A Partnership Approach to Repatriation: Building the Bridge from Both Sides
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Tuhinga 27: 1–9 Copyright © Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (2016) A partnership approach to repatriation: building the bridge from both sides Te Herekiekie Herewini* and June Jones** * Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, PO Box 467, Wellington, New Zealand ([email protected]) ** University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, United Kingdom ([email protected]) ABSTRACT: Mäori and Moriori ancestral remains were traded throughout Europe, the Americas and Australia from the 1770s onwards. Repatriation requests have successfully secured the return of many ancestral remains, but the act of repatriation does not always lead to a lasting legacy of friendship and continued collaboration. The University of Birmingham and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa worked together to build a bridge that allowed collaborative work to continue beyond the formal handover ceremony of Mäori ancestors in 2013. The bridge was built by mutual respect, increased levels of understanding and willingness to cooperate for the good of both parties through the handover ceremony. From the university’s perspective, the act of repatriation was a moral duty, providing an opportunity to address colonial attitudes that had led to the collection and retention of the ancestors. From Te Papa’s perspective, the formal handover ceremony provided an opportunity to show respect to the ancestors in an appropriate and culturally sensitive way. KEYWORDS: Mäori, Toi moko, repatriation, ceremony, partnership, culture, belief, ancestral remains, reconciliation, iwi. Introduction morbid curiosity. As the public became more aware of these collections in the mid-twentieth century, questions were During the nineteenth century, Britain experienced a raised about how the objects were gathered. In the United growing fascination with exoticism. Visiting travelling States, Native American graves were disturbed to gather shows, which displayed animals and people with rare condi - skulls for prestigious museums and medical schools to tions and unusual human anatomy, became a popular expand their comparative anatomy collections (Fabian Victorian day out (Qureshi 2011). Medical museums also 2010). The rights of indigenous people not to have grave became fashionable attractions. Alberti (2011) sets the items taken was finally addressed by the enacting of the historical context to contemporary debates about collecting Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in and displaying human remains for educational purposes. 1990. In Britain in the early twentieth century, the use of Anatomical displays of the ‘partial person’ promoted paupers’ bodies to teach anatomy to medical students was academic and public discourse about the nature of disease challenged as unethical and deeply dishonouring to the and death. On the one hand, medical museums valued destitute, who could not protect their bodies in death any the objects on display as teaching aids and promoters of more than they had been able to in life (Hurren 2012). The knowledge, whereas on the other, opening the medical context of morbid curiosity and ethical questions about museum to general viewing provided a source of revenue and collecting practices provide the background for Mäori an opportunity for the public to indulge further in its human remains to be considered. 2 Tuhinga, Number 27 (2016) The beginning of dealings between Mäori and Europeans Among these was the fascination in Britain and Europe has been described as a time of ‘mutual incomprehension’, with the exotic ‘other’, and a morbid preoccupation with with both sides soon seeking to benefit from new relation - beliefs and rituals surrounding life and death. When ships (O’Malley 2012: 14). One aspect of incomprehension explorers and traders brought back evidence of cultural on the part of the Europeans was the traditional Mäori diversity, a trade grew to supply museums and private practice of preserving the heads of loved ones and enemies, collectors with, among many things, human heads. Tapsell each for different purposes. This practice soon became the (2005) explains that there were diverse motives for this ground for trade between Mäori and Europeans, who trade. Profit was one motive, with museums and private seemed to overcome any reticence they may have had in collectors paying considerable sums for good specimens, order to make a profit when they traded heads back in while exchange of goods was another, whereby museums Europe. Today, Mäori view this part of their history very with large collections of indigenous objects were willing to differently and have come to a position where they seek exchange these for European museum objects (Tapsell 