Taonga Moriori: Recording and Revival, by M. Solomon and S. Thorpe

Journal of Material Culture17(3) 245 –263

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J o u r n a l o f

MATERIALCULTURE

Taonga Moriori: Recording and revival

Maui Solomon and Susan ThorpeHokotehi Moriori Trust, Rekohu, Chatham Islands, New Zealand

AbstractMoriori culture is one of the most researched in the Pacific, and yet perhaps one of the least well understood. Until the last 30 or so years, history had consigned the Moriori people of the Chatham Islands near New Zealand to being defined as extinct and almost landless. Today Moriori are in a spirit of revival and reconnection with their identity and culture. Through the gift of the Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways (TKRP) software system, laser scanning of rakau momori (tree carvings), and involvement in the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) Project, Moriori are developing an extensive database of cultural landscapes, elder stories, traditional practices and digital records of taonga. The next stage of this research will involve development of an intranet guide to taonga Moriori (ancestral artefacts) in overseas collections. Here we explore the methods and technology that Moriori have been using to assist in the process of preserving taonga for present and future generations to enjoy.

Keywordscultural revitalization, heritage landscapes, indigenous uses of digital technologies, Moriori, museums and source communities, virtual repatriation

Moriori are descended from Polynesian settlers who travelled from the south-eastern Pacific Islands to the archipelago they named Rēkohu (main Chatham Islands) and Rangihaute (Pitt Island), 800 kilometres to the east of Aotearoa/New Zealand, some 800–1,000 years ago. Here they developed a unique culture founded on peace and the outlaw-ing of warfare and cannibalism. They maintained this way of life for over 500 years, holding fast to their ideals even when their lives were threatened by successive waves of invaders. The Moriori commitment to peace is known as Nunuku’s law, after the elder who called his people together around the 16th century to denounce violence and killing.

Corresponding authors:Maui Solomon, General Manager, Hokotehi Moriori Trust, Rekohu, Chatham Islands, New Zealand. Email: [email protected] Thorpe, Projects Manager, Hokotehi Moriori Trust, Rekohu, Chatham Islands, New Zealand. Email: [email protected]

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246 Journal of Material Culture 17(3)

From the late 18th century, however, the people of Rēkohu experienced a series of trau-matic events, which resulted in dramatic changes to the island’s ecology and to indigenous relationships with land and sea. In 1791, a British ship, Chatham, was blown off-course and landed on Rēkohu. Its Captain, Lt Broughton, planted a British flag; claiming the island in the name of King George III, he re-named it Chatham Island. During this visit, in a misun-derstanding with the ship’s crew, a Moriori named Tamakaroro was killed whilst defending his fishing nets – the first casualty in a series of acts of aggression by outsiders that would devastate the archipelago’s indigenous population. From the early 1800s, sealers and whal-ers arrived, taking marine mammals in great numbers but giving little back except diseases to which local people had no immunity. Whereas in 1791 the population was thought to be around 2,500, by 1830 it had dropped significantly as a result of these introduced illnesses and the devastation of the people’s main food and clothing source – fur seals.

In November 1835, furthermore, two New Zealand Māori groups (from the tribes Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama) invaded Rēkohu from Wellington on an English sailing ship, taking advantage of Moriori willingness to share resources and their commitment to peace. In response to the initial attacks, Moriori men gathered at their traditional tribal meeting place near the outlet of the large lagoon on the main island, Te Whānga, to debate their response. This gathering of as many as 1,000 decided to hold fast to their pacifism – a sacred covenant between the gods and their ancestors. In the events following this assembly, some 230 Moriori were killed in the initial slaughter and the rest were enslaved. Some were taken to New Zealand and traded into slavery,1 while others were taken by force by Ngāti Mutunga to the Auckland Islands (King, 2000[1989]: 16). The Moriori population plummeted from 1,663 people in 1835 to only 101 by 1862 – the death of 1,562 Moriori in 27 years as a combined result of pākehā (European) disease, Māori inva-sion and neglect on the part of the New Zealand government.2 Slavery officially ceased in 1863, almost a quarter century after it was abolished on mainland New Zealand.

For many years following these traumatic events. Moriori were written out of the historical record by scholars who dismissed them as having died out or as being dis-persed and dislocated from their ancestral lands. Thirty years ago the revival of Moriori identity and culture began with the screening of a documentary about Moriori that fea-tured two Moriori descendants, Margaret and Charles Solomon (grandchildren of Tommy Solomon),3 tracing their roots back to Rēkohu.4 Today, through their representative body, Hokotehi Moriori Trust (Hokotehi), Moriori are in a spirit of revitalization and reconnec-tion with their identity and culture. Through an ambitious and wide-ranging digitization strategy, Hokotehi is actively preserving, reviving and promoting Moriori identity, cul-ture, language and heritage for present and future generations, using digital technologies to record their cultural landscapes, elder stories, traditional practices and other taonga. The next stage of research, explored in more detail below, will involve the recording of intergenerational storytelling and the development of an intranet guide to taonga Moriori in overseas collections.

