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International Journal of Cultural Studies
2014, Vol. 17(2) 191 –205
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1367877913482785
ics.sagepub.com
Mana Taonga and the public sphere:
A dialogue between Indigenous practice
and Western theory
Philipp Schorch
Deakin University, Australia
Arapata Hakiwai
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand
Abstract
Recent re-conceptualizations of the ‘public sphere’ facilitated a much needed shift in thinking
about identity politics ‘from a substance … to a movement’ (Weibel and Latour, 2007). This
laid the foundation for dissolving the ‘emanatist vision’ (Bourdieu, 1990) of self-explanatory and
perpetual systems and structures towards the interrogation of actions and performances that
simultaneously constitute and are affected by such wider socio-political realities. Most academic
contributions, however, remain on a normative or theoretical level without offering empirical
insights.
This article introduces Mana Taonga as an Indigenous Ma
–ori concept of cultural politics
embedded in current museum practice at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te
Papa). It creates a dialogue between Indigenous Ma
–ori practice and Western theory leading to a
refined understanding of performative democracy within a museum as forum, or public sphere.
The authors argue that a specific museum offers a particular place, space and empirical reality to
interrogate seemingly universal concepts such as ‘culture’ and ‘politics’ by blending theoretical
notions with an awareness of institutional contexts and practices.
Keywords
identity politics, Indigenous political practice, museum theory and practice, performative
democracy, public sphere
Corresponding author:
Philipp Schorch, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, Melbourne, VIC 3125, Australia.
Email: philipp.schorch@deakin.edu.au
482785ICS17210.1177/1367877913482785International Journal of Cultural StudiesSchorch and Hakiwai
2013
Article
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192 International Journal of Cultural Studies 17(2)
Collaboration: Creating dialogue between
Indigenous practice and Western theory
This article grew out of the dissatisfaction with the artificial dichotomy between theory
and practice in most conventional approaches to the analysis of cultural politics. In this
context, it is somewhat ironic that even global theorizations remain clearly informed by
one particular perspective. It follows that the vast majority of Western academic knowl-
edge production can rightfully be critiqued for its purely Western focus. Since it is both
impossible and undesirable to abandon one’s identity, we argue that collaboration is the
methodological key to overcome the current predicament and unlock deeper understand-
ings. By collaboration we mean dialogue, which does not involve a gestural accommo-
dation of a subaltern part for its eventual assimilation within the dominant whole, but
refers to an interpretive engagement which ‘requires that these two places … the I and
the You … be mobilised in the passage through a Third Space’ (Bhabha, 1994:136).
We intend to shape such a ‘Third Space’ of knowledge production by creating a dia-
logue between Indigenous practice and Western theory. Both content and form of the
evolving argument reflect this collaborative spirit. Mana Taonga as an Indigenous con-
cept of cultural politics embedded in museum practice at the Museum of New Zealand
Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa) is brought into dialogue with Western theoretical notions
of the public sphere. The collaborative ethos of this dialogue, which is the current out-
come of our mutual intellectual engagement over many years within and beyond Te
Papa, is further heightened by the different authorship in this joint article. In the first
section, Philipp Schorch sets the theoretical scene for an understanding of a museum as
forum, or public sphere. Then, Arapata Hakiwai presents the insider Māori perspective
into the practical functioning of Mana Taonga behind the scenes at Te Papa. Schorch
proceeds by drawing together the theoretical argument and the empirical insights to con-
clude with idea of the reflexive museum, which reveals museological productions and
bring these into dialogue with the museum experience, thus shaping a truly democratic
forum by ‘making things public’ (Latour and Weibel, 2005).
Introduction
This article focuses on museum theory and practice, and in particular aspects of the
strand of critical analysis called the ‘new museology’ (Vergo, 1989) and its relation to
wider postcolonial critiques. In the course of the new museology, the reinvention of the
museum as ‘forum’, or place and space of dialogue, with Te Papa being a prominent
example, and the notion of the ‘public sphere’ have been closely linked (Barrett, 2011;
Message, 2006, 2010). Within this context, the site ‘museum’ is a relatively new and
burgeoning object of academic analysis. It has been appropriated by a myriad of related
disciplines and research tends to operate in discursive cycles producing such essential-
ized totalities as the museum, the culture, the state or the visitor. Abstract and theoretical
concepts like ‘discourse’ and ‘structure’ assume the obscure and all dominating role of
an ‘invisible actor behind the scenes’ (Arendt, 1958) leading to an ‘emanatist vision’
(Bourdieu, 1990) that reduces historical subjects to incidents of discourse and embodi-
ments of structure.
