FOCAL POINT FOR MAORI CULTURE

Te Ao Hou, March 1959, Page 25

FOCAL POINT FOR MAORI CULTURE Largely through the generosity of the late W. D. Lysnar, the Museum started off with an enviable collection of Maori exhibits. These have been added to during the past three years by loans or donations of artifacts, pictures, photographs and documents all having some place in the long history of the Maori. These things are important, but a museum such as the Maori Wing financed, administered and supported by the Maori people of a district is much more than a mere collection of casually acquired relics. It is, and will become even more, a central point of Maori culture and Maori history for the whole East Coast. It is in fact the modern whare wananga the repository of all those outward, tangible and visible things which are the material basis of what has come to be summed up in the word Maoritanga. The old time pattern of community living, centred around the marae, tends to become dissipated with every passing and changing year. The prized relics of tribe and hapu become more and more restricted to the keeping and to the possession of family groups and individuals. The opportunity of sharing these things, of restoring them to their proper place in communal culture, becomes distressingly restricted. There are even occasions when they become a cause of embarrassment and ill-will instead of being a source of pride and inspiration. Too often they are buried away in safe-deposit boxes in a bank or lawyers office, even worse they are lost, sold or otherwise pass out of the possession of their former owners. Other and more highly prized more tapu objects, entrusted to the keeping of one or two elders are secretly hidden away and all too often the hiders take their knowledge with them

The Maori wing has a beautiful collection of East Coast stone tools. (Gisborne Photo News) to Reinga rather than leave them to less hallowed keeping. When such things are lost, or even with-held, something very precious and important is lost or with-held with them. These relics, and especially the history which so often surrounds them, are the very mauri, the pou manawa of Maori tradition, of tribal cultural heritage and of all that is summed up in the word Maoritanga.