Documenting Moriori in the past

In its efforts to identify, preserve and reassemble both taonga Moriori that remain on Rēkohu and those that are dispersed throughout New Zealand and abroad, Hokotehi is



Solomon and Thorpe 247

able to draw on as well as challenge a long history of anthropological, archaeological and historical research, which included the collecting, cataloguing and classification of Moriori cultural heritage. In much of the scholarship, Moriori have been persistently misrepresented, yet they kept their own records too. In 1862, Hirawanu Tapu, who was aged 11 years at the time of the 1835 Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama invasion,5 compiled a list of 1,663 Moriori people who had been alive immediately prior to this event. This was achieved by visiting the surviving elders of the villages on Rēkohu and Rangihaute and painstakingly recalling and recording the names of all those who were killed and eaten, beside whose names two crosses were placed; those who had been killed but not eaten; and those who had died of kongenge or despair, against whose names one cross was placed. These names and a written record of migration stories, karakii (ancient prayers), customs, traditions and rongo (songs) were compiled in a 173-page petition and delivered to Sir George Grey (then Governor of New Zealand) in an effort to document these injustices and to bring the plight of Moriori to the attention of New Zealand admin-istrators.6 The list does not include the names of many of the children who were killed but whose names were not remembered, nor the names of those who had managed to escape to seek refuge in New Zealand or further afield. Tapu’s list concludes with the names of the 101 Moriori still alive in 1862 (Figure 1). Their legacy has been preserved

Figure 1. A group of Moriori from the Chatham Islands, including T Solomon’s father, 1877. Alfred Martin Collection, Canterbury Museum, 19XX.2.481. Reproduced with permission.




in the list of names on the central post (Ka Pou a Rangitokona) in the Moriori marae (traditional gathering place) Kōpinga (Figure 2), and in this statement of remembrance:

Nga Raumahara – you are not forgotten,

Your sacrifice was not in vain,

Your legacy of Peace and Hope endures still.

In advancing its program of revival since the mid 1980s, Hokotehi recognizes and honours Tapu’s work. His efforts as an archivist and petitioner for his people have resulted in an impressive legacy that is now part of the foundation for the recovery of re Moriori (language), karakii (prayers) and rongo (songs), as well as an invaluable histori-cal record of the events that befell his people.7

In contrast to these taonga recorded by Tapu, the legacy of archaeological and ethno-graphic fieldwork on the island is problematic. Around the turn of the 20th century,

Figure 2. Ka Pou a Rangitokona. © Maui Solomon.




ethnologists like Stephenson Percy Smith (Surveyor General for New Zealand) and Henry Devenish Skinner (zoologist, curator at Otago University Museum and later Director of the Otago Museum) began to conduct research on Rēkohu. These men were influential in the ethnographic literature that would emerge on Moriori, much of it dele-terious (see, for example, Houghton, 1976; Jefferson, 1955; McFadgen, 1994; Park, 1976; Richards, 1962; Simmons, 1962, 1964, 1965; Skinner, 1919, 1923; Sutton 1977, 1985). Smith, a surveyor employed by New Zealand’s colonial authorities, had diffu-sionist interests in Polynesian migration and settlement. He worked with the ethnologist Elsdon Best to categorize Moriori as coming from an earlier Melanesian (‘Maruiwi’) migration forced out of Aotearoa/New Zealand, thus claiming a precedent for the coloni-zation of Rēkohu by Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama, and of Aotearoa/New Zealand by Europeans. Smith was co-editor of the Journal of the Polynesian Society from 1892 to 1922, the periodical of an organization formed principally in response to the pākehā (European) notion that Māori, like Moriori, were a dying race (Byrnes, 2010). Skinner (1923), in his monograph The Morioris of the Chatham Islands, opposed the Maruiwi theory and tried to discredit Best and Smith’s version of Moriori origins, but without much success.