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Schorch and Hakiwai 193
The main reason for such simplistic and reductionist accounts is a misunderstanding
of ‘hegemony’ and the political. By reading museums as cultural texts and hegemonic
orchestrations mirroring the reformist agenda and citizen technology of the state, such
perspectives fail to consider that ‘hegemony’ is no totalizing frame but an inherently
contested terrain (Laclau, 2000). In other words, the state itself is a heterogeneous and
relational complex, or ‘assemblage’ (Delanda, 2006; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), and
hence is ‘no more than co-action’ (Ricoeur, 1991). In the case of New Zealand, Indigenous
and other agencies are at work both within and outside the state and its institutions like
museums. Likewise, museological representations should be approached not as self-
evident points of departure or self-enclosed totalities, but rather as ephemeral manifesta-
tions of complicated processes performed by multiple actors in particular contexts.
Consequently, culture and politics can be seen not as linear, normative prescriptions but
instead as dynamic, hermeneutic negotiations. Even the most uneven distribution of col-
onization and globalization cannot produce a totalizing structural logic for the complex
interaction and transfer between cultural worlds of meaning.
Consequently, Te Papa’s bicultural principle, which attempts to enshrine the spirit of
the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 between Māori and the British Crown, in museum
governance, management and practice, is best approached through an interrogation of
socially and politically embedded cultural actions and performances rather than the com-
mon structural overdetermination of institutional critiques. This lays the foundation for
dissolving the ‘emanatist vision’ of self-explanatory and perpetual systems and struc-
tures towards the interrogation of actions and performances which simultaneously con-
stitute and are affected by such wider socio-political realities. Before we turn to such an
examination through the concept ‘Mana Taonga’, it is worth highlighting that, given the
hermeneutic complexity of human affairs, ‘biculturalism’ has never been a linear, one-
dimensional and superimposed ideology by the state, but rather is the dynamic outcome
of a Gramscian ‘war of position’ in the fluid, ambiguous and indeterminate spaces that
Bhabha (1994) calls the ‘in-between’.
McCarthy (2007, 2011) for example, has shown how the remarkable encounter of
Māori and Europeans unfolded throughout the colonial cultures of display in museums,
ultimately leading to Māori control and ownership of Māori collections and exhibitions.
This nuanced piece of scholarship complicates the seemingly conventional wisdom of
the one-sided ‘Western’ appropriation of ‘Other’ cultures by historically tracing the vari-
ous forms of Indigenous agency through which ‘Māori’ appropriated the institution
museum for their own strategic ends. In short, there have been overt and covert postco-
lonial moments and processes long before the official heralding of postcoloniality. In a
more specific museological context this also means that the new museology is not that
new after all. At the same time, however, there is neither a ‘bicultural New Zealand’ nor
a ‘bicultural Te Papa’ in a monolithic sense, but there emerge complex bicultural experi-
ments, arrangements and contentions in particular institutional, political and historical
contexts.
Indigenous critiques of museums continue to challenge Western museology and in
New Zealand’s context Māori people have created Indigenous theoretical frameworks to
ensure cultural relevancy, connectivity and legitimacy. Both museological academics
and practitioners are actively engaging with the politics of Indigenous recognition and
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194 International Journal of Cultural Studies 17(2)
advocate for stronger involvement of Indigenous people in relationships established
through exhibitions and collaborative research projects. The decolonization of Western
research practice is proceeding and writers like Smith (1999) have created a localized
critical theory that advocates emancipation and empowerment as well as the advance-
ment of self-determination, autonomy and independence. This wider postcolonial dis-
course in general and the politics of Indigeneity in particular have transformed the
institution ‘museum’ from the inside and from the outside, as the subsequent introduction
of Mana Taonga as an Indigenous political concept of cultural negotiation and contesta-
tion exemplifies.
Mana Taonga at the Museum of New
Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa)
In February 2010, I (Arapata Hakiwai, co-author of this article) presented a paper titled
‘Māori Taonga (treasures) and Māori Identity: Recognizing living relationships through
policy and practice’ at the Australasian Registrars Conference in Christchurch, New
Zealand. Central to my presentation was the recognition that Māori culture is still very
much alive in all its manifestations and that Māori taonga held in museums are still
important markers and symbols of Māori identity and history. Preservation, I argued,
meant different things to different people and for Māori people it was as much about
nourishing the vital elements of a living culture as it was for ensuring the best quality
care within a museum environment.
Aotearoa New Zealand – Museums and Ma
–ori
There are around 400 museums in New Zealand, large and small, with a wide range and
diversity, each with their own focus and direction. Arguably museums have in large part
been the gatekeepers of culture and in control of Māori material culture for a long time.
