to meaning in both theoretical and methodological terms, the chapter offers empirical insights into the multiple layers of interpretive engagements and reveals how visitors narrate their biographies into the museum experience, and the museum experience into their biographies. Both sides, then, become entangled through narrative engagements across cultural differences and thus make sense only in their dialectic relation throughout the museum experience's gestalt. The chapter concludes by pointing to the limitations of a narrative‐hermeneutic approach and how these might be overcome.

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Mana Taonga and the public sphere: A dialogue between Indigenous practice and Western theory

Cited by 22 publications

References 11 publications

Globalizing Māori Museology: Reconceptualizing Engagement, Knowledge, and Virtuality through Mana Taonga

Globalizing Māori Museology: Reconceptualizing Engagement, Knowledge, and Virtuality through Mana Taonga

Worlds Apart: Indigenous Re-engagement with Museum-held Heritage: A New Zealand - United Kingdom Case Study

Museum Encounters and Narrative Engagements

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