More systematic recording and archaeological fieldwork commenced in the 1950s with the work of Christina Jefferson (1955) on rākau momori (carvings into living trees, also known as dendroglyphs), and continued in the 1960s with the work of David Simmons (1962, 1964, 1965) and Rhys Richards (1962). In the 1970s and 1980s, survey work based at Otago University started on the islands. None of this work was carried out with Moriori involvement, let alone with any thought about participatory research. With the exception of Doug Sutton’s later writing (1985) in which he, like Skinner before him, challenged the Best–Smith Moriori origin myth, archaeological work on Rēkohu tended to reinforce erroneous theories on settlement and adaptation that presented Moriori as unsettled fisher-gatherers, largely because fieldwork was focused on the study of salient surface evidence, such as coastal middens and burials. It could also be said that the emphasis on these particular aspects of the archaeological record directed the research priorities – the result being a self-perpetuating methodology where the ends justified the means. Sutton however also attempted to refute the notion, popularized by observers after 1835, that the Moriori rejection of warfare was cowardly and that Moriori were a ‘timid race’ (see for example, Hunt, 1866: 34). He argued that the way of life that devel-oped on Rēkohu constituted a skilful adaptation to the environment and defined Moriori culture as one that used natural resources effectively (Blank, 2007; Sutton, 1985).

Collecting Moriori

Even before outside scholars began arriving on Rēkohu, the islands were being plun-dered by amateur collectors. The irresistible urge to collect and remove specimens, sam-ples, knowledge and treasures from Rēkohu began in the early 1800s, and has continued ever since. In the late 1860s, people like William Baucke (a school teacher on the main island and a fluent speaker of Moriori), Alexander Shand (the first magistrate and collec-tor of customs duties) and Henry Hammersley Travers (botanist and ornithologist) removed human remains from burial sites. Their collecting activities, like those of their




successors, focused on kōimi (the bones of ancestors), hundreds of which were taken from the islands. Theft of taonga (including both artefacts and human remains) was often audacious. Collectors openly discussed and wrote about their activities, sometimes seek-ing payment for their work. As Travers (1868: 175) wrote in a letter to his father:

… although I found the remains of numerous skeletons in the woods on Pitt’s island, I was unable to get one in good condition; I have, however, brought several authentic skulls, which will probably be interesting for ethnographical purposes.

These actions were boldly carried out because they weren’t considered to be unlawful or even inappropriate. For many collectors and their agents, the removal of Moriori remains was justified under the banner of protecting the remnants of what they saw as a dwindling culture. The effects of disease, killing and invasion on the Moriori popula-tion had indeed been cataclysmic, and the mythology of a ‘dying race’ became both inspiration and justification for these acts. Body parts of ancestors were sometimes removed simply for financial gain: an account from the 1830s records that a surgeon from the whaling ship Harriet was observed at Waitangi beach, ‘with an assistant, a small hammer and a bag, knocking the teeth out of numerous skulls laying about the beach, belonging to the original islanders’. The teeth were apparently to be sold for use as dentures (Richards, 1982).

Moriori, like their Polynesian cousins throughout the Pacific, buried their dead with taonga such as necklaces, adzes and other symbols of importance to assist them during their journey in the afterlife. These taonga were also plundered and there are significant collections in museums throughout Europe and the United States. As Solomon (2005) has argued, the theft of kōimi, and associated adzes, necklaces, bone pendants and other taonga from urupā (burial places) was a misappropriation of tangible cultural property.

In addition to smaller, portable items, the collecting of large taonga such as the dis-tinctive Moriori rākau momori8 (Figure 3) and rock carvings was also widespread. At various points during the late 1880s, 1920s and 1960s, whole trees were cut down and removed from the archipelago, instead of simply being recorded in drawings or photo-graphs. Five tree trunks, purchased from a schoolteacher on the island, are now in the British Museum,9 while others reside in Canterbury, Auckland, and Otago museums in New Zealand.10 The carvings are complex and diverse portrayals of ancestors and events – many of them memorials for departed loved ones. The belief was that, by carving the image into the bark, the spirit of the departed would be infused into the tree, which then acted as a kind of portal to the spiritual homeland. These places are very tapu (sacred) and are used for inspiration, communication, meditation and reflection. Given the great spiritual significance of the trees and carvings, Moriori today feel that these ancestral taonga, like their kōimi, should be returned to their rightful resting place on Rēkohu. The trees have the same significance as burial areas and should be treated as such.

Legacy of peace and reclaiming Moriori identity

The events of the last 170 years have been traumatic for Moriori. It would be understand-able if Moriori had been overwhelmed by the apparent hopelessness of it all. However,




the descendants of those who survived have proved to be very resilient and they are now working hard to ensure that their ancestors did not die in vain. Today there are over 1,000 people who are officially registered as Moriori, though it is estimated that as many as 8,000 may have connections to Moriori ka rāpuna (ancestors). Unfortunately, due to the historical alienation from ancestral lands, most live away from Rēkohu, while those remaining on the islands (like indigenous peoples in many other colonized nations) face the daily challenges of being a minority in their own lands. The relationship between Moriori and Ngāti Mutunga on Rēkohu today continues to be a difficult one especially since Moriori began reclaiming their identity and culture 30 years ago on the islands. In May 2011, two rākau momori were attacked – one with a machete and the other shot at with a gun – both in the carved head, which for Moriori (like Māori) is the most tapu part of the body. Another incident in recent years involved the desecration of another wāhi tapu (sacred place) known as Nunuku’s Cave. However, recent endeavours have been made to bridge the divide between the two imi/iwi (tribes) by working together on initiatives such as joint fisheries management plans and other projects. Moriori believe that a truth

Figure 3. Rakau Momori at Hapupu. © Hokotehi Moriori Trust.




and reconciliation process is needed in order for the tragedies and ghosts of the past to be laid to rest and for all the diverse peoples of the islands to build a more peaceful and prosperous future together.

