Architecture and Māori Identity

Te Reo Powhiri Rātana Church, Te Hāpua, opened in 1954

Ko Mataatua te waka
Ko Whangaroa te moana
Ko Emi Emi te maunga
Ko Ngāpuhi te iwi
Ko Ngāti Rehia te hapu
Ko Mangaiti te marae
Ko Tau Te Rangimarie te whare
Ko Deidre Brown taku ingoa
Tēnā koutou katoa

 

The pepeha above provides my identity as a Māori person. It acknowledges my descent from ancestors who migrated to Aotearoa (New Zealand) from eastern Polynesia on the Mataatua vessel 800 years ago and defines my lineage within the Ngāpuhi tribe and Ngāti Rehia subtribe of the Far North of the country. The pepeha associates me with my turangawaewae (landscape of belonging) defined by the Whangaroa Harbour and Emi Emi mountain. Ancestral stories and place names around the harbour recall that Whangaroa was the place where the great Polynesian deity Mauī slowed the sun by capturing it in a net and later lost his own life in an unsuccessful attempt to murder Hine-nui-te-pō (the deity of death). My pepeha ends architecturally. Tau Te Rangimarie is my wharenui (ancestral meeting house), and it stands in the township of Kāeo on Mangaiti marae, a place where our community assembles for meetings, weddings, birthdays, tangi (funerals) and other collective life events. My identity is closely linked to a building, a relationship with architecture not uncommon among indigenous people.

Like almost all wharenui, Tau Te Rangimarie is a wooden building. It was constructed in 1928, when Māori around the country were looking for new forms of regional and national collectively following the high mortality of the 1919 influenza epidemic and ongoing land alienation by the Crown and land speculators. The Rātana Church, a new Māori-led Christian religion, was sweeping the country and promised physical, mental and spiritual salvation. Two years before Tau Te Rangimarie was opened, my great-grandfather, the Reverend Hapeta Renata, left the Methodist Church to become a Rātana Āpotoro (apostle) and promote the religion across the Far North. The interior of the building features a large mural of the main Rātana Church Temepara (Temple) in Whanganui, with its distinctive Romanesque domed bell towers, and is surrounded by photographs of my tīpuna and whānau (ancestors and extended family) who have passed on to the world of Hine-nui-te-pō.

Tau Te Rangimarie wharenui,
Mangaiti Marae, Kāeo, opened 1928

When I was studying architecture at the University of Auckland, I was taught that wharenui were elaborately carved and painted buildings. But Tau Te Rangimarie is neither carved nor decoratively painted, and its plain characteristics are common among wharenui built in the Far North at that time. Exploring this ‘gap’ between the lived and historically recorded experience of Māori architecture led me to post-professional masters and doctoral studies and has become an academic career and lifelong passion, one that has widened to include the history of Māori art. There is a tremendous historical and regional diversity in Māori architecture, from the unadorned wharenui of the Far North, western and southern regions to the whare whakairo (carved and painted houses) of the central and eastern North Island, and among the many other housing, dining, educational and religious buildings. The promotion of the whare whakairo as the ‘authentic’ Māori meeting house architecture is an outcome of an historical selectivity, mostly by twentieth century Pakeha (New Zealand European) scholars and also a few notable Māori authors.

Tau Te Rangimarie is nearly a century old and is not alone in needing a bit of TLC. More than half of wharenui in active use today were built between 1880 and 1950. Most in the Far North were constructed with materials close to hand (many of which were native timbers) and are now suffering from rain and groundwater damage. Mangaiti marae is flood-prone because colonial-era forest clearance for timber and farming silted up and destroyed waterways, and extreme weather events (especially torrential rain) are becoming more frequent due to climate change. This is a common story across the country. Managed retreat is highly problematic when identity is closely associated with buildings, landscapes and deities, and tīpuna and whānau are buried in adjacent low-lying lands or erosion-prone hills. However, marae communities are incredibly resilient. By fundraising among whānau and through various NGO and governmental programmes some marae are raising the funds for renovating or rebuilding their wharenui to make them fit for purpose for another century. A popular archetype for replacement wharenui in the Far North and other regions are whare whakairo, illustrating the full talents of local men and women trained in whakairo rākau (wood carving), tukutuku (lattice wall panelling) and kōwhaiwhai (intricate scroll painting); these are arts which enjoyed a popular nationwide revival in the 1930s and again from the 1970s onwards. I fully support our Far North communities embracing this style from the eastern region as an expression of their tino rangatiratanga (self-determination). Ideas should travel, buildings should be safe and sound, and architecture needs to adapt as descendant groups grow in number. But, I do also worry about the loss of the small, simple wooden buildings that represent the mahi (labours) of our great-grandparents and embody the political, spiritual and social aspirations that our tīpuna (ancestors) had for us as their uri (descendants).

The Endangered Wooden Architecture programme is timely. Colonisation, cost, and climate change are among a few factors contributing to architectural loss. Some of the buildings recorded by the programme are passing out of existence and information about their construction may one day form the basis for an architectural revival when conditions change. The recording of other buildings may present the galvanising opportunity to persuade communities and/or funders that they should be saved. At the very least, the programme contributes to our understanding of the diversity of wooden architecture in an age when wooden and other buildings constructed from renewable resources offer the best hope of a climate-responsive and -responsible future.

Deidre Brown outside of the
Tāne-nui-a-Rangi whare whakairo,
Waipapa Marae, Waipapa Taumata Rau
University of Auckland, opened in 1998

Blog by Deidre Brown (Ngapuhi, Ngati Kahu), Professor of architecture at the School of Architecture and Planning, and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries (School of Architecture and Planning, Elam School of Fine Arts and Design, School of Music, Dance Studies), University of Auckland, New Zealand. Her teaching and research interests are in the fields of Māori and Pacific architectural and art history, and the broader discipline of indigenous design. Her book Māori Architecture: from fale to wharenui (2009), was the first book to chart the genesis and form of Indigenous buildings in Aotearoa New Zealand. She also co-authored Art in Oceania: a new history (2013) – a major comprehensive survey of cultural production for the region, supported by the Marsden Fund, which won the 2014 Art Book Prize for the best English language art or architecture book in the world. Her next co-authored book Toi te Mana: A History of Indigenous Art from Aotearoa New Zealand presents the first comprehensive survey of Māori art from the time of the ancestors to the present day.