Iwi’s cultural revitalisation in spotlight

A new atlas puts Nga¯ i Tahu at the centre of the South Island with the aim of fostering a ‘‘cultural revitalisation’’ of iwi culture and identity.

Five years in the making, Ka¯ Huru Manu provides a Nga¯ i Tahu perspective on the South Island through an interactive, cultural map launched yesterday.

The website and a bookTangata Nga¯ i Tahu, People of Nga¯ i Tahu were part of the iwi’s programme of ‘‘cultural revitalisation’’, Nga¯i Tahu archive adviser Ta¯ Tipene O’Regan told members at the launch.

‘‘In the process of the redevelopment of ourselves, one of the things we have to do is conserve our knowledge as we go, as well as recovering it.’’

A team of eight archivists began working on Ka¯ Huru Manu in 2012 and, in the process, had mapped more than 5500 places including rivers, mountains, lakes, pa and trails used by Nga¯ i Tahu with Geographical Information System (GIS) technology.

The website contains more than 1000 place names and each one has a pop-up box containing the history or story behind it. References to information sources are provided for each name, including manuscripts, published books, newspaper articles, survey maps and oral histories.

‘‘We’ve been going through several institutions, libraries and museums to find information pertaining to our history and putting it into our archive to make that knowledge much more accessible to our people,’’ Nga¯ i Tahu archive manager Takerei Norton said.

Searches can be in English or Ma¯ ori and by address or reserve name.

Before settlement of Treaty of Waitangi claims, the iwi’s identity was mainly tied up in ‘‘grievance mode’’ for many years as they fought to receive their entitlements from the Crown, O’Regan said.

A Nga¯ i Tahu archive was first started in the 1970s, but substantially grew as a result of the negotiation process from 1986 to 1997.

‘‘It contained a huge amount of information of the tribe given in evidence,’’ he said.

Other material included Ma¯ori manuscripts from the 19th century.

Post-settlement Nga¯ i Tahu were able to go into ‘‘growth mode’’ and determine how they wanted to be in the future, O’Regan said.

The website and book were just the beginning of the process to collect and restore the iwi’s cultural information.

O’Regan said the process was the same as the work done by Pakeha museums and libraries.

‘‘We needed to be able to do this for ourselves because . . . even though we have saved a lot of material tribally, our whole identity had been tied up with the battle, with the claim since 1849.’’

The work has been done to ‘‘drive an inter-generational renewal of Nga¯i Tahu’s heritage and identity’’, he said.