2005: repatriation of preserved heads and other human remains 157–159). Some individuals sought to expand their personal back to Aotearoa New Zealand. collections, such as Horatio Robley (1840–1930), who Museums and medical schools are commonly referred to amassed Toi moko (preserved tattooed Mäori head/s) from as ‘holding institutions’ in debates about repatriation. curio shops in London (Robley 2001). Others, such as the Requests for repatriation of human remains place a holding American physician Samuel George Morton (1799–1851), institution and indigenous communities in a unique sought skulls from around the world to advance physical relation ship. This relationship is most often one of an anthropology, which gave way to scientific racism, where the extreme power imbalance, with communities requesting shape of a skull was thought to indicate the intellectual and the return of ancestors who hold positions of great impor - moral characteristics of the race to whom the person tance to them and institutions facing the potential loss of belonged (Gould 1978: 503–509). This bolstered colonial valuable parts of their collections. Indigenous communities beliefs about ‘superior’ and ‘primitive’ cultures, creating a have no power beyond that of request, whereas institutions rationale for much of the treatment of indigenous people we may be governed by a legal remit to ensure their collections now find abhorrent. remain intact. Therefore, the most common experience is one of indigenous communities requesting repatriation and holding institutions being unable or unwilling to comply. Europeans arriving in Aotearoa This paper details the unique relationship that has been built between the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa New Zealand Tongarewa (Te Papa) and the University of Birmingham, Europeans began arriving in Aotearoa New Zealand coastal which began in 2011 when the university offered repatriation waters from 1642, when Dutch explorer Abel Tasman visited of a previously unknown collection of Mäori ancestral the country but failed to land owing to a skirmish between remains. The relationship continues beyond this act of repa- his men and the local iwi (tribe) Ngäti Tumatakokiri at triation, building a long-lasting collaboration that is mutu- Golden Bay in northwest Te Waipounamu, or South Island. ally beneficial to both sides. The two institutions are During Captain James Cook’s visit to Aotearoa New Zealand consequently ideally situated as partners working together to in 1769, the first exchange of Mäori human remains promote the understanding of repatriation of ancestral occurred between Mäori and Päkehä (foreigners), with a remains within the wider contexts of the values and beliefs mummified child ‘accepted’ by ship’s surgeon William held by both. Monkhouse from an elder at a village near Anaura Bay, about 75km north of the modern-day city of Gisborne History of trade of indigenous (Salmond 2004: 124). On the same voyage, but this time at remains in Britain and Europe, Queen Charlotte Sound in northeast Te Waipounamu, botanist Joseph Banks exchanged a pair of used linen and from Aotearoa New Zealand underwear for a Toi moko after he cemented the exchange During the colonial period, several philosophies emerged to by producing a musket to provoke the male elder into explain and justify treatment of indigenous communities. releasing the head (Te Awekotuku & Nikora 2007: 48). A partnership approach to repatriation: building the bridge from both sides 3 Some rangatira (chiefs), such as Hongi Hika (Ngäpuhi, How the indigenous ancestors 1772–1828) and Pömare I (Ngäpuhi, ?–1826), became heavily involved in the trade of Toi moko between 1815 arrived at Birmingham University and the late 1820s, as they realised a mummified head could While many museums and universities have excellent command a valuable exchange in items such as muskets, provenance for the indigenous ancestors housed in their ammunition and metal goods (Te Awekotuku & Nikora collections, in others provenance is either lacking or com- 2007:48; McLintock 2011). Many of these Toi moko are pletely absent. However, in institutions like the University of from warriors who were defeated and died in battle, and Birmingham, where collections exist without provenance, whose heads were quickly mummified by the victors some pointers do still remain. The university’s medical school and then traded at will to visiting ships from Europe, building was established in 1825, when surgeon William Australia and America (Lee 1983: 145; Ballara 2003: 133). Sands Cox began a course of anatomical demonstrations in This, however, is only part of the story of how Mäori and his father’s house. The first dedicated medical school was Moriori remains found their way into collections abroad. constructed in 1828 and the Queen’s Hospital opened as a On 6 February