Making our voices heard

Then the next part of the exhibition is called Ngā Pou Wāhine. And it's kind of acknowledging that, yes, there was a revival happening, but sometimes performance has happened in a context of protest and pushing up against norms. And Vicki-Anne Heikell as part of her curation of Pūkana identified two beautiful photographs here in the exhibition are placed side by side. One is of Nancy Brunning, the actor, as part of the Downstage Theatre production of ‘Waiora’. So, Downstage Theatre have deposited their collection with the Turnbull Library.

So Nancy's sort of – it captures Nancy mid-movement. She’s sort of, twirling around. Her dress is, sort of, moving – it’s in motion and her hair’s in motion – and her arms are up.

It's a beautiful image, kind of, a bit like the image in a different section of Pūkana which captures women doing poi and their piu piu moving as they're doing that. Beside this image of Nancy Brunning is an image of Tuaiwa or Eva Rickard and she's dancing at Moutoa Gardens, which was occupied in 1995. So Māori occupied Moutoa Gardens in protest about that land – what had happened to that land.

And we, kind of, like – we've put these two images together to sort of acknowledge that there is theatre in protest, and then also protest came into theatre. Because what happened in Māori theatre is that the grievances, the take, the kaupapa, of the protest movement came into the theatre. And when you started to go to Māori theatre from sort of the 80s, 90s at least as early as that, there were things like powhiri and haka and waiata, which hadn't really happened before in theatre. So that's what we're doing in these two images that we're setting up the sort of foundational ideas of the section.

‘Ngā Pou Wāhine’ is the name of a play by Briar Grace-Smith, who's been a key figure in Māori theatre, the revival of Māori theatre. And at the National Library, we have some tukutuku panels. And some of them were actually made by Briar Grace-Smith. So there's the chance to see one of these here, and it's called Roimata Toroa or Tears of the Albatross. So it's a tukutuku panel, but it's also got feathers on it as well.

So it's wonderful to be able to see this, because this has been in storage for many years and not many people have had a chance to see it.

Then in this exhibition, which is looking at the connection between performance and protest, we've got material to do with Herbs and reggae and acknowledging the connections between people like Bob Marley when he came to New Zealand and then groups that were inspired by him like Dread Beat and Blood. And this is a photo of David Grace, a photo of a – sorry, a copy of a poster – for when Herbs, the group Aotearoa, and Dread Beat and Blood all performed at Victoria University.

And then we're also looking at ‘Once Were Warriors’, because we're conscious that it's the anniversary of that film coming out and Communicado Features deposited the production archive of that film with the Turnbull Library. So there's a photo in this section of Rena Owen who was one of the actors in the film with Riwia Brown, who wrote the screenplay based on Alan Duff's book. So we've also got, for example, an image in this Pūkana section, the image of George Henare doing pūkana is from when George Henare played the social worker in that film. So you've, sort of, got these references threaded through the exhibition.

The last part of this performance and protest section Ngā Pou Wāhine is devoted to Carmen, who we thought really lived her life in a way that could be seen as an act of protest. Because it took a lot of courage to live your life like she did at that time and that she created a space for other performers like Mika. So we've got a poster for this production that was on in 1994 during the Hero Festival in Auckland, and it was Carmen and Mika performing together. It was called ‘Carmen's International Coffee Lounge’.

And in the case, we've got a photo album. Carmen deposited her collection with us and with Te Papa and we have this fantastic collection of photos. But it's even more fantastic, because Carmen went through and wrote on the back of the photos. She also wrote in the album. So there's a lot of really valuable information in this album, and the whole album has been digitised because we were conscious that it's not easy for people to see it once it's in the exhibition for eight months. So that's available online.

And in the case with that album — photo album — we've got a book and a poem by one of the really exciting poets and artists at the moment, a woman called Tayi Tibble and her poem ‘Identity politics’ from 2018. And that comes from her book, ‘Poūkahangatus’, which has a stunning cover which is in the case. And when Vicki-Anne pointed this out to me, she said, you know although you can see that things kind of have changed a lot from those early, sort of, activists and protesters. When you read Tayi’s poem, which is available online, you can see that some of the ideas really haven't changed even among the young people coming through.

In the exhibition, we have a few slideshows. And one of them is of our colleague Dylan Owen, who works in the Services to Schools section, photos he's taken, because Dylan also has a career as a photographer. And Dylan has documented protests and events, mostly in Wellington, but also in other bits of the country, since 2002. And he has donated his collection over time to the Library as well.

So we've got a selection of some of Dylan's images of performance, sometimes in the context of protests, but also other contexts as well. So things like the anniversary of the Public Service Association and students from a Kura Kaupapa Māori, Te Kura Māori o Porirua, performing.

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