Crown jewels

Kia orana tātou katoatoa!

Turou, oro mai, Haere mai and welcome! We celebrate Cook Islands Language Week, 3-9 August 2015. Our theme:

To tatou reo Tupuna e korona ia no to tatou matakeianga
Our language is a crowning glory of our community

Our families’ photographs

And speaking of crowns, I want to talk about the amazingly useful Crown Studio collection of photographs and how it has helped the community.

Made up of tens of thousands of photos from between 1918 and 1977, the collection was digitised and put online in 2012, along with over 60 other collections. I was very fortunate to be part of this amazing team and got to see how much was available, on a community and a personal level.

During last year’s Cook Islands language week I made prints of 25 digitised images from the Crown Studio Collections and photocopied A4 and A3 prints. I was able to invite the local Cook Islands community to identify family members and friends and note names on the provided photocopies.

Many of the Crown Studio’s images are unidentified and this process has enabled me to gather information from the community. I am pleased to say all the names identified from this day are now available online.

My story begins here...

While working on the Crown Studio collection, one of my colleagues recognised my mother (as a young lady) in one of the images. Not only were there images of my parents' wedding, I also located photographs of aunts, uncles, cousins and parents of friends I grew up with.

I’ve called this post ‘Crown jewels’ as this truly represents the treasures I discovered. Here are my three favourite images from the collection, they are my jewels, each one captures and represents who I am today – church, family and netball.

Church

Members of the Pacific Islands Presbyterian Church youth group, it includes my mother (Pakura Karati) seen in the back row, 1st from the left.

Family

The second is my parents' beautiful wedding photograph. As a child I never saw the full set of my parents' wedding photographs, today I am able to view and get copies of all nine photographs.

Netball

For those that know me I absolutely adore netball and I was so pleased to locate this photograph of my grandmother’s sisters (maternal side) who were members of the Pacific Islands Presbyterian church netball team. Maine Rangi (nee Ironui) and Ina Stevenson (nee Ironui) are seen in the back row, 3rd and 5th from the left. Somehow I always knew my netball talent came from my mother’s side!

Come and visit us

Please do come and visit the library, you just don’t know what you’ll uncover. Our staff are happy to assist you with any enquiries.

Meitaki ma’āta.