They have played their part in the colonization process in New Zealand where they have
collected and interpreted Māori cultural treasures without forming close relationships
with the iwi (tribes) who had originally owned the collections (Butts, 2002: 225). Many
museums carry with them their undeniable Western traditions and practices, which have
often remained unchanged since the time of the New Zealand wars of the 1860s when
many museums in New Zealand were formed – Auckland (1862), Taranaki (1865),
Hawke’s Bay (1865), Wellington (1865), Otago (1868) and Canterbury (1870).
As far as museums are concerned, Māori have been the passive observers looking
from the outside in. The language of definitions, the modus operandi and the manage-
ment of taonga have been largely in the hands of the dominant cultural perspective.
Although we know that Māori have had some meaningful relationships with museums in
New Zealand throughout their history (McCarthy, 2011), museums have been largely
mono-cultural and unwelcoming to Māori. Museums are cultural constructs that reflect
the traditions and practices that gave rise to them. As Peers and Brown (2003: 7) note:
Museums have their own traditions of knowledge about the items in their collections, their own
professional culture, their own ways of caring for and classifying artefacts, and their own goals
of education and entertainment that they wish to realise from their collections in their work with
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Schorch and Hakiwai 195
the public. By and large, these differ dramatically from the perspectives and goals of source
communities.
In many cases, museum practice in New Zealand is still stifling and outdated, let alone
relevant and meaningful to the communities they serve. For Māori people, the past is an
important and pervasive dimension of the present and future. Our ancestors are still with
us, all around us, a part of us. Their mana (power & authority) and achievements are
continually recounted and celebrated, not in a historic and unattached way but in natural
form that embraces the present and contemporary. These words are significant because
museums hold large numbers of ancestral treasures that represent our ancestors and their
histories. Our treasures are much more than objets d’art for they are living in every sense
of the word and carry the love and pride of those who fashioned them, handled and
caressed them, and passed them on from generation to generation as taonga-tuku-iho.
The relationship between museums and Māori is at the heart of Te Papa’s policy of
Mana Taonga (see Appendix). At the core of this relationship lays the contemporary
relevance and value of heritage and its potential to make a difference in the lives of the
people. As Kreps (2003: 10) reminds us:
The New Museology movement is largely about giving people control over their cultural
heritage and its preservation as part of how they maintain, reinforce, or construct their identity.
The approach acknowledges the importance of preserving not only resources that represent a
community’s past, but also vital elements of its living culture and its continuing development.
Mana Taonga at Te Papa
To understand Te Papa’s Mana Taonga policy (see Appendix) is to understand the history
that led to its founding vision and concept. Te Papa grew largely out of what was happen-
ing in the 1980s as this was an important time in New Zealand’s history. The Waitangi
Tribunal, a commission of enquiry, was given extra jurisdiction to inquire into historic
claims dating back to 1840; the Kohanga Reo National Trust for early Māori education
was established along with the first two Kohanga Reo or Māori language nest pro-
grammes, the first Māori university was founded, the Te Karere Māori news programme
aired on television and there was a new and vibrant period of political rights for language
and land.
The politics of Indigenous recognition manifested themselves in new and innovative
ways including the creation of Indigenous frameworks that challenged Western ways of
knowing and being. For example, Kaupapa Māori research methodologies were advo-
cated largely in the educational disciplines in the 1990s to provide culturally relevant and
meaningful education. Kaupapa Māori research theory and practice builds directly on
Māori lived realities and experiences, and challenges the political context of unequal
power relations and associated structures by identifying three main areas (Smith, 1997):
• The validity and legitimacy of Māori are taken for granted
• The survival of Māori language and culture is imperative
• The struggle for autonomy over our own cultural well-being and over our own
lives is vital to Māori struggles.
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Te Ma
–ori Exhibition (1984–87)
Amidst the above described historical climate emerged the highly successful Te Māori
exhibition that travelled to the USA in 1984 and then returned home to close in 1987. Te
Māori was a watershed moment for our nation as for the first time Māori people were in
large part in charge. It took over ten years to be put together and there were 174 tribal
taonga included in the exhibition from museums throughout New Zealand. The Te Māori
exhibition opened at the Metropolitan Museum in New York on 10 September 1984 and
it closed exactly three years later at the Auckland City Art Gallery on 10 September
1987. It was the result of a ground-breaking collaboration and co-operation between
museums, government agencies, sponsors and Māori people.
