Meeting House, Te Papa, Wellington

“The Wharenui or (Meeting House) at Te Papa is called Te Hono Ki Hawaiki, meaning the links to Hawaiki, the traditional homelands of the Māori. The kinship groups it represents encompass all the iwi and other cultures whose treasures and stories are held at Te Papa.

This is particularly shown by the carving of the traditional story of Maui taming the sun, as depicted on the maihi (arms of the meeting house). Maui is an important figure in many Polynesian cultures. The stained glass door, made by Robert Jahnke, represents Ranginui, the sky father.

The tiled flooring, designed by Kura Te Waru Rewiri, depicts Papatūānuku, the Earth mother. When the stained glass door is opened (it is pushed upward), it re-enacts the traditional Māori story of the separation of Ranginui and Papatūānuku.

The tukutuku (woven panels) on the walls were made by students from Toi Haukura, the Māori School of Design at the Tairawhiti Polytechnic in Gisborne. Another Māori story depicted along the roof of the meeting house is the creation of the first woman, Hineahuone (the woman made from sand), by her father Tāne Mahuta, the god of the forest.

He is represented in the doorway of the meeting house. Other stories depicted inside the meeting house include that of Maui the trickster turning his brother-in-law, Irawaru, into a dog, and the story of Paikea the whale. New Zealand’s other cultures are represented along the back wall of the meeting house. The changing relationship between Māori and Pākehā is portrayed inside the cupboards housed in the poutokomanawa (the central heart post of the meeting house).”

You will find this image on the front page of the website in my Featured Content Gallery. Permission is granted to use this file under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) license.