Auckland Museum angers Heke family

By GREG ANSLEY

CANBERRA - Artefacts of Hone Heke have arrived in Canberra amid ground-shaking thunderstorms and the first shots in a new war between Nga Puhi and the Auckland Museum.

The artefacts, including Heke's flag and weapons, will be part of a major new exhibition of international outlaws, revolutionaries and bushrangers at the National Museum of Australia.

But while Nga Puhi elder Hare Paniora spoke this week of the propitious signs of lightning and thunder and of a journey of peace from New Zealand, Heke descendant and family head David Rankin launched a broadside at the Auckland Museum.

Nga Puhi would now be officially seeking the return of all Heke artefacts held by the museum, which he said were without provenance and had been taken from the iwi's burial grounds. Mr Rankin's fury erupted at the museum's refusal to release any Heke artefacts for the Australian exhibition, despite representations from his descendants and 40 Nga Puhi elders.

He said the museum had claimed absolute ownership, had rejected Mr Rankin's family authority and had installed a "self-appointed collective" of Ngati Whatua to speak for all Maori represented in the museum's collection.

The artefacts in the Australian exhibition were loaned by the Kaikohe Pioneer Museum, the Alexander Turnbull Library and Te Papa.

At a brief ceremony to open the crates containing the artefacts, Mr Rankin said Nga Puhi, Canberra-based Maori and the National Museum of Australia had faced a difficult fight to gain taonga to display because of the Auckland Museum's attitude.

"The Auckland Museum is an archaic museum," he said.

"The Auckland Museum is a museum that does not like individual people and descendants of distinguished people to speak for them." Mr Rankin said Nga Puhi would now seek the return of all Heke relics from the museum, but did not want to hold them, intending instead to pass them to a "professional" institution such as Te Papa, which was in tune with the descendants of ancestral Maori.

Auckland Museum director Dr Rodney Wilson said the institution had "declined" to release Hone Heke artefacts after consultation with its Maori advisory committee.

Taumata-a-Iwi and Northern iwi were, he said, "concerned at the potentially negative association of Hone Heke with villains and rebels".

The artefacts in Canberra will join an astonishing collection of relics assembled by the National Museum to explore the myth and reality of outlaws and rebels from nine countries.

Others in the exhibition include Australia's Ned Kelly, American outlaw Jesse James, Japan's Ishikawa Goemon - prototype of the ninjas and reportedly boiled alive - and the Indian bandit Queen Phoolan Devi.

Heke's inclusion was largely the work of Tauranga-born Jo Diamond, a Heke descendant who is completing a doctorate at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Ms Diamond convinced the museum of her ancestor's significance and the New Zealand artefacts will now form the single largest collection in the exhibition.