item details
Overview
The First Taonga Māori in the Colonial Museum: Recovering a Forgotten Tauihu
This tauihu waka (canoe prow) holds a singular place in Aotearoa New Zealand’s museum history. Acquired on 29 September 1865, it was the first taonga Māori to enter the Colonial Museum, the institution that would later become the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. For more than 160 years, its story lay fragmented - its origins unrecorded, its significance obscured by the legacies of colonial collecting and museum practice.
The rediscovery of this tauihu’s identity forms part of the Acknowledging our Colonial Past Project, a long-term initiative that seeks to reconcile the provenance of taonga Māori acquired during the Colonial Museum era. This work is essential to understanding Te Papa’s collections, many of which were assembled within colonial systems that prioritised acquisition over care, context, and accountability.
Coloniality and the Museum
Although the period of formal colonisation has passed, coloniality remains embedded in cultural institutions, shaping how knowledge is classified, preserved, and shared. Museums in the Western tradition are deeply tied to imperial systems of knowledge-making, where Indigenous taonga were often removed from their communities and reframed as ethnographic objects rather than living cultural treasures.
Te Papa’s foundations lie in the Colonial Museum, established in 1865 under the directorship of James Hector. During this period, taonga Māori entered the collection through a range of means - donation, deposit, and purchase - often with minimal documentation. A major restructuring of the collection in 1904, following Hector’s departure and the introduction of a new classification system by Augustus Hamilton, resulted in widespread renumbering and the loss of original accession information. As a result, many taonga Māori in the collection today remain unprovenanced or only partially understood.
Recovering Provenance
The Acknowledging our Colonial Past Project focuses on reconnecting taonga Māori acquired during Hector’s directorship with their original provenance and histories, ensuring that early acquisition records are accurately linked to current collection numbers in Te Papa’s collection management system (EMu).
This mahi directly supports Te Papa’s Hāpai Ahurea strategy, which prioritises transforming museum practice by centring Māori and communities in the care, understanding, and sharing of their taonga, mātauranga, and kōrero. Provenance research is also a critical step in addressing the ethical implications of colonial collecting and supporting repatriation where taonga were acquired under questionable circumstances.
The First Taonga Māori
Early Colonial Museum registers show that the first three entries recorded were samples of coal. The fourth entry, however, marks a turning point: a tauihu waka, presented by George Henry Wilson. The register records no iwi affiliation, maker, or place of origin—only the date and the donor’s name.
The symbolism of this is striking. A tauihu is the leading edge of a waka, guiding its movement through water. Yet this tauihu was removed from its tinana and immobilised within museum storerooms, unable to fulfil its intended purpose for more than a century.
The Donor: George Henry Wilson
George Henry Wilson (1832 - 1905) emigrated from Ireland to Aotearoa in 1857 and was living in Pāuatahanui when he deposited the tauihu. Wilson later authored Ena, or the Ancient Maori (1874), a fictionalised and romanticised portrayal of Māori life written for a settler audience. His writings reflect a colonial fascination with Māori culture, shaped by observation rather than accountability or reciprocity.
Wilson donated several additional taonga to the museum in the late 1860s, including three more tauihu, a toki pounamu, and a patu muka. However, he was not known as a prolific collector, and the circumstances under which he obtained these taonga remain unclear.
Finding the Forgotten Tauihu
Tracing Wilson’s first tauihu proved challenging. Te Papa holds approximately 80 tauihu, and none of the early registration numbers offered a clear match. The breakthrough came through archival research, beginning with the discovery of an 1868 photograph in the Alexander Turnbull Library that showed a tauihu in the museum gallery. At that time, only Wilson’s tauihu were held by the Colonial Museum.
Comparing this image with Te Papa’s photographic records revealed a match: ME010928, a tauihu formally registered only in 1963, nearly a century after its acquisition. Further confirmation came when the taonga was examined in person. Despite later alterations—including reconstructed sections, added pāua eyes, and layers of museum paint - it was unmistakably the same tauihu.
Careful inspection of the underside revealed a partially obscured inscription:
“Geo. H. Wilson 1865.”
This moment confirmed what had long been uncertain. After 165 years, the identity of the Colonial Museum’s first taonga Māori had been recovered.
Looking Forward
While the tauihu’s place in museum history is now clear, its true story is only beginning to emerge. Where did Wilson obtain it? Who carved it, and for whom? Which iwi does it belong to, and under what circumstances was it removed from its community?
Answering these questions is the next stage of this research.