Ng¨¡ Kete W¨¡nanga book order form

History of the book

In 1999 Manukau Institute of Technology MIT) produced 2000 copies of a small, 60 pg Booklet, full colour, through a small publishing company in Ponsonby. The booklet concerned the wharenui Te Kete Uruuru Matua that had just been opened as part of Ng¨¡ Kete W¨¡nanga Marae at MIT, authored by Master Carver Pakaariki Harrison and Peter Boyd, the Maori Art Programme Tutor.

At the time sales of the booklet were to be handled through Te Tari M¨¡tauranga M¨¡ori, The M¨¡ori Studies Department at MIT. By 2010 all copies of Ng¨¡ Kete W¨¡nanga had been sold and since that time MIT has had regular enquiries as to whether and when further copies might become available. The strong ongoing interest in this publication stemmed from the inclusion in the booklet of support chapters on the M¨¡ori art practices of whakairo (carving), k¨­whaiwhai (painting) and tukutuku (weaving) that are an integral part of the wharenui. Few other smaller publications on particular wharenui have included this kind of material.

In 2012 Te Tari o te M¨¡tauranga made a decision to begin work on a new edition, not just a reprint. This new edition was to include additional translations for many of the karakia in the original, in order to enable many more people to access Te Ao M¨¡ori thinking and understandings. As part of our funding and ethics applications for this project, we proposed to also embed a new design approach that begins to explore presenting Te Kete Uruuru Matua as a living entity, a living tipuna, a manifestation of Te Ao M¨¡ori, rather than just a ‘catalogue’ of the ‘items’ in the whare.