The collection of Ngati Tahinga taonga known as the Bird Family collection moved to a new home in the Raglan Museum on Saturday 3rd March. Museum Society President Patrick Day joined Kaumatua Russell Riki and Piripi Kereopa as well as other Ngati Mahinga Kaumatua representatives in the move of the collection from Te Akau to Raglan.
Members of the Raglan & District Museum Society and local iwi Ngati Mahaanga were at the museum at 1pm to acknowledge the arrival of the taonga.
Russell Riki said that the move of the collection was a day when all iwi in the area came together as one. He said that the power of Saturday’s storm was a good sign for the move. Sunnah Thompson gave thanks to the heavenly father for the move and also thanked the Maori King. Eru Thompson emphasised the significance of Ngati Tahinga allowing the collection to leave their own area and be placed in the museum.
The Bird family farmed the coastal Te Akau or Horea area that is the home of Ngati Tahinga in the early part of the 20th Century. Family members collected the artefacts from this area and displayed them in cabinets in a small museum. When the property was sold, the collection was moved to an unsecure farm shed. Archaeologist Neville Ritchie, from the Department of Conservation described the collection with its provenance to Horea, “as being a nationally significant artefact collection providing a special insight into the Maori activity in that area in the past, their lifeways, and exploitation of local and more distant resources in addition to the information which can be derived from the remains of the middens and sites themselves. The fact it is a localised collection ( i.e. we know where the artefacts came from) makes it much more significant from a cultural and archaeological perspective.”
The Bird Family have given the collection to the Museum Society as a long-term indefinite loan. The collection is now stored in the Raglan Museum’s reserve collection where it will be studied and catalogued before an exhibition can be planned. It is understood that the Museum Society will soon start fund-raising for the costs involved with this.