Te Māori was transformational and it awoke the spirit of our ancestors on distant
shores and stirred the imagination and minds of those working in museums. Its influence
and legacy has been profound. It changed the lives of people and museums, it involved
our people in ways never before undertaken, and it said to the world here are our taonga
and we are its people. The world saw the magnificence of our art traditions and the pres-
ence of our people and our rituals and tikanga (customs). People saw that there was a
living relationship between the taonga and their descendant kin communities. The
whakataukī or proverb used for Te Māori, ‘He Toi Whakairo, He Mana Tangata’ –
‘Where there is artistic excellence, there is human dignity’, expressed the connections,
relationships and whakapapa of taonga with their descendants. It signalled to the world
that taonga were an important part of the social universe of Māoridom past and
present.1
The Te Māori exhibition was a defining moment for museum – Māori relations in
terms of interpretation, governance and authority since it was the first real opportunity
for Māori people to manage and present their taonga held in museums both nationally
and internationally. The ultimate success of Te Māori challenged those who managed and
controlled our taonga and emphasized the inadequacies of museum – Māori relations in
a visible and tangible way. Te Māori signalled a turning point, a time for museums to
examine and change the way operated.
Sid Mead, the co-curator of Te Māori, was highly critical of museum practice in
New Zealand and advocated that Māori must reclaim the language of definitions
and take back control of what was Māori. Mead’s (1990: 165) well known quote for
the reclamation of Māori taonga remains relevant today as it was 20 years ago when
he said:
One way of recapturing one’s culture is to take control of the language of definitions and
descriptions and to have members of the culture speak for themselves, present their culture such
as their music, their dances and their various art forms in a manner they consider appropriate to
them. This is a very important educational, intellectual, psychological, social and self-esteem
raising exercise for members of captured cultures.
One of Te Māori’s legacies was the acknowledgement and recognition of cultural owner-
ship. Te Papa’s Mana Taonga policy (see Appendix) was a natural progression of this
along with the recognition that the old museology did not work.
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Mana Taonga – power to the people
Before our National Museum opened in February 1998, it was openly acknowledged that
the old museum was not right. It was a ‘stifling museology’ at its worst where Māori for
the most part were the passive observers looking from the outside in. The new National
Museum was to be ‘bicultural’ and it had to speak to the uniqueness of our country.
Māori clearly did not want a blueprint of the old but instead a museum that recognized
and embraced Māori cultural values, tikanga (customs) and knowledge systems.
Te Papa created a structured process of engagement with its communities before it
opened and later called it the Mana Taonga principle (see Appendix). Mahuika (1991:
10–11), one of the creators of the Mana Taonga policy, stressed that Māori were poised
to see what sort of cultural recognition the new National Museum would get stating that
‘Te Papa is seen by Māori as the first physical demonstration of a bicultural approach to
taonga and, therefore, a first step towards the recognition of Māori cultural values’ and
that ‘through the negotiation process that has typified the museum’s planning, Mana
Māori has been transferred and translated into a bicultural expression in the new museum
as Mana Taonga’.
Mana Taonga is a key statement and guiding principle for our National Museum and
at its core is the recognition that there still exist living relationships and connections
between taonga and their cultures of origin. Mana Taonga recognizes that communities
have a right to their taonga by virtue of these concrete relationships. It acknowledges the
role of communities in the care and management of taonga at the Museum of New
Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and their willingness to engage and mediate in new ways.
Mana Taonga is central to Māori participation and involvement and in a very tangible
way it connects iwi (Māori tribes) to Te Papa via the whakapapa or genealogical relation-
ships of taonga and its knowledge.
This active process of engagement reflects the connections that exist between the
taonga and their makers, kin and descendants. These relationships are often personal and
frequently involve kanohi ki te kanohi or a face to face approach. The nature of the rela-
tionship can be expressed through such instruments as a memorandum of understanding,
a legal agreement or a contract but often they are reinforced with mutual trust and respect
for both parties. In all that we do at Te Papa, first we actively seek the support and
approval of Māori with respect to the use of any treasure of theirs. This also extends to
the interpretation and knowledge base associated with that treasure. Mana Taonga pro-
vides great scope for the inclusion of multiple ideas, different voices and competing
perspectives, which echoes the hermeneutic complexities of cultural politics which we
alluded to in the introduction and ultimately provides richer and more meaningful expe-
riences to visitors. For Te Papa, Mana Taonga is an Indigenous principle that aims to
restore the right of Māori to their material culture and thus awards the museum the inter-
pretive authority through its connectivity and meaningful relationships with the com-
munities of origin.
Perhaps the most telling symbolism of Mana Taonga was the transition from the old
museum to the new museum in the late 1990s when Māori tribal treasures such as the Te
Takinga storehouse and the Te Hau ki Turanga meeting house of Rongowhakaata were
carried from the old museum in Buckle Street to the new museum on Wellington’s
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198 International Journal of Cultural Studies 17(2)
waterfront by their tribal descendants. It was a graphic reminder that the new museum
vision had started. The concept of Mana Taonga was central in laying the foundation and
setting a course for Māori participation and involvement in the Museum of New Zealand
when Te Papa first opened in 1998.
