February 01, 2019
Mataatua house record makes book awards long list
A book on a much travelled meeting house has made the long list for May's New Zealand Book Awards.
Mataatua was opened in 1874 and sent for exhibition in Sydney five years later before being sent on to England and eventually to Dunedin.
It was held for many years at the Otago Museum before being returned to Ngāti Awa, who have restored it to pride of place near the Whakatāne river mouth.
Mataatua Wharenui: Te Whare i Hoki Mai was compiled from the work of Hirini Mead, Layne Harvey, Pouroto Ngaropo and Te Onehou Phillis, and published by Huia.
Mr Ngaropo says the house was built at a time of huge change for Māori, and was intended to unify the people and give a message of peace.
"The conceptual idea was based on a prophesy of Te Kooti which says let there be a belt woven and within this belt let there be many strands and let these strands combine and keep us together like a tawharau, like a sheltering place to protect everyone at a time when mana motuhake was shifting to kāwanatanga," he says.
The house is a taonga for all Māori because every waka is represented in the carvings.
Other books in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards long list include The Imaginary Lives of James Poneke by Tina Makereti, Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand Wars on Screen by Annabel Cooper, Galleries of Māoriland: Artists, Collectors and the Māori World, 1880-1910 by Roger Blackley, and in the poetry section, Poukahangatus by Tayi Tibble.
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