{"id":564497,"date":"2026-07-29T01:50:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T01:50:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/564497\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T01:50:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T01:50:15","slug":"new-museum-lures-respected-maori-curator-historian-and-author-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/564497\/","title":{"rendered":"New museum lures respected M\u0101ori curator, historian, and author home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Te Unua Museum of Southland staff, from left, Tyra Ryan (Kaitiaki Mana Taoka), Ayden Dove (Registrar), Dougal Austin (Senior Curator \u2013 M\u0101ori), and Tiffany Jenks (Team Leader \u2013 Collections), view a patu pounamu once owned by K\u0101i Tahu rangatira T\u016bhawaiki at Te P\u0101taka Taoka Southern, Regional Collections Facility. The patu was placed in the care of the former Southland Museum and, Art Gallery by Naina Kihau Russell in 2001.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The lure of Murihiku Southland\u2019s new regional museum has drawn one of the country\u2019s leading experts in taoka M\u0101ori home.<\/p>\n

As the mahi to bring Te Unua Museum of Southland to life continued, Invercargill City Council\u2019s museum and heritage services team was being developed to deliver it.<\/p>\n

The most recent appointment made to the team at Te Unua Museum of Southland was that of respected M\u0101ori curator, historian, and author Dougal Austin (K\u0101ti M\u0101moe, K\u0101i Tahu, Waitaha), who last week began in the role of Senior Curator \u2013 M\u0101ori at the regional museum.<\/p>\n

Originally from \u014craka (Colac Bay), Austin had previously spent a remarkable 32 years working at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. He had served as Senior Curator M\u0101tauranga M\u0101ori at Aotearoa New Zealand\u2019s national museum for a number of years, and was particularly well-known for his expertise and research on hei tiki: the carved pounamu pendants worn by M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n

His mahi had also included curating and supporting exhibitions such as Kura Pounamu. The largest exhibition of taoka pounamu ever shown at Te Papa was displayed between September 2009 and July 2011. It had also toured China \u2013 visiting Beijing, Guangzhou, and Hangzhou \u2013 Paris, and domestically throughout Aotearoa New Zealand.<\/p>\n

In 2019 Austin also published the book Te Hei Tiki: An enduring treasure in a cultural continuum, which explored the origins and enduring cultural significance of hei tiki within M\u0101ori society. He had also served as a trustee of Te Kupeka Tiaki Taoka Southern Regional Collections Trust since 2023 – though he had since resigned following his appointment to the Te Unua team. <\/p>\n

Te Kupeka independently governs the regional museum\u2019s art and heritage collection on behalf of the community.<\/p>\n

Austin said he had jumped at the opportunity to return to Murihiku.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a real form of reconnection. When you\u2019re back on your whenua, it recharges you \u2013 you feel recharged spiritually as well as physically. I\u2019ve been coming down from Wellington every year \u2013 I haven\u2019t missed a year for about 25 years \u2013 and staying out at \u014craka, but those stays always feel too short. This is a really exciting time to be getting involved with the new museum opening \u2013 it\u2019s a great opportunity to get in on the project and just a great bunch of people to be working with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He was particularly looking forward to working with iwi to tell the p\u016brakau (stories) of the takiw\u0101.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s my passion \u2013 working with taoka. It\u2019s hard to put into words. You feel drawn to work with those taoka. They\u2019re windows into the lives of our ancestors, and the knowledge that they held. That\u2019s something that, when you try to unpack the significance of it, is actually quite big,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaoka are not considered inanimate objects. They have a mauri, they have a life force, sometimes they have a known whakapapa \u2013 but they all have a whakapapa, though it may be unrecorded. It\u2019s a privilege to be able to find those connections, or contextualise that taoka, in ways that can inspire and uplift us today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Te Unua Museum of Southland Experience Team Leader David Dudfield said Austin was regarded as one of Aotearoa New Zealand\u2019s leading specialists on M\u0101ori culture and heritage, the cultural meanings of taoka M\u0101ori, and m\u0101tauraka M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not everyday you get someone of Dougal\u2019s calibre joining the team, and we are absolutely delighted to welcome him back to his t\u016brakawaewae. His return to the south is a tremendous taoka for our whole community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Te Unua Museum of Southland Director Eloise Wallace said Invercargill City Council\u2019s committment to the takiw\u0101 was evident within the appointments it had made to the museum and heritage services team.<\/p>\n

\u201cDougal\u2019s appointment is just the latest in a series of exceptional kaimahi joining our team. Our team is made up of people who live here, move here here, work here \u2013 and they all play a vital role in telling our stories and caring for our treasures. Objects and artefacts do not just care for themselves. They\u2019re an intergenerational legacy, and they require specialist resource to ensure they\u2019re able to be displayed, to be cared for, to be accessed, to be digitised, to be made available for research purposes, and more,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Austin joined several recent starters within the wider museum and heritage services team.<\/p>\n

Tyra Ryan (K\u0101ti M\u0101moe, K\u0101i Tahu, Waitaha) had joined the team from Te R\u016bnaka o Awarua to take on the role of Kaitiaki Mana Taoka. Two new collections technicians had also been appointed: Jessica Roylands had relocated to Invercargill from the Hawke\u2019s Bay, where she had worked as part of the team responsible for collection relocation at that region\u2019s new museum storage facility in Hastings, while Yiying Yang had previously worked within the collections team at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Tiffany Jenks had also begun in the role of Team Leader \u2013 Collections. She had previously worked as the Community Heritage Coordinator at Clutha District Libraries, and prior to that had worked in Southland as part of Project Ark.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just about building a regional facility: it\u2019s also about rebuilding our museum and heritage services function, which at its heart is all about people, and enriching the Invercargill and Southland communities,\u201d Wallace said.<\/p>\n

Physical construction of Te Unua was on track to be completed later this year. It will be opened to the public in 2027, following the completion of its interior fit-out and experience development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Te Unua Museum of Southland staff, from left, Tyra Ryan (Kaitiaki Mana Taoka), Ayden Dove (Registrar), Dougal Austin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564498,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-564497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}