Today it still remains a cornerstone of Te Papa’s modus operandi. Broadly speaking
the concept recognizes the spiritual and cultural connections of taonga with the people,
thus acknowledging the special relationships that these create. Central to Mana Taonga
was also the creation of a marae specifically for the new museum. This is significant as
adopting the strong Māori cultural institution of a marae also ensured that Māori values
and knowledge systems were likewise respected. As Mahuika (1991: 11) noted in the
early 1990s:
Te Papa Tongarewa has adopted the Māori perceptions of marae, the meeting house, wharenui,
and the courtyard, atea, as part of the new museum. The significance of this acceptance of the
concept of marae means that Māori taonga will now have their own cultural environment. This
cultural environment will enable people to greet and speak to their taonga.
Mana Taonga is a policy and principle that recognizes people and cultures. As Healy and
Witcomb (2006) argue, Mana Taonga places people at the heart of the museum as a way
of focusing on what is important in today’s contemporary world. By doing this, we
ensure that the museum remains relevant and connected to its communities. Mana Taonga
in essence activates this principle by recognizing that there are real living relationships
that exist between the taonga and their descendant source communities. This ensures that
cultural recognition, values and knowledge systems are acknowledged. Underpinning
the concept of Mana Taonga is the recognition of living cultures and by association the
importance of creating meaningful relationships with the communities and peoples from
whence the objects and collections originate from and who identify with them. Te Papa’s
former Chief Executive, Dr Seddon Bennington (1994: 11), once said that ‘Mana Taonga
is not just a way of thinking about the relationship for Māori between objects and their
makers. It is also bringing to our consciousness the role and attitude we need to develop
in our engagement with other communities’.
In practice, Mana Taonga has meant a new way of doing things at Te Papa. It has seen
the active engagement and involvement of our communities in everything we do. The
Mana Taonga policy ensures that consultation and participation is activated at all times
to ensure that Te Papa does speak with authority and that the people are involved in the
telling and presenting of their own cultural histories and narratives. In an article written
in 2009, former senior curator of the Māori collections at Te Papa, Huhana Smith, com-
mented on how Mana Taonga operates for curators. Smith (2009: 8) noted that Mana
Taonga recognizes the authority derived from the whakapapa relationships and that ‘such
knowledge becomes the foundation for wider affiliated Māori participation at the
museum and especially when research reconnects key people to taonga’. Highlighting
both the challenges and opportunities Smith noted how Mana Taonga can maintain,
improve and enhance relationships with tribal members and how curators can act as
‘intermediaries’ in the care, management and research of taonga on behalf of iwi, hapū
and whānau (2009: 13,17).
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Te Papa’s Mana Taonga policy ensures the following:
• The spiritual and cultural connections of Māori and communities with their taonga
and collections are acknowledged and reaffirmed.
• Communities have access to taonga with which they have connections and rela-
tionships to.
• Facilitating community engagement and involvement in decision-making about
taonga, including how taonga might be managed, cared for, presented, interpreted
and displayed.
• Seeks to ensure that ‘community voices’ are heard in any exhibition of the taonga
or representation of its history.
• Consultation with communities occurs regarding the gathering and use of
Mātauranga Māori or Māori knowledge associated with taonga, and that this
knowledge is stored, cared for and used appropriately.
• Museum staff is guided by appropriate tikanga or customary practice in caring for
taonga along with any protocols or tikanga concerning its use.
• Communities are consulted about any specific tikanga or customary practice
required for the care of particular taonga.
Although the object or taonga is important within a museum context, Te Papa has always
acknowledged the living relationships that exist between taonga and their kin as arguably
it is this dimension that builds mutual trust and respect. As Tapsell (2003: 250) argues,
‘the key to museums successfully shifting contexts lies not simply in what they hold, but
in the relationships such holdings represent to indigenous source communities, who have
defied colonial expectations of dying out and continue to wrestle for kin survival’.
