A team of University of Otago researchers and weavers will unlock the secrets of one of te ao Māori’s most precious taonga for the first time in more than 200 years. The late Hec Busby was in his 50s when the Hawai’ian ocean voyaging waka Hokule’a landed at Waitangi in 1985. By that point, most … Read more
At the beginning of November, The Spinoff published an article looking at the story of the Māori prisoners taken from Taranaki and imprisoned in Dunedin. The piece reported new research by Toitū Otago Settlers Museum curator Seán Brosnahan that challenged the accepted kōrero, brought home to whānau by survivors, that the prisoners were kept in … Read more
After Europeans arrived, moa were used a metaphor for the feared extinction of Māori themselves, write the authors of a new study. Tracing extinctions that happened centuries ago is difficult, but our collaborative analysis of ancestral sayings, or whakataukī, found that early Māori paid attention to their local fauna and environment and recognised the extinction … Read more
In 1879, the Whakatane meeting house Mataatua was taken apart and put on a ship bound for Australia, then England: “And so began the wanderings of New Zealand’s most-travelled wharenui…” Seeing Mataatua today, one is struck by its beauty. It is easy to imagine a government official being similarly struck in times past, and thinking … Read more