The images presented document aspects of progress and growth for a significant wetland and coastal restoration project taking place at Kuku, Horowhenua, southwest coast of North Island, Aotearoa, New Zealand. The work is undertaken by representatives from various hapū known as Ngäti Te Rangitäwhia, Te Mateawa, Ngäti Manu, and Ngäti Kapumanawawhiti ki Kuku, who are affiliates of a larger tribal group, or iwi, Ngäti Tükorehe. The research project (undertaken while working as senior curator Mätauranga Mäori at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington) links cultural landscape issues and activities to the concerns for cultural property as revered taonga with special qualities within museum collections. The term taonga is relevant to understanding culturally venerated items within museum holdings while honoring their associated peoples, tribal lands, and waterways from where they derive. As significant cultural material, taonga are valued because of their associations. Cultural landscapes are also well regarded as land-, sea-, and water-based taonga—an encompassing term that denotes their intrinsic value and intricate natural, cultural, and spiritual interrelationships. As museum professionals rethink cultural property issues in different ways, the academic research has also embraced the concept of land- and water-based taonga to bolster ecological, cultural, and spiritual contexts that persist in ancestral lands in tribal tenure.
31 Days of Borneo