An important expression of Mana Taonga is Te Papa’s Iwi exhibition programme. The
Iwi Exhibition, or Māori tribal exhibition programme, at Te Papa is one of the most vis-
ible expressions of Te Papa’s bicultural face. Essentially, Te Papa acts as a dynamic
facilitator and provides an opportunity for iwi to work in partnership with Te Papa to tell
their stories, histories and present their taonga to the world in their own way. The Iwi
Exhibition changes every two and a half years and since 1998 we have had six major
Māori tribal exhibitions.2 Along with the Iwi Exhibition we employ two tribal elders for
the duration of the exhibition. These elders act as ambassadors of their tribe as well as
elders and ambassadors for Te Papa. The Iwi Exhibition at Te Papa recognizes Māori
cultural ownership and provides iwi with the opportunity to tell their own stories in a
national forum, or place and space of dialogue, thus contributing to and participating in
Te Papa Tongarewa. It also offers iwi a platform to promote themselves and their cultural
heritage initiatives to the world via the museum. Kaumātua or elders of the tribe also
work for Te Papa during the tenure of the Iwi Exhibition as our elders share knowledge
and wisdom with Te Papa as well as represent their tribe at the National Museum.
Of course there are challenges and tensions with Te Papa’s Mana Taonga policy and
the operations of Te Papa as sometimes entrenched museum practice can collide with
Māori values, customs and worldviews. Areas such as conservation practice, commercial
operations and repatriation initiatives are examples that Te Papa continues to negotiate.
Mana Taonga is an important pou or pillar of Te Papa’s bicultural foundation although
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200 International Journal of Cultural Studies 17(2)
there are ambiguities and conflicts inside and outside Te Papa as management, staff, visi-
tors and stakeholders continuously debate what biculturalism means and what a bicul-
tural Te Papa looks like (McCarthy, 2011). As we have seen in the introduction and are
reminded of once again, cultural politics are not governed by some pre-determined struc-
tural logic but instead are performed and contested in particular contexts and under com-
plex circumstances.
The Iwi Exhibitions at Te Papa connect Māori to the museum and the museum back to
Māori in a highly visible way. We actively involve Māori tribes in the exhibition process
and this engagement often leads to further opportunities far in excess of the exhibition
arena. The Iwi Exhibitions involve a large number of people and at the opening and clos-
ing ceremonies it is not uncommon to see thousands of people there in the early morning
dawn. To see young and old celebrating their histories and identities with us and the
nation is a privilege. The songs, chants and rituals of both young and old, along with the
words of their elders are humbling to witness. To me, this is what museums and galleries
can do. They can and they do make a difference in the lives of people. Collections,
access, care and how this is enacted is an important part of this transformational process.
Mana Taonga is Te Papa’s policy that helps shape the way we do things. It empowers our
communities in the business of the museum and it gives back authority and power to the
people from where the taonga and stories originate from.
The reflexive museum
This last section draws together the preceding theoretical discussion on the ‘public
sphere’ and the empirical insights of Mana Taonga as an Indigenous cultural practice
underpinning identity politics at Te Papa. In the process of doing so, there appear repre-
sentational strategies which can bring the complex political engagements throughout
museological productions behind the scenes, as enacted through Mana Taonga, into dia-
logue with the museum experience, thus realizing the communicative potential of the
museum as forum by creating a place of debate. Hakiwai, co-author of this article and on
another occasion a formal informant of a previous research project (Schorch, 2010,
2013), presents an exciting point of departure:
In some cases we do embrace the forum through the concept of Mana Taonga. We embrace that
not consciously I suppose … I think the way that we use forum is more in terms of we have a
lecture theatre … or the marae and the forum must be there. But we actually invoke the concept
of a forum through the participation of Iwi and our communities in the processes. So back of
house, meetings, whether it’s here or in the country, we are actually debating, working through
issues, and to me that’s actually a concept of forum. But I think it’s couched without intuitively
saying ‘oh, we are going through a forum process’. It’s more of a Mana Taonga active
engagement …
As we have seen, Mana Taonga is the consideration of spiritual and cultural links between
ancestral material treasures and people. It is one of Te Papa’s founding principles which
substantiates the forum idea within museum practice (McCarthy, 2011) (see also
Appendix). While this association is not consciously drawn, as Hakiwai points out, Mana
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Schorch and Hakiwai 201
Taonga clearly facilitates ‘active engagement … through the participation of Iwi and …
communities in the processes’ of museological production and representation. In short, it
is a highly political concept of cultural negotiation and contestation. Importantly, the
discursive and dialogical nature of Mana Taonga enables the move beyond the ethnic
confines of biculturalism and humanizes cultural politics. That is, it involves cultural
actors through their interpretive performances that are enacted in the ‘articulation of
cultural differences’ (Bhabha, 1994) and consequently mirrors the hermeneutic com-
plexities in human affairs in general and the cultural domain in particular. Hakiwai pro-
ceeds with another promising concept, the marae or communal meeting place:
… it’s a forum. A pōwhiri is people getting together and it is political. People get on the marae
and say what they want, which usually they do. But having said that, we engage in those arenas
if you like not only here but also out in the community, whether it’s talking about cultural
centres, taonga or going out. I think Te Papa actively takes that sort of forum out. But we don’t
acknowledge that or we don’t actually record it or document it.
