Scoping project

There are more than 16,000 Māori treasures held in overseas museums, art galleries and allied institutions. Unfortunately, the knowledge about many of these taonga has been mainly confined to museum personnel, academics and scholars who have visited these institutions. Māori people have been largely dislocated and alienated from their taonga and been the passive observers of the research and knowledge about them.
 

First a public servant in the Native Lands Purchase Department then later MP for Napier and Minister for Native Affairs, Sir Donald McLean (Makarini) was a major architect in the most formative period of our colonial history (c.1850–1880). His fluency in te reo Māori and his willingness to visit Māori in their own communities gained the respect of many rangatira of that time.

Māori are increasingly taking on environmental management roles (often on a voluntary basis) that juggle the responsibilities of both traditional networks and government regulations. The focus of this scoping project was to identify the barriers, obstacles and potential solutions to conducting research in the area of local customary fisheries from a flax roots level, that is the application and management of Mataitai and Taiapure by communities and marae.
 

Historical trauma is a term commonly used by Native American researchers who have investigated the impact of past relationships between native populations and settler governments on current and future generations of Native Americans.