The revival that began with the television documentary in 1980 gained momentum with the erection of a statue to Tommy Solomon in 1986 (now one of the most frequently visited places for tourists on the islands) (Figure 4). The movement gathered further impetus when historian Michael King agreed to work with Moriori to write a book on our history. The critically acclaimed Moriori: A People Rediscovered (2000[1989]) was one of the first examples of truly collaborative work with Moriori and ensured Michael’s memory has a special place in Kōpinga Marae. In 1988, a Treaty of Waitangi claim was filed, which was reported on in 2001.11 The report upheld Moriori claims, recognising us as tchakat henu tuturu, or the true tangata whenua of Rēkohu. To date, no settlement on the claims has been reached; negotiations began in 2004 but were abandoned in 2008 by the government due to other political priorities – yet another example, if one is needed, of governmental neglect of these islands and their people.

Figure 4. Tame Horomona-Rehe's Statue at Manukau. © Maui Solomon.




Following the claim, the imperative to foster Moriori identity and culture continued with the 1997 construction of the first modern Moriori marae or gathering place, Kōpinga (which means a grove of kōpi trees,12 so named because they were places where the ancestors gathered) (Figure 5). The marae was opened in January 2005 in a celebration that saw the largest gathering on the island in over 160 years. It has become the home base for Moriori to meet on the island as well as a centre of teaching and learning for the wider community. It will also be the base for the establishment of a Peace Centre on Rēkohu in the coming decade.

Hokotehi’s most recent achievements have been to develop relationships with Peace Trusts and the New Zealand National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Otago University. A deed of gift has been signed with the New Zealand Government for a fund to foster Moriori identity, culture, language and heritage, and the revival has been enhanced by an exhibition touring New Zealand museums and galleries, called Moriori – People of the Land, and the release of a special edition set of school Journals pub-lished by the Ministry of Education and written in conjunction with Hokotehi that focuses on correcting past inaccuracies about Moriori in the New Zealand education curriculum. The journals were blessed at Kōpinga Marae in March 2011.

In Hokotehi’s work alongside other indigenous communities struggling to revive cul-ture and identity (especially those that have few or no fluent native language speakers alive), it has recognized common strands. These include:

Figure 5. Koopinga Marae. © Maui Solomon.




1. The need to assert control over naming (particularly of landscapes and places) and autonomy in the manner in which research is carried out (through use of ethi-cal principles and practice). These are the first steps in reclaiming history and heritage.

2. The search for innovation in the way heritage is recorded, often resulting in push-ing aside existing forms, templates and recording methodology in favour of an approach rooted in the rich traditions of Moriori, that involves story-telling as a connector of people to place, as well as being intergenerational and carried out in the landscape.

We have talked here about the comparative silence of Moriori voices in heritage records. In response to this, Hokotehi’s recording work is now centred on the words, names and memories of our elders. Naming and knowledge of place is known to be strongly connected to retention of guardianship roles and duties – ‘a sense of place’. Despite problems caused by poor or inappropriate research in the past, Hokotehi has also consciously adopted an approach in line with its core values of ‘sharing, unity and listening’, which has resulted in digitization initiatives in an emphasis on digital reciprocity and a desire to work with like-minded research partners, such as the Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways (TKRP) originators in Australia (see below), the Intergenerational Native Digital Story-telling project in the Southwestern United States (http://nativedigitalstorytelling.blogspot.com/) and Footprints of the Ancestors, a Hopi initiative (http://www4.nau.edu/footprints/), as well as the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) case study research pro-gram (IPinCH, http://www.sfu.ca/ipinch/) and the Reciprocal Research Network, both based in Canada.13 The notion of sharing may seem in conflict with the idea of asserting control, but we have found that the principles of generosity of spirit and sharing of knowledge are enhancing Hokotehi’s ability to hold on to the mana or ethos of what it means to be Moriori.