At this stage, I need to refer to some theoretical notions of the ‘public sphere’. According
to Arendt (1958: 198), the ‘public realm rises directly out of acting together, the sharing
of “words and deeds”’. Arendt (1958: 198) further asserts that ‘action and speech create
a space between the participants’, the ‘space of appearance’. A pōwhiri, a ceremonial
welcome or communal meeting, on the marae creates exactly such ‘space of appearance’
and transforms a gathering place into a discursive space or a place of debate. Importantly,
Hakiwai stresses that ‘Te Papa actively takes the forum out’. The physical parameters of
the marae are blurred through the political Mana Taonga engagement beyond Te Papa’s
walls shaping ‘a space between the participants which can find its proper location almost
any time and anywhere’ (Arendt, 1958: 198).
This dialogical terrain reflects the continuous making, becoming and emerging of a
public sphere and lends empirical weight to its theoretical reconceptualization ‘from a
substance … to a movement’ (Weibel and Latour, 2007). It also clearly shows that Māori’s
postcolonial political involvement is not confined to the internal procedures of Te Papa,
but reaches into other public spheres of political negotiations and contestations. It fol-
lows that Mana Taonga as theory, practice and policy is not to be misunderstood as neo-
colonial technology to assimilate Indigenous people within state institutions. Instead, it
is the current outcome of the ongoing ‘war of position’ which constantly changes the
ideas of state and governmentality from within.
These political ‘moments’ or ‘processes’ characteristic of a ‘forum’ are, however, not
revealed in museological representations at Te Papa and therefore remain inaccessible to
visitors. As other research has shown, none of the interviewees and focus group partici-
pants referred to concepts such as Mana Taonga (Schorch, 2013). They relied instead on
the interpretive support in the form of guided tours to get at least a glimpse of the com-
plex consultations and ‘interpretive contests’ (Said, 2003) occurring behind the scenes. It
is again Hakiwai who supports such a critique:
I think the process is just as important, if not more, than the actual end product … we don’t
reveal the processes here well enough. It’s quite intuitive and we perhaps know them in-house,
but we are not that explicit in the front of house. I think if people knew exactly what we do to
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202 International Journal of Cultural Studies 17(2)
create these products or these things on the floor and experiences, they would be quite astounded.
I dare say there are still members of the public who think that these exhibitions and so forth are
done by a few people coming together. If they knew that there were in some cases hundreds and
thousands of people involved in the creation, I think the mindset would be ‘huh, that’s
empowering, that’s really affirming, that’s different’. And I think that’s the point of difference
and probably as we go forward there will be a bit more of that in terms of communicating that
far more to the public … we might know that we work with a lot of tribes. And it has taken years
and negotiations, hui, but that’s not readily known. We don’t communicate that. In some cases
that’s actually a very important part of the story, of the processes themselves. Rather than come
in and see an exhibition, knowing that you have invested that time, that energy, the relationships
that would actually help the visitors to understand what this museum stands for.
As we have seen in the preceding section, In Te Papa’s case there certainly exist exten-
sive community consultations and contributions as through Mana Taonga, but the
dynamic negotiations remain hidden back of house and do not enter the museum experi-
ence and the associated interpretive actions, movements and performances of museum
visitors or cultural actors.
In this context, I have addressed elsewhere the chasm between museological produc-
tion and representation and argued for a shift in conceptualizing exhibitions: from prod-
ucts to be presented to processes to be revealed. By presenting the processes leading to
the definition of categories and the interpretation of identities, and by giving faces to
decisions made, the reflexive museum can become an epitome of democracy that does not
silence controversies but awards diversity public voices (Schorch, 2009). Such an under-
standing of the reflexive museum is linked to recent thinking in museum theory such as
Bal’s ‘metamuseal function’ (Bal, 1992; Mason, 2006), which in the case of Te Papa
could incorporate a ‘display of its own story in order to tell the interaction between insti-
tution and community’, thus crafting ‘an extremely effective embodiment of bicultural-
ism’, as Message (2006: 183) rightly asserts.
