Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections March 2020 - 24

Book Reviews
Biculturalism at New Zealand's National
Museum: An Ethnography of Te Papa
2019, Tanja Schubert-McArthur (Routledge, New
York, NY, 219 pp.).
At once warm and clinical, this
outstanding ethnography about a
museum's culture is the kind of
study best conducted soon after
a museum's establishment, when
founders, first-generation staffers,
volunteers, and the public can
share their thoughts, both raw and
processed, with an equally-vested
ethnographer. Tanja SchubertMcArthur worked for several years at Te Papa in different
capacities, both back-of-house
(research assistant) and frontof-house (events supervisor, tour guide). Her book is very
much of-the-moment, as museums worldwide, especially
those with anthropological collections, are addressing the
significant challenge of managing and exhibiting collections
in partnership with descendent communities.
Te Papa opened in a new building in 1998, but its formal
conception dates to the "Museum of New Zealand Te Papa
Tongarewa Act" of 1992 which established a national museum providing "a forum in which the nation may present,
explore, and preserve both the heritage of its cultures and
knowledge of the natural environment in order better - to
understand and treasure the past, to enrich the present, and
to meet the challenges of the future."
The words bicultural and biculturalism appear in the book
almost five hundred times in two hundred pages of text-
not entirely unexpected as biculturalism is Te Papa's raison
d'etre, a framework providing "the mandate for the Museum
to express and celebrate the natural and cultural diversity
of New Zealand." Schubert-McArthur's working definition
of biculturalism is "the acceptance of two cultures (indigenous Māori and Western Pākehā) as different but equal, as
well as a commitment to share power and resources; it is
not an end in itself, but an ongoing negotiation process and
a stepping-stone towards Māori self-determination." Her
book is explicitly about biculturalism, but many museums,
especially those with anthropological collections from many
continents, must recognize multiculturalism. Nonetheless,
Schubert-McArthur's thickly-described ethnography of Te
Papa is enormously informative and can be scaled up for
museums with worldwide anthropological collections.
24 * SPNHC Connection

Biculturalism is an action as much as it is a philosophy, and
the author has titled her chapters Establishing Biculturalism,
Interpreting, Performing, Learning, Enacting, Tackling, and
Grasping Biculturalism. The chapter titles connote action
and provide a structure for categorizing the complicated
human stories therein, but the stories, being human, defy
categorization and could just as easily fall under any of the
headings, be they establishing, grasping, or any of the gerunds in between. Such is the complexity of human behavior
and the difficulty of writing about it in a manner which
coheres, which Dr. Schubert-McArthur so ably does.
Te Papa is an encyclopedic national museum and includes
five levels of exhibitions encompassing natural history, history, culture, art, and even a display about New Zealand's
record-breaking, and celebrated, Britten V1000 motorcycle.
The author's emphasis, however, is on two fourth-floor
exhibitions where biculturalism is most dramatically addressed. The public first sees an exhibit about the Treaty
of Waitangi, New Zealand's founding document, signed in
1840 by representatives of the British Crown and over five
hundred Māori chiefs. Next, the public enters a space called
Te Marae, comprised of a meeting house and its courtyard.
Maraes are the centers of Māori communities throughout
New Zealand, and Te Marae is the beating heart of Te Papa,
where people gather for reasons sacred, ceremonial, and
memorial. Traditionally, meeting houses are covered with
ancestor figures, but because Te Marae is the Museum's
center stage, "where everybody can have a sense of belonging (68)," master carver Cliff Whiting1 decorated the house
with visually arresting images of modern Māori and Pākehā
people, be they laborers, educators, farmers, clergy, artisans,
musicians, office workers, or even an incarcerated soul. The
Treaty of Waitangi and Te Marae exhibits complement and
contrast each other - the former seems to be frozen in time
while the latter is a place for bicultural action in perpetuity.
Accordingly, the story of Te Marae, from its conception
to its completion, is told in the chapter titled Performing
Biculturalism, where Schubert-McArthur deftly represents
both Māori and Pākehā stakeholders, for unlike other maraes
in New Zealand, the Museum's "marae is not owned by one
(subtribe), who set the rules; instead it is a pan-tribal marae
that is supposedly inclusive of everybody, Māori or nonMāori." Mr. Whiting pressed for Te Marae's bicultural décor
and included an image of a Christian dove because "we
needed to find if there's something within Pākehā culture
that parallels something on a marae. . . The thing that we
could see in (European) history was the church having a
similar role to a marae." Chairman of the Board Sir Ronald Trotter insisted upon gender equality because he would
"rather be without a marae, if women can't speak on the
Society for the Preservation of Natural History Collections March 2020

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