The working diary of Bruce Collier's Whare Whakairo Project.
OPINION
Nyree Sherlock is the Museum Assistant.
Bruce Collier was a Whangārei historian who wrote a series of local history articles for publication under the by-line “Yesterday - Today” in the Weekend Magazine, which then became known as the Weekend Report and later as the Whangārei Report.
What set Collier’s writing apart from others was his enthusiasm, respect and knowledge of Māori oral history and legends, coupled with his aspirations to make this available to all.
Collier had a vision of establishing a Māori cultural building in the form of a whare whakairo (carved meeting house) at Heritage Park. He was passionate about the project, imagining the building to be not only an added attraction to the museum complex, but a living textbook where people went to gain knowledge- it would also be the seed for a larger building in the future. Throughout this early stage of planning,
Collier met with Te Roopu Kaumatua O Whangārei, who aimed to set up the school, once the building was complete.
Collier was not only a man with a civic conscience, but one of unstoppable action: He drove a vision ahead of its time and, determined to achieve his goal, he bought a building from the Ministry of Works in 1982 and gave it to the Northland Regional Museum.
His brothers, Derek and Mick also donated timber and time to set up the building. In addition, the City Council donated $300 towards the cost of moving it from Walton St to Heritage Park, while also gifting windows from an old dismantled Pohe Island house.
A timely source of further funding came via visitors from Whangārei’s sister city, Bountiful in Utah, US: After receiving a traditional Māori welcome, and upon viewing the plans for the Whare Whakairo, they contributed several hundred dollars towards its development. During this place in time, the whole world became exposed to taonga Māori with the first tour of the acclaimed Te Māori exhibition and the renaissance of Māori art.
In the meantime, the Whangārei County Council employed two excellent carvers under the Project Employment Scheme (PEP), the late Duncan Kapa of Whangārei, and Henare Toka of Dargaville, to create the carvings for the building. Time was taken to carefully select the right timber for the carvings – including trips to the bush on several occasions, and hours of research went into choosing the legends that were to be represented by the carvers.
Collier’s respect and admiration for Māori carving was conveyed in his local history articles, where he also shared Māori legends and history.
In one of these articles, he drew an analogy between Māori master carvers and the masters of European fine art, to provide insight into the phenomenal skills required of both disciplines: just as European masters are identified by their work and the influences of their tutor, region, and school of learning, Māori master carvers can be recognised in a similar way. In fact, during pre-European days carvers were some of the very few people who could freely navigate between iwi (tribes), even during war, as they held great mana.
Collier was delighted when the plans for the Whare Whakairo were eventually conceived, especially regarding the styles and the legends that the carvers were to represent. Subsequently both men toiled to complete the carvings, although there were many unexpected holdups and obstacles along the way that delayed the project’s deadline. For example, this was an era without cellphones, where many families in isolated regions of Tai Tokerau did not even have a landline, so often Collier felt the frustration of trying to connect with his project carvers to check their progress, but communication was spasmodic.
On one occasion where Henare Toka needed to relocate back to Dargaville to complete his carvings, Collier’s diary entries describes his single-minded effort to locate and reconnect with Toka by driving to the town and physically searching for him, but without success- all was resolved a day later when Toka calmly reappeared in Whangārei. However, despite frequent communication breakdowns and protracted deadlines, Collier remained determined, and this is captured in his writing: - the Whangārei Museum Archives holds the working diary of Collier’s project which allows us to gain his insight of the time.
In a “History on our doorstep” article, published in January 1984, Collier retells the Māori legend of Reita and Reipae, which is encapsulated in one of the Whare Wakairo’s intricate carvings; he also anticipates the planned opening of the Whare Whakairo on February 6, 1984 with palpable enthusiasm, stressing that, although the small, narrow building had been grafted together from three humble Public Works huts, and lacked many of the features one would expect in such a building, it was, nevertheless, a framework fit to carry the full complement of carvings.
Collier was more enthused by the potential of the building, than by its general appearance, as he was passionate about enabling the dissemination of Māori culture. Moreover, he envisioned the Whare Whakairo would be open each Saturday, where tutors would teach arts, crafts, tikanga and language, along with Māori history and legends. He also saw an opportunity for a duty guide to describe the meaning within the 24 carvings created by Duncan Kapa, Henare Toka, and their carving students for the Whare.
All in all, despite the many holdups, Collier never gave up on the project, and the Whare Whakairo eventually opened to the public on October 27, 1984 at Heritage Park.
As Collier reiterated, it was not a meeting house in the true sense of the term but was intended as a whare wānanga (a house of learning), as its carvings depicted legends of the North and displayed other styles of carving from around Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Collier proposed that visitors would be given opportunities to learn the basic steps in “reading” a carving, by gaining an understanding of the symbols and the regional styles. One of Collier’s final entries in his project diary was an instruction to the Northland Regional Museum that should the building deteriorate, he would want it to be pulled down instead of remain in disarray. When this happened, the carvings were removed and the building demolished.
In the present day, 40 years after they were initially displayed on Heritage Park, Whangārei Museum staff are working on a project to restore the carvings with a display honouring the original Whare Whakairo vision within the main exhibition hall and welcome any descendants of the original figures to make contact and be included in the project.
Information for this article was drawn from historian Florence Keene’s Heritage Park Book, along with excerpts from Bruce Collier’s diary, his “Yesterday - Today” articles, his Weekend Report, Friday, January 27, 1984: “History on our doorstep,” and Northern Advocate articles 1982-1984.
I visited Budapest last in the 1980s when it was under communist rule.