Moriori cultural database work

In 2005, Hokotehi resolved to undertake a comprehensive cultural database project that involves re-recording archaeological evidence in a way that combines elder knowledge and experience, oral traditions and recollections of past land-use and events. Beginning with a field trial in 2006, this work has focused on cultural landscapes, and aims to define Moriori settlement in Moriori terms, reflecting our deep attachment to and affection for the islands. None of this happened spontaneously. The fieldwork and subsequent research design involved trial, error and adjustment. When Hokotehi started to combine tradi-tional knowledge with instinct and improved archaeological methodology, it was found that we had the right mix that could honour the precedent set by our ancestors in their support of Hirawanu Tapu’s research.

The Hokotehi fieldwork is responsive to environmental indicators including land-scape change brought about by ecological processes, such as erosion. Hokotehi record-ing uses a method that prompts the description of a range of aspects of a heritage landscape according to the following questions:




• What can be physically observed?• What are the recording conditions (weather, season, landscape use, landscape

change)?• What archival information is available about the place?• How accurate is the information above and how may this be tested? This is done

by drawing out reflections from elders and land-users about traditional uses of and events associated with the area and accuracy of names.

Interviewee responses to these questions are filmed and film-clips are processed using the TKRP software, which enables tagging of key words in the digital record so that data can be sorted, transcribed and translated. If, in the description of a place, the speaker talks about ancestral events and then moves to information about traditional practices such as fishing, the film-clip can be cross-referenced to all subjects mentioned. The out-come is an on-site record that captures the immediacy and relevance of the interviews. Often this is information that may not otherwise have been captured in a paper-based assessment.

The purposes of the cultural landscape database are threefold. Firstly, it provides a framework for recording Moriori places and events. Secondly, it provides a platform for informing the revival of culture and identity. Lastly, it is part of a cultural redress pack-age as part of the Treaty negotiations with the New Zealand government.

Archaeology of landscape

Hokotehi’s digitization strategy was stimulated in part by the distinct lack of reference to the indigenous culture and traditional knowledge in previous heritage recording on Rēkohu. In the 1960s and 1970s archaeological surveys of surface evidence recorded over 700 ‘sites’, including middens, burials, tree and rock carvings, and artefact loca-tions, now incorporated into the New Zealand Archaeological Association (NZAA) reg-ister. This selection reflected a lack of engagement with local people since it focused on emergency recording of surviving physical evidence at the expense of culturally impor-tant landscapes.

The limitations of carrying out archaeological work that is separate from local indig-enous knowledge became apparent when the Moriori cultural survey work started in 2006. NZAA recording forms ask for information about evidence such as grid points, dates of recording, descriptions and guides to re-location. They do not enquire about cultural values and heritage landscapes, or the relationships amongst these collections of evidence. Even though large and complex middens had been recorded on Rēkohu with obvious stratigraphic signs of lengthy and habitual use, no questions were asked about where and how these people lived. Instead, assumptions were made that Moriori were transitory, unsettled occupants, with a dependence on harvest from the sea and coast, and a lack of horticultural traditions.

Evidence being recorded by Hokotehi has begun to challenge some of these assump-tions. Until they launched the field trial, archaeological work had concentrated on the northern and eastern coasts, which possess easily identifiable and accessible coastal mid-dens. The evidential bias in the previous surveys painted a picture of unsettled




occupation, and even lack of attachment to landscape, whereas the Hokotehi survey demonstrated more settled occupation, with evidence of large buildings and a close asso-ciation with nearby middens, kōpi groves and food and tool production areas. As part of this challenge to record differently, Hokotehi’s work also needed to unravel the knots of recent ‘scientific’ thinking about Moriori traditional culture.

Heritage landscapes are places ‘where human relationships with the natural environ-ment over time define their essential character. The emphasis is on human history, conti-nuity of cultural traditions, and social values and aspirations’ (Mitchell and Buggey, 2000: 35). Landscapes like these on Rēkohu have been defined over centuries of affec-tion for place and knowledge of ecological processes. These kinds of connections are now recognized in the landscape approach to archaeology, which validates and adds weight to interpretation of evidence, especially when physical evidence has been modi-fied. The landscape approach tries to understand relationships between areas of evidence and, in some cases, the landscape itself constitutes the cultural object. This is particularly so for prominent features such as mountains and hills but also for places imbued with associated qualities, such as the ability to generate feelings of peace and comfort and, consequently, enable healing or renewal of spirit. Some of these aspects of place can only be understood through an indigenous lens: through knowledge of the land and the way it has been and is lived in, cared for and understood. Around this core of indigenous knowl-edge the landscape approach being used on Rēkohu brings in landowner and land-user knowledge, oral history and memory, associative knowledge, and archival data and maps.

When archaeological practice separates the physical from the intangible, the result is an impoverished record – and often a misread one. The gaps in the NZAA-style record have left a wounded space where the associated stories and values of place should sit. The record is a mono-lingual, mono-cultural statement. Because Moriori voices and views are silent in these records, some places have been misread. The out-come of this is a kind of cultural illiteracy. If traditional knowledge has not informed the interpretation, it is possible, even likely, that signs of settlement may be illegible to the archaeological eye.

