Word of the Week: Taonga

by Eleanor Lee-Duncan Taonga “tah-oh-nga” ‘(Māori). 1. (noun) property, goods, possessions, effects. 2. (noun) treasure, anything prized - applied to anything considered to be of value including socially or culturally valuable objects, resources, phenomenon, ideas and techniques. ’ -Te Aka Māori-English, English-Māori Dictionary and Index The Māori term does not easily correspond with any single English word, since it encompasses broader concepts than our words such as ‘treasure’ describe. Emphasis is placed on the spiritual dimensions, or wairoa of any given item, alongside or instead of its material worth as an object. Furthermore, while abstract concepts, or experiences can be described in English as ‘treasured’, for example, ‘I treasured hearing that poem’, in Te Reo Māori an experience such as this can be described in itself as taonga. Stories, ideas, land features, people, found objects, works of art, or anything which one considers precious can be described as taonga. Furthermore, museums are referred to in Te Reo Māori as whare taonga (house of treasures).

Installation view, Fiona Pardington: In My Dreaming I Saw - MOEA IHO NEI I AU, 2015, {Suite}, Wellington

We can consider this word alongside the works of photographer Fiona Pardington, in her images of heitiki. A selection of her works at the exhibition ‘In My Dreaming I Saw – MOE IHO NEI I AU’, are currently on display at {Suite} gallery, 241 Cuba Street. Each work is a toned silver bromide fibre based print, depicting various heitiki, and one hei matau. Heitiki are carved Māori pendants, generally based on the human figure, and hei matau are fishing hook shaped pendants. These heitiki can be carved from wood, bone, or pounamu (greenstone). Heitiki are taonga not just because of the precious material value, particularly of pounamu, but also the spiritual or metaphysical aspect of them, as well as the personal, familial, or tribal history of the item.

Fiona Pardington, Taranaki Style with Paua Eyes Heitiki From The Burnett Collection Whanganui Museum, 2008, Toned silver bromide fibre based print, 600 x 500 mm, Edition 3/5

In these works by Fiona Pardington, we are presented with taonga, some carved from prized pounamu, one from human bone, several from fake bone. Rather than recording these objects, these taonga, in an objective documentary style of photography, Pardington shows them suffused with soft light, which makes the pounamu seem to glow with an aura. The photos are incredibly close up, so each taonga fills up almost the whole frame, and appears confrontingly large. Each minor scratch and blemish is highlighted; As Zara Stanhope says, ‘the tiki carry the scars of the individuals and families who owned and wore them.’

Fiona Pardington, Hei Matau, New Zealand, provenance unknown, Okains Bay Maori and Colonial Museum, 2002, Toned silver bromide fibre based print, 600 x 500 mm, Edition 1/5

Zara Stanhope continues an analysis of these taonga as photographed by Pardington by examining the ways they operate as a ‘critique of western destruction of indigenous cultures through the acts of settlement and assimilation, and the stripping of taonga from land and body.’ These photos appear to us in an incredibly intimate way, which opens up imaginative meditation and conjecture on who has possibly worn these heitiki, to where, and what the wearer experienced. While taonga and heitiki, as concepts, and individual objects, belong to Māori culture, since colonisation they have been collected, appropriated by, and made for, non- Māori peoples.

Fiona Pardington, Traditional Heitiki 1953.4.2.4 From The Burnett Collection Whanganui Museum, 2008, Toned silver bromide fibre based print, 600 x 500 mm, Edition 2/5

Further reading: Zara Stanlope, Slow Release: recent photography from New Zealand, 2002, Victoria: Heide Museum of Modern Art.