When 40 Māori working in museums and galleries around Aotearoa New Zealand gathered in Hawkes Bay for the Kāhui Kaitiaki Hui they brought their rourou of research and mahi to share.

Convenor Tryphena Cracknell (Rongomaiwahine), who works at the Museum Theatre Gallery Hawke’s Bay (but on maternity leave when she spoke with Kōkiri), says the Hui was a chance to investigate mātauranga Māori within museological practices.

It was also a chance “to share the challenges we face; often working as the only Māori staff member in institutions usually set up within a colonial paradigm."

It had been a decade since the last Hui. “The call to wānanga came from kaitiaki themselves,” Tryphena says. “As you can imagine, a lot of new faces have come into the sector in that time.”

Kāhui Kaitiaki is the network of Māori working in museums and galleries. It has done the groundwork to establish their database of 140 kaitiaki; probably the significant majority of Māori in the sector. Tryphena acknowledged Bridget Reweti, who also organized the Hui, and cold-called practically every institution to identify as many kaitiaki as possible.

The Directory of New Zealand Museums shows there are 389 institutions in Aotearoa New Zealand of 13 different types from agriculture, art, history, marine, to military, science, technology and transport.

Their international guest Aboriginal academic Dr Sandy O’Sullivan of the Wiradjuri nation Skyped in and described Aotearoa New Zealand as “leading in the area of indigenous voices within museums”.

Dr O’Sullivan’s research looks at 350 institutions in Australia, the US and UK and their capacity to engage with, represent the cultures and tell the stories of their own indigenous and First Nations populations.

Her comment was met with some light laughter from kaitiaki who feel that, although there has been a lot of improvement in the last decade, there is still a long way to go toward achieving an equal voice, Tryphena says.

“Certainly, getting together at this hui and finding out that many of the issues we face are the same from institution to institution, helped.” As has the whakaWhānaungatanga and ongoing conversations that have sparked collaborative relationships across the network to work on kaupapa such as unprovenanced taonga in collections. Other outcomes of the hui include contemporary collecting, increasing the use of te reo Māori, and succession planning.

Tryphena estimates that for more than half of taonga in museums in this country there is no knowledge of how they came into the collection. She feels that although “many of our taonga have come into museums from collectors who had dubious methods of acquisition” the reality is that the taonga are in the museums and art in the galleries. “The best way to care for them and to tell our own stories is to be in there too.”

“We often feel as though we are called into the work by our taonga,” Tryphena says. Many did not train specifically to work in the sector; a number have come from visual arts backgrounds or came to it by various means and either trained on the job or studied later in their career.

Finding out more about why the conventional pathway to museums and galleries is rare for Māori and encouraging rangatahi into the sector are key areas the network wants to develop. At the same time, identifying training needs for kaitiaki already in the sector and helping to meet those, is another support goal of Kāhui Kaitiaki.

Tryphena says another Hui is planned for 2014. They want to keep up the momentum from this year’s Hui and with a connected group of kaitiaki collaborating to meet shared challenges and supporting a strong number of new kaitiaki in their roles.

“I think too that part of our legacy should be to raise our voices – there’s not a lot out there in that area – our voices about our work in the place between arts and museum institutions, and our hapū and whānau.”