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Toi moko

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"Bargaining for a head, on the shore, the chief running up the price" – sketch by H. G. Robley

Toi moko, or mokomokai, are the preserved heads of Māori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, where the faces have been decorated by tā moko tattooing. They became valuable trade items during the Musket Wars of the early 19th century. Many toi moko were taken from their family and homeland as trophies. Repatriation efforts are underway by Te Papa and Te Herekiekie Haerehuka Herewini to return toi moko to their descendants.

Moko

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Main article: Tā moko

Moko facial tattoos were traditional in Māori culture until about the mid-19th century, when their use began to disappear. There has been something of a revival from the late 20th century. In pre-European Māori culture, they denoted high social status. Generally only men had full facial moko. High-ranked women often had moko on their lips and chins.[1]: 1  Moko tattoos served to identify connection between an individual and their ancestors.[2]

Moko marked rites of passage for people of chiefly rank, as well as significant events in their lives. Each moko was unique and contained information about the person's rank, tribe, lineage, occupation and exploits. Moko were expensive to obtain and elaborate moko were usually limited to chiefs and high-ranked warriors. Moreover, the art of moko, the people who created and incised the designs, as well as the moko themselves, were surrounded by strict tapu and protocol.[1]: 1–3 

Moko design

Mokomokai

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When someone with moko died, often the head would be preserved. The brain and eyes were removed, with all orifices sealed with flax fibre and gum. The head was then boiled or steamed in an oven before being smoked over an open fire and dried in the sun for several days. It was then treated with shark oil. Such preserved heads, toi moko, would be kept by their families in ornately carved boxes and brought out only for sacred ceremonies.[3]

The heads of enemy chiefs killed in battle were also preserved; these toi moko, being considered trophies of war, would be displayed on the marae and mocked. They were important in diplomatic negotiations between warring tribes, with the return and exchange of mokomokai being a bargaining chip as well as an essential precondition for peace.[1]: 3–4 

Musket Wars

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Main article: Musket Wars

Trading these heads with Westerners apparently began with Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist on HMS Endeavour, when he traded old linen drawers (underwear) for the head of a 14-year-old boy.[4] The head was traded as a "curio" and a fascination with the heads began to grow. This continued with mokomokai heads being traded for muskets and the subsequent Musket Wars. During this period of social destabilisation, toi moko became commercial trade items, which could be sold as curios, artworks and museum specimens that fetched high prices in Europe and America, and could be bartered for firearms and ammunition.[1]: 4–5 

The demand for firearms was such that tribes carried out raids on their neighbours to acquire more heads to trade for them. While most early toi moko sold to Europeans were slain warriors, eventually demand from European traders outstripped supply, so the heads of slaves and prisoners were tattooed (though with meaningless motifs rather than genuine moko) in order to provide heads to order.[5]

The peak years of the trade in mokomokai were from 1820 to 1831. On 16 April 1831, Ralph Darling, the Governor of New South Wales, issued a proclamation banning further trade in heads out of New Zealand saying that there was reason to believe that the trade tended to increase the sacrifice of human life. In New Zealand, Maori, concerned that heads were being traded, gradually ceased to preserve them.[6][7]

During the 1830s the demand for firearms diminished because every surviving group was fully armed. By 1840 when the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, and New Zealand became a British colony, the export trade in mokomokai had virtually ended, along with a decline in the use of moko in Māori society, although occasional small-scale trade continued for several years.[1]: 5–6 [8]

Robley collection

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Main article: Horatio Gordon Robley
H.G. Robley with his mokomokai collection

Major-General Horatio Gordon Robley was a British army officer and artist who served in New Zealand during the New Zealand Wars in the 1860s. He was interested in ethnology and fascinated by the art of tattooing. He wrote Moko; or Maori Tattooing, which was published in 1896. After he returned to England he built up a collection of 35 to 40 mokomokai which he later offered to sell to the New Zealand Government. When the offer was declined, most of the collection was sold to the American Museum of Natural History.[9] The collection was repatriated to Te Papa Tongarewa in 2014.[10]

