Portals to the past
Dame Anne Salmond unlocks stories of our taonga in a new series, Dionne Christian writes
Anyone who has ever had the difficult task of packing up the home of a deceased relative or friend will know objects — artefacts — have power of their own.
What to do with the ceramic jug that took pride of place on the mantelpiece; the “tree” ornament made from dozens of tiny pieces of jade; the lowcut red dress, worn only once a decade ago but still taking up space in the wardrobe; or the faded photograph of a young girl, in a handmade frame, excitedly posing with a new bike?
If they could speak, what would these possessions tell us? Could we find out how and why they ended up in our loved one’s homes? What they meant to that person and how they used it (or why they choose not to)? How they were made and what they were intended for? To box them up and put them in storage or give them away often feels wrong because these meant something to someone.
Most of the things around us reveal information about us; it’s this that historians and archaeologists try to discover when they’re digging up the past and wondering what a society might have done with, say, the feathers of an extinct bird.
Celebrated New Zealand anthropologist, environmentalist, writer and Maori Studies professor Dame Anne Salmond begins each episode of Maori Television’s new six-part documentary series, Artefact, with a reminder: “Artefacts are portals to the past that allow us to travel back in time and space on a quest to unlock the stories of our taonga; they speak to all New Zealanders and tell us as much about our present and future as well as our past.”
Artefact uses historical objects — the famous and more obscure — as the starting point for cross-cultural stories about the accomplishments of our tupuna. On the one hand, it’s an exploration of our shared history using iconic taonga — from a carved tekoteko to a dress worn by New Zealand’s first Maori woman cabinet minister Tini “Whetu” Marama Tirikatene-Sullivan — to tell historic stories.
But equally importantly, and it’s a point Salmond emphasises, it uses ancestors’ experiences and aspirations to connect with the present and look toward the future.
Each episode is also about what we can learn that might assist us as we journey toward a brave new world. It’s not just practical information, for example, talking about techniques used to adapt to new environments as voyagers did when they arrived in a temperate climate from the tropics.
It’s as much about gaining strength and a measure of self-belief through the achievements of our tupuna; their ingenuity, adaptability and versatility. Salmond says it’s a window to a part of our country and history that is extraordinary, fascinating, exciting and something that all New Zealanders should feel proud of.
“You’ll learn a lot about this country — and I know I did — and there are a whole lot of surprises about the nature of our past and the wonderful ideas people have about possible futures,” she says. “It made me very proud to be a Kiwi and it was a privilege to make this series.”
Salmond was a teenager on a scholarship in the United States when she first became interested in Maori history. Asked to speak about New Zealand, it struck her that her greatgrandfather, a Scotsman called James McDonald, had devoted years to filming, photographing and working alongside tangata whenua but she knew little about this side of the country.
In the 2013 Maori Television documentary The Scotsman and the Maori, she and her anthropologist daughter, Dr Amiria Salmond, retraced his journey and reflected on the thousands of images he captured and what they would mean for the descendants of Maori, such as Sir Peter Buck and Sir Apirana Ngata, he worked with.
Making Artefact also involved a fair bit of travel. Accompanied by a film crew, Salmond travelled by plane, train and car
— and, a couple of times by helicopter — to all corners of New Zealand as well as the United States and Europe to track down taonga and the iwi, uri (offspring), archaeologists, historians and museum curators who could reveal more about these artefacts.
Even with a 50-year career in academia and research and numerous books — many of them award-winning — to her name and a number of other accolades, notably 2013’s New Zealander of the Year, she found herself frequently amazed by the stories she heard or objects she was looking at.
In the early 2000s, a storm whipped up around Kaitorete Spit, the finger of land — aerial photos really do make it look as if it’s pointing the way — along the Banks Peninsula coast of Canterbury, which separates Lake Ellesmere from the Pacific Ocean.
Concerned about ongoing coastal erosion, Department of Conversation staff went to inspect the possible latest damage and were surprised to find oily black sludge oozing from part of the ground. It turned out not to be an environmental disaster in the making but a historic find of national significance.
Further inspections revealed it was a posthole and when archaeologists went to work, they discovered the remains of a whare, albatross bones, tools and a red dye known as kokowai. But the real surprise was the fragile remnants of a 500-year-old cloak.
Salmond says it would have been made in the early centuries of Maori settlement and shows how those early arrivals were experimenting with new ways of making clothing using locally available materials that would ward off the biting cold of the South Island.
“It’s just amazing that it survived and shows weaving techniques developed early and continued to be refined and built upon,” she says.
She says they never wanted to look at an artefact in “clinical isolation” and the series evolved so she became more conversationstarter rather than a host or presenter coolly filling in the silences. While there was a great deal of preliminary research,it wasn’t overly scripted.
“I know from my own experience that sometimes the most powerful information and facts, you could never have got it from rigidly sticking to a script. If you make interviewees dance to the tune of a script rather than letting them be themselves, they become an actor and that can stop a lot of spontaneity and you risk losing out on part of a story.”