Tawa is the name Maori bestowed on a remarkable man, more famously known as Captain Gilbert Mair.

Through the respect he gained as a linguist, soldier, Court Assessor and humanitarian, tribal communities of the central North Island of New Zealand demonstrated their trust in Mair by presenting him with their most valued taonga – ancestral treasures.

Unlike other collectors, Mair – having grown up amongst Maori – understood the importance of receiving such gifts. He ensured the associated narratives remained attached to the taonga after he passed them into the safe-keeping of the Auckland Museum in 1890.

Consequently, each taonga in the Ko Tawa exhibition (selected from Mair’s collection of 236) continues to carry a unique story, intimately linking today’s descendants to ancestral landscapes and reminding us of the rich, genealogically-deep history on which our nation is built. Ko Tawa is designed to bridge past and present: to make these unique taonga accessible to young Maori growing up away from their home-marae communities, while providing all visitors with an insight into the contemporary world of the Maori.