Ownership rights
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Transcript
- Student from Morrinsville College
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If an iwi wanted their taonga back, would the museum hand it over?
- Dion
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I’ve been in situations where we have…We term that repatriation - that whole term that you’ve talked about, about giving taonga back to an iwi - it has happened. It doesn’t happen as quick as most iwi, hapū, whānau would like it to happen. It’s just that because we are a government organisation there are certain…how would you put it…there are certain things that need to be required before we actually go about giving taonga back.
I’ve been in instances where quite forthright young Māori have come up to me and said, “I know that taonga, return it home to me.” And I usually approach it like this, “Well, kei te pai tēnā. So, where are you going to place this taonga?”
And they will say, “Oh, I’m going to place it over Nanny Mere’s fireplace.”
“Oh, kei te pai tēnā. Well if you place it over there, you know that due to the fragility of that kākahu, the thing is most probably going to start to disintegrate in time, and before too long you won’t have a kākahu.”
And they go “Oh, didn’t think about that.”
So it’s just about educating people about what we do as kaitiaki. Because that’s another important aspect that we play. Because we’re Māori too, we are not the evil person. I know you weren’t implying that, but we’re doing our best as kaitiaki to care for all of our taonga. And I am not just thinking about this generation, I am talking about ten, twenty generations from now.