Tawa is the name Maori bestowed on Captain Gilbert Mair. Through the respect he gained as a linguist, soldier, Court Assessor and humanitarian, tribal communities of the central North Island of New Zealand demonstrated their trust by presenting him with
their most valued taonga – ancestral treasures. Unlike other collectors, Mair – having grown up amongst Maori – understood the importance of ensuring the associated narratives remained attached to the taonga after he passed them into the safe-keeping of the Auckland Museum in 1890. Consequently, each taonga in the Ko Tawa exhibition (selected from Mair’s collection of 236) continues to carry a unique story, intimately linking today’s descendants to ancestral landscapes.
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