Repatriation

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More recently there has been a campaign to repatriate to New Zealand the hundreds of toi moko held in museums and private collections around the world, either to be returned to their relatives or to Te Papa for safe and respectful storage, not on display whilst efforts are made to research the individuals' heritage and contact their descendants.[11] It has had some success, though many toi moko remain overseas and the campaign is ongoing.[9][12][13][14] Many international bodies have repatriated toi moko from their collections including institutions in Great Britain, United States of America, Netherlands, Argentina, Australia, Canada, Germany, Sweden, Norway, France, and Austria. The organisations who repatriated their toi moko and the dates can be found on Te Papa's website.[15]

An example of these repatriations comes from the small English seaside town of Scarborough, North Yorkshire. In 1834 a toi moko was traded from Kāpiti Island and brought to England, later to be donated to the museum at Scarborough by Richard Baley Munn, master of the brig 'Eleanor', where it stayed, sometimes on display, until 1998 when it was repatriated to Te Papa through the High Commission of New Zealand. Although an important item in the collection of the museum, the knowledge of the toi moko was lost after the repatriation and was not uncovered for approximately 40 years, when Jacob Smith, intern at the museum from the University of York, rediscovered its history and the journey it took.[16]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Palmer, Christian; Tano, Mervyn L. (1 January 2004), Mokomokai: Commercialization and Desacralization (PDF), Denver, Colorado: International Institute for Indigenous Resource Management
  2. ^ Borelli, Silvia; Lenzerini, Federico, eds. (2012), Cultural Heritage, Cultural Rights, Cultural Diversity: New Developments in International Law, Leiden; Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, p. 163, ISBN 9789004228399
  3. ^ Wharewaka, Abraham Joseph, ed. (1990). Mokomokai: Preserving the Past. Auckland: Abraham Joseph Wharewaka – via NZETC.
  4. ^ Fennell, Marc; Ross, Monique (14 December 2020). "The Headhunters: Tattooed, severed and mummified Māori heads were once a prized collector's item in Britain. New Zealand wants them back". ABC News. Retrieved 12 February 2021.
  5. ^ Walker, Ranginui (2004). Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou - Struggle Without End (2nd ed.). Auckland, New Zealand: Penguin Books. p. 83. ISBN 9780143019459.
  6. ^ Fraser, Bryce; McLauchlan, Gordon; King, Michael; Keith, Hamish; Walker, Ranganui; Barber, Laurie (1986). The New Zealand Book of Events (1 ed.). Reed Methuen. p. 23. ISBN 0 474 00123 7.
  7. ^ Bayer, Kurt. "Grisly trade raised fears for Maori". The New Zealand Herald. No. 14 Nov, 2014. NZME Publishing Ltd. Retrieved 14 November 2024.
  8. ^ Janes, Robert R.; Conaty, Gerald T. (2005). Looking Reality In The Eye: Museums and Social Responsibility. University of Calgary Press. pp. 156–157. ISBN 978-1-55238-143-4.
  9. ^ a b "The trade in preserved Maori heads". The Sunday Star-Times. Archived from the original on 23 February 2013. Retrieved 25 October 2011.
  10. ^ "Largest collection of ancestral remains in NZ history to be repatriated". Māori Television. 2 December 2014. Retrieved 8 August 2021.
  11. ^ "The repatriation of Māori and Moriori remains | Te Papa". tepapa.govt.nz. Retrieved 13 August 2024.
  12. ^ "Aussie Museum to Return Maori Heads". Wellington. Associated Press. 7 April 2000. Archived from the original on 13 August 2007. Retrieved 26 November 2008.
  13. ^ "Maori Heads May Return Home". Reuters / One News. 6 November 2003. Retrieved 25 October 2011.
  14. ^ "French City Vows to Return Maori Head". Paris. Associated Press. 4 January 2008. Archived from the original on 7 January 2008 – via National Geographic News.
  15. ^ "International repatriation | Te Papa". tepapa.govt.nz. Retrieved 13 August 2024.
  16. ^ Jacob Smith, ‘Across the World and Back Again THE REPATRIATION OF A TOI MOKO, WHICH RESIDED IN SCARBROUGH’ (University of York, Department of History of Art, 2024).

Further reading

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