ABSTRACT
How do we measure an exhibition’s success? Who is ultimately best qualified to judge? When the Ko Tawa exhibition project was in its initial design stages, its curatorial team adopted a Maori worldview before committing any lines, words or drawings to paper (Figure 15.1). Could its young team of Maori-accountable curators, archival researchers, exhibition builders, graphic designers and educators create an exhibition to match the expectations of source communities and, in the process, bring their urban relations along for the ride? What were their expectations? Would community elders view the team as tribally accountable Maori or young know-it-all museum representatives from the city? How could it design a space to display ancestral treasures-taonga-that appropriately reflected the philosophy of a once deeply tribal people-the philosophy of whakapapa: the acceptance that all things, all thoughts, all beings are genealogically connected throughout the universe? Could an exhibition capture the past, present and future, from birth to death over 3,000 plus years of ancestral voyaging across the largest ocean on the planet? Could the team design something that would engage the hearts of young and old, accurately reflecting the wider Maori communities’ identity through the pain of colonization, their rights to belong, to harvest resources, to engage with the living and say farewell to the dead? Could an exhibition harness the power of marae (ceremonial plaza in the village): the place to where we, as Maori, are drawn in life and are laid out in death; where the core business is relationships; where the living ritually engages with the dead who in turn provide guidance to the living?1 This chapter provides an insight into the Ko Tawa journey and the challenges facing museums seeking to translate indigenous knowledge into an exhibitionary context. To assist my discussion, I have provided the originating context (tribal Maori) 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 (post-) museum contexts.2
