Pacific Arts: The Journal of the Pacific Arts Association

Kaihaukai is a term that describes the sharing and exchanging of traditional foods, an important customary practice for Māori. The Kaihaukai Art Collective centres on the mahika kai (food gathering/processing) of the Ngāi Tahu (Indigenous peoples of Southern New Zealand), which relates to working with traditional foods in their place of origin and includes preparation, gathering, eating, and sharing. Mahika kai assists in the transfer of knowledge and continuation of cultural practices, some of which are at risk of being lost.

This paper discusses Kaihauka Art Collective’s contribution to the Tamatea: He Tūtakinga Tuku Iho/Legacies of Encounter exhibition, shown at Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand from November 2019 to July 2020. The exhibition centred around the acquisition of a painting by William Hodges, which depicts a hulled Māori canoe beside a waterfall in Tamatea (Dusky Sound). The painting was shown with works by renowned New Zealand artists that responded to it.

Kaihaukai Art Collective’s response to the exhibition culminated in an installation that included a feast that took place within the gallery. The feast was a narrative that participants consumed in four parts—Ko Te Tai Ao, Ahi Kaa, Disturbed Earth, and Vermin. Through doing this, they became complicit in the resulting legacy of their own encounter with Tamatea. The meal’s remaining detritus—the shells, bones, and other waste—was collected in the form of a midden, a tangible reminder of impact and disruption. This discussion of the installation is contextualised by an exploration of the Māori term mana whenua (relationship to place) and its relationship to mana i te whenua (authority from land).