While modern ‘forms’ of communication play a significant role in bridging the gap
between museological ‘production’ and ‘consumption’, I argue that it is even more
important to create an inherently dialogic ‘content’ within exhibitionary representations;
a reflexive museum practice that pays tribute to the ‘inescapable hermeneutic complexity
in moral and political affairs’ (Held, 2008: 161). In short, the reflexive museum as ‘forum’
lays open the inherently contested processes of cultural politics, that is, the endemic
‘polysemy’ (Ricoeur, 1981) in the ‘construction of culture’ and ‘invention of tradition’
(Bruner, 2005). Such politicized and moralized representations would open the doors to
the ‘interpretive contests’ backstage and encourage the hermeneutic actions, movements
and performances of visitors within the discursive space of the ‘museum forum’. In this
case, both museological production and representation stimulate the political dynamics
of the museum experience marrying the three dimensions within a vibrant public sphere,
which breaks up and enriches the spaces ‘in between’ political actors and their ‘enuncia-
tions’ (Bhabha, 1994) beyond homogenizing and essentializing totalizations of state ver-
sus museum or museum versus visitor.
By pursuing these avenues in museum theory and practice, the interpretive ‘com-
mon sphere’ (Dilthey, 1976) will be enriched through political ‘intersubjectivity’
(Habermas, 1999) and the resulting ‘performative democracy’ (Weibel and Latour,
2007). By opening the doors to Mana Taonga, for example, the Māori experiment in Te
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Schorch and Hakiwai 203
Papa might also be applied elsewhere thus vitalizing other public spheres and forms of
democratic engagement. Importantly, Mana Taonga is not only a museological process
but a political intervention in the heart of the colonial enterprise and its postcolonial
renegotiation, that is, knowledge production. And it is this very knowledge which
requires further democratization by ‘making things public’ (Latour and Weibel, 2005)
in and beyond museums.
Conclusion
This article created a dialogue between Mana Taonga as an Indigenous Māori political
concept of cultural negotiation and contestation embedded in museum practice at the
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa) and Western notions of the
public sphere leading to a refined understanding of performative democracy. The main
innovation of this paper is that museum, cultural and political studies are enriched and
expanded by drawing not on yet more Western theory but Indigenous thought. The
authors argue that the key lesson for scholarly work is cross-cultural collaboration, which
itself performs a more democratic form of knowledge production.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
1. Te Māori was an overwhelming success and the number of people who visited the exhibition
in the United States numbered 621,000, which didn’t include school children. 917,500 people
viewed Te Māori in the four venues in New Zealand.
2. The first Iwi Exhibition was the local tribe Te Atiawa followed by Te Aupouri of the Far
North, Ngāi Tuhoe of the Bay of Plenty; Te Awa Tupua of Whanganui, Ngäi Tahu of the South
Island and presently Tainui-Waikato.
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Schorch and Hakiwai 205
Author biographies
Philipp Schorch is a research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Research Institute (ADRI) and the
Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific (CHCAP) at Deakin University. Philipp’s
research interests are situated at the intersection of globalization, travel, museums and meaning.
He has recently published in International Journal of Heritage Studies, Museum and Society and
Museum Management and Curatorship.
Arapata Hakiwai is Scholar of Mātauranga Māori at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa
Tongarewa. Arapata belongs to the Ngāti Kahungunu, Rongowhakaata, Ngāti Porou and Ngāi
Tahu tribes. His museum experience spans over 20 years, including Director, Mātauranga Māori
(2003–08), and he has presented at international conferences, published in academic books and
journals, and regularly lectures at Victoria University of Wellington.
Appendix: Mana Taonga Principle
‘Mana Taonga: At its meeting of 30 September 1992 Ngā Kaiwawao (the Māori Advi-
sory Group to the museums development board) resolved to recommend that the Board
endorse the concept of Mana Taonga. This concept as defined by Te Papa, is central in
laying the foundation for Māori participation and involvement in Te Papa. The concept
was developed through consultation with iwi and other key stakeholders in 1989–90, and
was endorsed by the Museum’s Board in 1992.
Broadly speaking the mana taonga concept as practiced by Te Papa, recognizes the
spiritual and cultural connections of taonga with their people through the whakapapa of:
i) The creator of specific taonga;
ii) The ancestors after whom the taonga is named; and
iii) The whanau, hapū or iwi to whom the taonga is an heirloom
The concept is defined as follows:
• The rights of iwi to Te Marae o Te Papa Tongarewa in equality with all other iwi
– these rights are conferred through the taonga that are held by Te Papa on the
behalf of iwi.
• Spiritual and cultural ownership rights conferred through the whakapapa in
respect of the traditions and histories that taonga represent, as well as the whaka-
papa of the creator of the taonga.
• These rights accord to iwi the mana to care for their taonga, to speak for them, and
to determine their use or uses by the Museum.
The rights of mana taonga cannot be erased and continue to exist for those taonga held
within Te Papa’s care. In a practical sense, mana taonga provides iwi and communities
with the right to define how taonga within Te Papa should be cared for and managed in
accordance with their tikanga or custom.’
(Retrieved from Te Papa Intranet)
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