Te Poari Whakapapa: the origins, operation and tribal networks of the Board of Maori Ethnological Research 1923–1935

Abstract

In 1923 Apirana Ngata set up the Board of Maori Ethnological Research under Section 9 of the Native Land Amendment and Native Land Claims Adjustment Act. The purpose of the Board, also known as Te Poari Whakapapa, was the “study and investigation of the ancient arts and crafts, language, customs, history, tradition, and antiquities of the Maori and other cognate races of the South Pacific Ocean”. Ngata spoke in Parliament when the bill became law, exhorting his colleagues on both sides of the House to support the legislation to publish manuscripts awaiting publication for many years, “which the scientists of the world are clamouring to see”. Over the next 10 years this Māori-led and -funded body effectively took over the management of government research, and it exerted considerable influence on related bodies, the Department of Native Affairs, the Dominion Museum, the Turnbull Library, and the Polynesian Society and its journal. What were the origins of this remarkable episode in indigenous anthropology and museology? How and why did Ngata, Peter Buck (Te Rangihīroa) and their parliamentary colleagues, tribal contacts and Pākehā ‘European New Zealander’ allies mobilise ethnological research in the service of Māori social, economic and cultural development? In particular we examine the scholarly connections with the Journal of the Polynesian Society and the tribal networks with Te Arawa traced through the work of Tai Mitchell.