ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an insight into the Ko Tawa journey and the challenges facing museums seeking to translate indigenous knowledge into an exhibitionary context. It provides the originating context of the Ko Tawa story on which to explore the opportunities and barriers facing curators committed to translating indigenous source community knowledge, not least activating the underpinning principles by which such communities might successfully become co-producers of ancestrally bounded knowledge within museum contexts. In early 2001 the Ko Tawa exhibition project began life as part of a joint Auckland Museum/University of Auckland academic Marsden Fund research output. The primary research focus was Captain Gilbert Mair's nineteenth-century collection of 427 taonga. At the time chapter investigates Mair's collection was not only the museum's newly employed Tumuaki, but also University of Auckland's adjunct Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and co-convener of the Museums and Cultural Heritage Program.
