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Rotorua taonga welcomed back

Friday 12 August 2011, 3:40PM

By Rotorua District Council

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ROTORUA

Te Arawa will gather at Te Papaiouru Marae in Ohinemutu on Saturday [13 August] to welcome back carved tupuna (ancestor) Pukaki, before he is permanently moved to the Rotorua Museum.

Pukaki Trust chairman Te Ururoa Flavell has issued an invitation to the entire community to attend from 7.30am.

Pukaki will be carried on by members of the Ngati Whakaue hapu and he will rest at the marae before being carried to his new home at the Rotorua Museum.

The Te Arawa taonga has recently undergone conservation treatment after being moved from the Rotorua District Council's Civic Centre.

Pukaki spent 13 years in the building but had been damaged by over-exposure to sunlight.

While he is at Te Papaiouru his whanau from around the region will be asked to entertain him and regale him with song and dance. A whakatau (welcoming ceremony) will also be conducted by Te Pukenga Koeke o te Whare Taonga - Te Arawa elders who work with the museum.

Pukaki's placement at the entrance of the Rotorua Museum will coincide with the Nga Pumanawa o Te Arawa exhibition which will see the return of original Te Arawa taonga from Te Papa in Wellington and the Auckland Museum.

The exhibition will open on September 3 and will see important taonga, some dating back to before the great migration, being given back to Te Arawa.

This includes the greenstone "toki" that carved the Te Arawa canoe.

Museum director Greg McManus said Pukaki would become the centrepiece of the new exhibition in the museum's soon-to-be completed south wing.

Pukaki, a warrior leader of Ngati Whakaue, lived on Mokoia Island and at Parawai (in Ngongotaha) in the mid-1700s.

He was carved by Te Taupua of Ngati Whakaue in 1835 from timber that originated out of the Ngongotaha Stream. He was a gateway carving at the original fortifications of Ngati Whakaue.

In the 1850s Pukaki was modified from a kuwaha (gateway) into a tiki (statue).

Pukaki was gifted to the Crown in 1877, then placed in the Auckland Museum where he remained until presented back to his descendants in 1987.