Publications
Members of our team past and present have been involved in various publications around Hinemihi.
Decolonizing Conservation Caring for Maori Meeting Houses outside New Zealand
Edited By Dean Sully
This book argues for an important shift in cultural heritage conservation, away from a focus on maintaining the physical fabric of material culture toward the impact that conservation work has on people’s lives. In doing so, it challenges the commodification of sacred objects and places by western conservation thought and attempts to decolonize conservation practice. To do so, the authors examine conservation activities at Maori marae—meeting houses—located in the US, Germany, and England and contrasts them with changes in marae conservation in New Zealand. A key case study is the Hinemihi meeting house, transported to England in the 1890s where it was treated as a curiosity by visitors to Clandon Park for over a century, and more recently as a focal point of cultural activity for UK Maori communities. Recent efforts to include various Maori stakeholder communities in the care of this sacred structure is a key example of community based conservation that can be replicated in heritage practice around the world.
The House with the Golden Eyes
By Alan Gallop.
Drawing on original material from archives in both Britain and New Zealand this story recounts how skilled Maori craftsmen carved and construted this whare nui (meeting house) at Te Wairoa in the Hot Lakes Region of New Zealand's North Island, close to the spectacular Pink and White Terraces keenly sought out by intrepid Victorian tourists as the eighth wonder of the world. A wonder that was lost on a night in June 1986 when Mt Tarawera erupted without warning killing over 100 people. Only Hinemihi was strong enough to withstand that rain of fire and stones saving those who sought shelter within.
The story goes on to tell how Hinemihi came to be purchased for 50 pounds by Lord Onslow and shipped to his estate at Clandon Park in Surrey where it has stood for over 100 years, a symbol of unity between Maori and Europeans.
This book has gone out of print, although used copies can usually be found through www.amazon.co.uk.
Locating Hinemihi’s People
Dean Sully, Rosanna Raymond, and Anthony Hoete
Journal of Material Culture Volume 19, Issue 2
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.