Northland secondary school students travelled back in time when the Nga Taonga Tuhituhi – Written Treasures exhibition visited them in August.

Nga Taonga Tuhituhi comprises 18 digitally reproduced and enlarged examples of writing and drawing on paper dating from 1793 to 1826 by Māori from Northland. These illustrate Māori earliest engagement with writing and pen and paper, and the Māori involvement in the establishment of New Zealand’s first school in 1816. The images include surviving material such as copybooks.

Professors Kuni Jenkins (Ngāti Porou) and Alison Jones took the exhibition to six secondary schools in Northland during August thanks to support from Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga (NPM) and talked to the students about their findings.

Professors Jenkins and Jones’ main goal initially was to present their research only in book and article form, supported by a Marsden Fund grant, with the book due out from Huia Publishers later this year.  But the idea of an exhibition soon took on a life of its own, says Professor Jones.

“We received initial support from NPM to take it around various venues last year and now with further support from NPM and The University of Auckland’s Faculty of Education, we took it to these Northland schools.”

The exhibition visited Kamo High School, Whangarei Boys High School, Whangarei Girls High School, Kaitaia College, Tikipunga High School and Ruawai College. The images displayed on easels have proved to be a powerful vehicle to tell the Māori side of the story about the first educational encounters with Pākehā.
 
“We usually think about Māori educational success in terms of what teachers, governments and schools should do, and the idea of focusing on relationships seems somehow common sense, so we often ignore it,” says Professor Jones. “Relationships are difficult to articulate. What Kuni and I have done is to tease out some of those first Māori-Pākehā educational relationships historically and how Māori might have understood and engaged with them. I think these earliest relationships still have huge resonance today, and they hint at the elements required to make modern educational relationships successful.”

Professor Jones is from The University of Auckland’s Faculty of Education and Professor Jenkins is from Te Whare Wānanga o Awanuiārangi.