well if there was a hall in new zealands national museum te papa where these three flax baskets were going to get their fill of mana it would be in the maori people display... sadly for me not even this place was enough for the kete o te wananga, the depositories of all maori mystic knowledge, to try and do whatever it is they need to do and disappear.
this places maori collection is way bigger than the otago museum's! i guess that should be expected of the national museum compared to our local one... not that the otago doesn't stand up even after seeing so many kiwi museums on the quest so far!there was a lot to see, but out of respect i didn't take many photos... i sadly didn't notice the sign asking them not to be taken till after i snapped the following... so please don't think me a bad dinosaur, people of the innerweb. i just didn't know!
one of the most impressive displays was an ACTUAL marae... the oldest one still intact in new zealand. called te hau ki turanga.
marae's were the maori peoples city hall, church, and community centre all in one building.
it was very rude and bad of the early european new zealander's to disassemble this one and put it in a museum as marae are tapu, or in other words spiritually sacred. really bad stuff is supposed to happen if you violate it...
again i didn't learn this till after i'd checked it out. at the same time it is a good thing that something so magnificent is being preserved and kept safe. it's just too bad it has the history is does.
the inside of these very important places are decorated floor to ceiling with amazing carvings. though the lighting wasn't ideal for a picture (i never use a flash in museums out of fear of harming the specimens and artifacts) it definitely added to the impressive atmosphere the place had about it...
they also have the ORIGNAL te takinga storage house... why i'm so excited, if you don't remember people of the web wide world, is that the otago museum has a replica of this famous storage house in our maori gallery, and i walk by it nearly every time i'm on patrol at work...
so seeing the real thing was ubber cool!
the final artifact just outside the gallery is a war waka, or war canoe.
despite it being such an impressive gallery, again the baskets didn't do a thing. this was honestly my best chance at getting rid of them here in wellington!
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