What began as a forgotten collection tucked away in an English attic has become a powerful story of taonga finding its way home.
Now held again by Ngāi Tahu, the Shortland Pounamu collection is reconnecting the iwi with an old friend from the 1800s, a warm story then shared with the public as it featured at WORD Christchurch and Te Puna o Waiwhetū last week.
Helen Brown (Ngāi Tahu), Principal Advisor at the Ngāi Tahu Archive says the hei tiki and nine mau kaki pendants and beads became the possession of an English doctor whose name became etched into the history of Ngāi Tahu.
“This taonga had a label attached to it, which stated that it had been gifted to Dr. Shortland by a Māori chief in 1840.
“Edward Shortland is part of this very special group of people whom Tā Tipene refers to as the Friends of Ngāi Tahu”.
“These people have been with us historically through every decade since colonisation began, and we continue to have non-Ngāi Tahu allies, colleagues and friends who work with us and for us and are an integral part of who we are today,” she says.
Shortland travelled the South Island and recorded the kōrero of rangatira, and between Tūhawaiki and Tira Morehu, he started to build one of the earliest frameworks of Ngāi Tahu whakapapa in history.
His story was brought to life by Michael Stephens (Ngāi Tahu) at WORD Christchurch last week.
“He disagreed that Māori people, Māori culture, was fundamentally inferior to British people,” says Stephens.
“He met with them on their terms; he was fluent in the reo, he was legible to them and they to him. He took meticulous records of those exchanges.”
“In a way, it’s part of what we bring to bear in all those select committees, things of Te Kereme, but also with the Waitangi Tribunal,”.
It wasn’t until the 1950s that the pounamu became set to return to Aotearoa when an English jeweller bought a wooden display case at an estate sale, unaware of the pounamu treasures inside, which he then stored inside a shoebox in his attic for 25 years unknowing of its historic value.
The collection reached our shores in 1984 and was later gifted back to Ngāi Tahu, and after more than 20 years on loan to Southland Museum and Art Gallery, was formally returned to the iwi in Bluff in 2025.
“The Englishman, Geoffrey Diss, who owned the hei tiki… he said that he felt that the tiki surely must want to return home. It was as if the taonga spoke to them, and it was on that basis that he approached the New Zealand High Commission in England,” says Brown.
“The Shortland Pounamu was gifted to Ngāi Tahu on the occasion of the signing of the Ngāi Tahu Settlement at Kaikoura in 1997, and so as such, it’s got symbolic significance as the koha that cemented that relationship between the Crown and Ngāi Tahu at that time,”.
The collection is currently at Te Puna o Waiwhetū, where it will remain on display until February 2027.
