The Tale of Mataatua Wharenui, the house that came home

Tame Anderson, welcoming us to the Mataatua Wharenui, reopened in 2011 after over a century of traveling the globe. 

In the 1870s, several Maori tribes of the North Island who were being decimated by illness, loss of land and other indignities, banded together and as a symbol of unity built a beautiful traditional carved meeting house (whare). They gathered master carvers (men) and weavers (women) and in three years erected a magnificent building with a richly decorated interior of carvings of the ancestors and intricate woven wall panels. They called it Mataatua Wharenui (The House of Mataatua) after the name of their ancestral waka (canoe).

Five years after the Maori opened the building, the colonial government dismantled the Mataatua Wharenui (without the permission of the Maori) to send it to Sydney for the 1879 International Exhibition. There, with no Maori to oversee the rebuild, the building was re-erected inside out, with the carvings and woven wall panels unprotected from the elements. Later, the building was again dismantled and shipped to London where it was displayed for a few years and then stored for 40 years in the basement of the Albert & Victoria Museum. Finally, in the 1970s, it was returned to New Zealand, but sent to a museum in Dunedin. When the curators found it was too tall to fit in the exhibition room, they chopped off the bottom parts of the carved walls. Not until 1996 did the descendants of the original tribes regain control of their treasure. It took 15 years, but eventually, the local tribes trained enough carvers and weavers to completely restore and re-erect Mataatua Wharenui. Over a century after it was built, it now serves again as the center of the Marae — a gathering place for Maori ceremonies and a place of education about Maori culture for everyone.

While visiting Anne and David Wicks in Whakatane, we were able to visit Mataatua Wharenui and the marae, and it was incredibly moving.

Our tour guide, Tame, was a young Maori man who speaks English as his second language. He guided us through the traditional welcoming ceremony for guests, which includes a formal procession into the grounds (with women going first to indicate the visitors come in peace), and a welcoming speech and song from the chief of the Maori tribe (in this case, done by Tame). Traditionally the welcome speech is followed by a speech and song by the visitors. We had been prepped by David and Anne, so Mike was ready to give a short speech of gratitude for the welcome, and then we sang as a duet “The Lord’s My Shepherd” to the tune of Brother James’ Air — a piece we sang together down in Christchurch.

Tame then led us around the four walls of the building, greeting the various ancestors represented in the carvings. He explained that the idea of the carvings is that any Maori who comes to visit should be able to find an ancestor that they connect with.

 

After admiring the carvings (and trying to determine which were done in the 19th century and which were done in the 21st century) we were treated to a magnificent “light show” that used light and shadow projected onto the carvings and woven mats of the back wall to illustrate stories associated with the Whakatane area. These included how the original waka (canoe) from Polynesia was caught in a whirlpool, but by the strength and courage of the paddlers it broke free, and afterwards the chief saw the face of God appear, so he renamed the waka “Mataatua” – meaning “Face of God”.  Another story was how a powerful chiefs who used magic for good and evil was left stranded on a nearby volcanic island to die, but called up the King of the Whales and rode him back to land. A third story was about how this area got its name: when the great Mataatua waka was tied to a rock and the men were on shore, the waka began to drift away. Although it is forbidden for women to paddle the canoe, the chief’s daughter saw the danger, grabbed a paddle, and shouted “Whakatane” — “We must act as men” and successfully paddled the waka back to the rock.

After the light show, Tame invited us into the eating area for tea, since all Maori meetings involve the sharing of food. We drank tea made from local tree leaves, and brownies made with kumara (a type of sweet potato). The ancestral stories indicate that Whakatane is where kumara was first brought over from Polynesia. It is a staple food source for the Maori.  During our tea we had a long talk with Tame and discovered that his family name is Anderson (same as Marsha’s!), that he is an artist, and that he and his brother have recently bought an art gallery and hope to make a going concern of turning it into a local art studio for the community. It was good to get a sense of how Tame was combining his Maori heritage and concern for community with a sense of entrepreneurship.

The next day we saw a different type of Maori building. In 2013, the local tribes used some of the money given to them by the government in compensation for historical wrongs and built a building to serve as a modern administrative and community center for the local tribes.

What is fantastic about this building is that it is a “Living Building” — one that produces more electricity than it uses, treats all of its own waste water, uses local materials, is healthy and beautiful to be in, and in general is not only self-sufficient, but gives back more than it takes from the environment.

The idea of a living building fits well with Maori culture, which stresses the spiritual and physical interconnection of all things on earth.  It was wonderful to see how smoothly a building that appears radically modern fits into a culture that looks to the past for wisdom.

Look closely — the mosaic tiles have been recycled from computer keyboards!

The builders used innovative construction efforts such as using rammed earth and wooden beams with steel cores. But what touched us was the sense of beauty that imbued the building. From the beautiful grand wooden arches, to the artwork created from discarded computer parts, there was beauty around every corner. We were there on a Friday and could see that the building was well used: banks of computers had people at them, there were meetings going on, and the cafe was ready to serve us coffee.

 

Anne and David Wicks, our wonderful hosts at Whakatane.

We came away from Whakatane with a lovely sense of how the Maori are claiming their heritage and using it to move forward in a land that nearly destroyed their way of life in the 19th and 20th centuries.