Hei Taonga mā ngā Uri Whakatipu
Treasures for the Rising Generation : The Dominion Museum Ethnological Expeditions 1919–1923

Edited by Wayne Ngata, Arapata Hakiwai, Anne Salmond, Conal McCarthy, Amiria Salmond, Monty Soutar, James Schuster, Billie Lythberg, John Niko Maihi, Sandra Kahu Nepia, Te Wheturere Poope Gray, Te Aroha McDonnell and Natalie Robertson

Published by Te Papa Press, November 2021

368 pages, Hardback, 270 x 220 mm

RRP$75.00

Buy from Te Papa Press Here

Reviewed by Kennedy Warne for Kete Books

The 1918 flu epidemic struck Māori with devastating force. During a two-month period from October to December, 2500 Māori died. Most were people in their prime. Flu stripped Māori communities of its wage earners, caregivers and future leaders. It blasted a demographic crater in Māori society. The Māori death rate was eight times higher than that of non-Māori. The epidemic was “the severest setback the race has received since the fighting days of Hongi Hika,” said Māori health administrator Te Rangihīroa/Peter Buck. 

The epidemic’s indirect impacts were equally dire. There were grave concerns that loss of cultural knowledge through the death of experts in ancestral arts and knowledge would cause irreparable damage to the very foundations of Māoridom. Māori leaders, in particular Apirana Ngata, the MP for Eastern Māori, were adamant that this could not be allowed to happen.

A plan emerged to record and preserve the patterns of Māori life while they could still be witnessed. Using the relatively new technologies of phonographic recording, cinematography and photography, staff from the Dominion Museum would visit Māori communities to make an inventory of cultural arts and document daily life.

Time was of the essence. As James McDonald, the photographer and cinematographer for the expeditions noted in December 1918, “The elders are fast passing away, and the chances of securing [records of Māori culture] are steadily diminishing.”

As it happened, a hui to welcome returning Māori troops to Gisborne was already planned for April 1919. It would be the largest Māori gathering of its time and afforded a perfect opportunity for the gathering of cultural knowledge. The Dominion (now National) Museum acted swiftly, sending a team comprising McDonald, ethnologist Elsdon Best and librarian Johannes Andersen to join Ngata on the first of four ethnological expeditions.

Continue reading the full review at Kete Books.

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