ROTORUA - Now that the carving of the ancestor Pukaki has returned to the Rotorua-based Ngati Whakaue tribe, the rest of New Zealand is to be told about its history.
Pukaki, A Comet Returns, a book detailing the history of Pukaki, has been launched at the Rotorua District Council.
Pukaki is an ancestral father of Ngati Whakaue, an Arawa hapu, and is symbolised in a carving that used to stand at Ohinemutu.
It was returned to Rotorua in October 1997 and now stands in the council buildings.
The carving has been on display in the Auckland Museum and was a national icon in the Te Maori exhibition.
But it was Paul Tapsell's thesis on Pukaki in 1995, commissioned by iwi elders, that alerted the museum to the controversy surrounding the carving.
"The book has become an opportunity for the rest of New Zealand to find out about the story of Pukaki," Dr Tapsell said.
The tale was related mainly by Te Arawa's late paramount chief Hamuera Taiporutu Mitchell. "This story is not mine. It belongs to the people," he had said.
Dr Tapsell, descended from Te Arawa and Tainui, is a former curator of the Rotorua Museum and is an Oxford doctoral scholar and post-doctoral fellow at the Australian National University.
He is director (Maori) at the Auckland Museum and lectures at the University of Auckland.
- NZPA
Carving's tale revealed to all
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.