The Traditional Knowledge Revival Pathways (TKRP) system (www.tkrp.com.au) was developed precisely to counter the damaging effects of this kind of research. This project, initiated in 2001 by Kuku Thaypan Aboriginal elders in Northern Queensland, Australia, is designed to facilitate the preservation of traditional knowledge and its appli-cation in cooperative land management. Vital principles of TKRP and of the emerging Hokotehi recording process are threefold:

(i) that the work is premised on the notion of a gift; the ethic of reciprocity; (ii) that the work is intergenerational, involving young people working with elders,

listening and learning as they record;(iii) that the work is based ’in-country’ – in the landscapes being talked about.

The field trial started by looking at specific research problems, such as lack of Moriori input and the bias towards evidential recording in localized areas, and




shaped solutions for developing a recording model. This method is recursive, in that the research design is constantly refreshed through the development of collective memory as more work and more research are carried out. Following this system, overlays of original names and traditional uses are the first layers in the heritage fabric.

Reassembling taonga Moriori

In addition to reclaiming language and cultural identity and recording heritage land-scapes, over the last few decades Moriori have been making efforts to reclaim owner-ship and control over their physically dispersed taonga. These efforts have included purchasing artefacts at auction and from private collectors, and seeking protection of sacred places on private land. More recently it has involved purchasing their own lands back again. Land adjacent to one of the largest groves of kōpi trees on Rēkohu at the J.M. Barker National Historic Reserve is now back in Moriori ownership. The positive events highlighted here are significant milestones in the process of reaffirm-ing Moriori identity, but it is important that the struggle to get this far is not forgotten, and to recognize that it continues. Until recently, the focus on collecting was on tan-gible taonga (such as human remains, artefacts, tree trunks and carvings); today it is increasingly on the taking and use of intangible knowledge associated with our land-scapes and taonga. For Moriori, these treasures are not simply inanimate things. They are imbued with the knowledge of those who created them, those for whom they were created, and the associated events and knowledge of those who used or cared for them. They were always associated with the observance of rituals and karakii as pro-tective rites. The intellectual and cultural property associated with these taonga is possibly better described as a set of obligations rather than a set of rights; these obli-gations even extend to the way that taonga are stored and displayed.

Over the last two years, Hokotehi has been running Keke Tura identity workshops for our members, focusing on youth engagement (Figure 6). The workshops have covered recording and registration of taonga (resulting in a new exhibition space being created at Kōpinga Marae); digital recording of taonga and images; conservation techniques for images and taonga (fibre, wood, stone); making short films, and traditional practices associated with song, oral recording and manaakitanga (hospitality). All aspects of these workshops have been recorded by participants using the TKRP system in a ‘learning by doing’ construct.

In January 2010, a new digital recording project commenced. In a collaborative pro-ject involving Hokotehi, DOC, and the University of Otago, the rākau momori carvings on the island were recorded using hand-held digital laser scanning. The result is a spec-tacular record of all surviving carvings to a level of detail that shows the underside of the bark as well as the carved side (Figure 7). Hokotehi regards these digital records as taonga. They are exact replicas of ka rāpuna and are therefore treated with great rever-ence. The scans are permanent records of carvings and trees that will one day die and disappear, but they are also teaching tools and will play a vital part in the revival of the tree carving tradition, unique to Moriori.




Looking forward

The shift in thinking that Hokotehi has instigated through its series of taonga recording projects is assertively indigenous and yet deeply respectful of collective histories, whilst enabling Moriori to define the management priorities for their own taonga. It is an evolved approach that aims to be inclusive and encouraging of shar-ing – strong, traditional Moriori values. Hokotehi’s next steps involve the develop-ment of a comprehensive database of taonga Moriori in overseas collections and the construction of a new whare taonga (museum and research centre) adjacent to Kōpinga Marae. Like the TKRP system, the first taonga database will involve core Moriori values of sharing and unity. The proposal involves the establishment of an intranet system that will also involve partnerships with participating institutions – a curator/kaitiaki connection and a form of digital reciprocity. In return for providing access to collection records, Hokotehi will provide information on provenance, taonga uses and ancestral data (where available). The database will be a members-only guide to taonga Moriori around the world, including human remains.

Increasingly, museums are converting accession and acquisition records to electronic forms and even making these available on public internet sites (see Newell, 2012, this issue). At the same time, indigenous communities are developing relationships with

Figure 6. Timiriki with a rakau momori, Hapupu. © Susan Thorpe.




museums for sharing information and carrying out research, sometimes with a view to future repatriations. As noted at the start of this article, the many taonga Moriori removed from the islands include examples of older art forms that are no longer here or even close to New Zealand.

