August 24, 2022
Racist dummies set for chop
Canterbury Museum is finally getting rid of mannequins that many visitors feel are racist.
Museum board member Puamiria Parata-Goodall says the offending diorama was developed in the 1980s as a depiction of early
Māori life in Te Waipounamu.
She says complaints from the public and staff have grown over the years.
The museum is undergoing a major redevelopment this year, and the museum’s iwi liaison group Ōhākī o Ngā Tīpuna, which she chairs, has pushed for a new display.
“We now have the opportunity to rebalance that narrative and to tell the stories we want to tell in the ways we want to tell them as opposed to us being researched and our stories being told about us by people who are not us,” Ms Parata Goodall says.