Locating Hinemihi’s People

Abstract

The care of taonga (Maori treasures) outside the Maori community takes place within varying degrees of inter-cultural engagement, in which encounters with the past can be seen to be negotiated through the changing nature of personal and institutional relationships in the present. The desire to develop Hinemihi, the historic Maori meeting house at Clandon Park, as a functioning marae (ceremonial gathering place) has provided a challenge to conventional heritage conservation practice. A response to the conservation of Hinemihi has been to adapt practices developed by the Pouhere Taonga / New Zealand Historic Places Trust for the conservation of historic marae. The success of this approach relies on the formation of an active and sustainable marae community. Therefore, a series of community-based events have been delivered to nurture the developing relationships between Hinemihi and her people as an essential element of the conservation project. This has questioned the central role of Maori in the long-term care of Hinemihi. As a result, the formation of ‘Hinemihi’s People’ is an attempt to develop a sustainable conservation community for Hinemihi at Clandon Park that reflects a spatially and temporally grounded reality, based on lived experiences.