Hokotehi’s second future project will see a comprehensive research facility developed on Rēkohu, incorporating a dedicated space in which taonga may be stored and cared for. Opportunities for Moriori to take care of, study, or be inspired by their taonga will be increased. This is critical to Hokotehi’s ongoing work and research because we recognize, alongside the benefits of the kinds of digital research tools and resources discussed here, the importance of our taonga’s physical pres-ence. Access to these treasures, both digital and physical, is central to the mainte-nance of rangatiratanga Moriori (Moriori authority), crucial for a people misrepresented and undermined for so long, but now recognized as a dynamic, liv-ing culture.

Figure 7. Digital scan of rakau momori at Haapupu. © Hokotehi Moriori Trust.




Appendix

Moriori words used in the text

Hokomenetai To gather together in peace. This is the name of the main house inside Kopinga Marae.

Hokotehi Unity. The name of the Moriori representative Trust.Imi and Iwi People and also bones. Imi is the Moriori term, whilst iwi is the Maori

term.Ka Pou a Rangitokona

The central pole inside Hokomenetai (the main house inside Kopinga Marae) named for the god (Rangitokona) who separated Sky Father and Earth Mother and holder of the 10 heavenly pillars.

Kaitiaki GuardianKarakii PrayerKoimi Skeletal remainsKongenge DespairKopi Karaka tree (Corynocarpus laevigatus)Kopinga A grove of kopi trees. The name of the Moriori Marae on Rekohu.Mana Honour, dignityManaakitanga HospitalityMarae A traditional Maori and Moriori place of gathering and debate.Moriori Indigenous inhabitants of RekohuPakeha EuropeanRakau momori Literally ‘memorial trees’, kopi trees with living carvings indented into the

outer layer of bark.Rangatiratanga AuthorityRangihaute Name of the smaller of the large islands in the Chatham archipelago, also

known as Pitt Island and Rangiauria.Re LanguageRekohu Chatham Islands and also the name for the larger of the two main islands in

the archipelago. Rekohu literally means to see the sun through misty skies.Rongo Peace, to listen, songTaonga TreasureTapu SacredTchakat henu tangata whenua

People of the land. Tchakat henu is the Moriori term, whilst tangata whenua is the Maori term.

Urupa Burial placeWahi tapu Sacred place

Notes

1. Records show that people were taken to Taranaki, Hawkes Bay and also to parts of Northland. There are likely to have been other unrecorded instances of disconnection from Rēkohu.

2. Rēkohu was annexed by New Zealand in 1842. 3. Tommy Solomon’s full name was Tame Horomona-Rehe, and he was famed as ‘the last

known full-blooded Moriori’. He was born in 1884 and died in 1933. He was the only surviv-ing child of Rangitapua Horomona Rehe and Ihimaera Te Teira, who were members of both the Owenga and Otonga Moriori tribes (King, 2000[1989]).




4. Moriori was a one-hour documentary produced in 1980 by Bill Saunders and Television New Zealand.

5. Hirawanu Tapu was born in about 1824. He was a Moriori from the Owenga area on Rēkohu and was fluent in Moriori and Māori and proficient in English. When Moriori held their chiefly Council at Te Awapatiki in 1862, Tapu was their scribe. In 1870, he was a key Moriori witness in the Native Land Court hearings. In 1868, Tapu had begun to help the young licensed native interpreter Alexander Shand (son of the first resident magistrate) to collect Moriori history, traditions, chants and vocabulary (King, 2000[1989]).

6. George Grey Maori Manuscript Collection, Auckland Public Library Auckland GNZMSS (122 letters from Chathams to William Seed and Grey, 1862, 2 pp.) and GNZMSS (144 letters to Grey from Moriori elders, 1862, 131 pp.).

7. Hokotehi ensures that its members are well informed about these heritage recording and pro-tection initiatives, which have been universally endorsed. Indeed, members see this work as being a vital component of the ongoing revival of Moriori culture and identity.

8. Rākau momori (scar tree or dendroglyph) is an all-encompassing word for carvings into tree bark, though these definitions barely convey the deep spiritual associations and values that rākau momori have for Moriori.

9. In June 1897, Joseph Walter Williams wrote to the Museum, ‘by the steamer I will forward three slabs of kōpi or karaka upon which are some old Moriori carvings of rude execution …’ (British Museum correspondence 1896–1899, in Richards, 2007).

10. Canterbury has seven carved tree trunks, Auckland has five, and Otago has twenty (collected by HD Skinner and D Simmons – anecdotal evidence suggests that Simmons collected three or four of these trees from the lagoon, not from living tree groves).

11. The Waitangi Tribunal, established in 1975 by an Act of Parliament is a permanent commis-sion of inquiry charged with making recommendations on claims brought by Māori relating to actions or omissions of the Crown, which breach the promises made in the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 by Crown representatives and some Māori chiefs.

12. Kōpi (Corynocarpus spp.) are vitally important to Moriori. Varieties of kōpi were brought to the islands from Eastern Polynesia by the first Moriori settlers as a food source. The species has a paleotropical origin but the variation C. Laevigatus radiated into Aotearoa/New Zealand several million years ago (Wagstaff and Dawson, 2000). On Rēkohu they are also used for the rākau momori (dendroglyphs).

13. Hokotehi is associated through professional membership or through collegial working rela-tionships in all the projects listed.

References

Blank JM (2007) Imagining Moriori: A history of ideas of a people in the twentieth century. MA thesis, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Byrnes GM (2010) Smith, Stephenson Percy – Biography. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Available at: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2s33/1 (accessed 15 March 2011).

Houghton P (1976) The human skeletal material from Waihora (CH283). Working Papers in Chatham Islands Archaeology, Vol. 4. Dunedin: Department of Anthropology, University of Otago.

Hunt F (1866) Twenty-Five Years’ Experience in New Zealand and the Chatham Islands: An Autobiography (electronic book edition). Auckland: Auckland University Library. Available at: http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/document?wid=2080&page=0&action=null (accessed 22 March 2011).




Jefferson C (1955) The dendroglyphs of the Chatham Islands. Journal of the Polynesian Society 64(4): 367–441.

King M (2000[1989]) Moriori: A People Rediscovered. Auckland: Viking.King M (2010) Solomon, Tommy – Biography. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara

– the Encyclopedia of New Zealand (updated 1 September). Available at: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/2s35/1 (accessed 4 January 2012).

McFadgen BG (1994) Archaeology and Holocene sand dune stratigraphy on Chatham Island. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 24(1): 17–44.

Mitchell N and Buggey S (2000) Protected landscapes and cultural landscapes: Taking advantage of diverse approaches. The George Wright Forum 17(1): 35–46.

Newell J (2012, this issue) Old objects, new media: Historical collections, digitization and affect. Journal of Material Culture 17(3), September.

Park GS (1976) The dendroglyphs and petroglyphs of the Chatham Islands. Working Papers in Chatham Islands Archaeology, Vol. 3. Dunedin: Department of Anthropology, University of Otago.

Richards R (1962) An historical geography of the Chatham Islands. MA Thesis, University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

Richards R (1972) A tentative population distribution map of the Morioris of Chatham Islands, circa 1790. Journal of the Polynesian Society 81(3): 350–374.

Richards R (1982) Whaling and Sealing at the Chatham Islands. Canberra: Roebuck Press.Richards R (2007) Literature review. Unpublished Report for Hokotehi Moriori Trust.Simmons DR (1962) The Moriori of the Chatham Islands. New Zealand Archaeological Association

Newsletter 5(1): 238–244.Simmons DR (1964) Chatham Island archaeological survey. New Zealand Archaeological

Association Newsletter 7(2): 51–69.Simmons DR (1965) A preliminary report on an associated group of dendroglyphs in Chatham

Islands. New Zealand Archaeological Association Newsletter 8(2): 39–43.Skinner HD (1919) Moriori sea-going craft. Man 19(5): 65–68.Skinner HD (1923) The Morioris of the Chatham Islands. Memoir of the Bernice P. Bishop

Museum 9(1): 16–21.Solomon M (2005) The long journey home: Return of our ancestors. In: World Archaeological

Congress, 12 November, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Available at: http://www.wipo.int/export/sites/www/tk/en/folklore/creative_heritage/docs/solomon_maui_ancestors.pdf (accessed 22 March 2011).

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Corynocarpus (Corynocarpaceae) inferred from DNA sequences. Systematic Botany 25(1): 134–149.

Author biographies

Maui Solomon is the General Manager for Hokotehi Moriori Trust and is a Moriori/Māori barrister specializing in law on the protection of indigenous rights and intellectual property. He is legal counsel for three of the claimants in the long-running WAI 262 claim for ngā taonga tuku iho.




Maui is also Adjunct Professor in the First Nations Program at Simon Fraser University, Co-Chair of the Aotearoa New Zealand Peace and Conflict Studies Trust and a research partner in the inter-national IPinCH project.

Susan Thorpe is an archaeologist, working primarily in the area of mapping heritage landscapes. She is an IPinCH research partner and is currently working alongside Hokotehi Moriori Trust on cultural database research and implementation of the TKRP system and other digitization initia-tives for Moriori heritage and oral history recording.



Taonga Moriori: Recording and Revival, by M. Solomon and S. Thorpe

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Transcript of Taonga Moriori: Recording and Revival, by M. Solomon and S. Thorpe