Maori Tales & Legends nā Kate McCosh Clark i kohikohi, i kōrero anō; nā Robert Atkinson kā whakaahua. London, England: David Nutt, 1896.
This exhibition has been brought together as a celebration of Māori art and storytelling as seen through children’s literature. The books in this case do not represent a true Māori voice but are part of an earlier chapter in that story. Here we have mātauraka Māori as seen through a colonial European lens.
By the time these books were produced, colonisation had taken a heavy toll on the Māori population and culture and there was some fear that knowledge not recorded might be lost. This is the climate in which Kate McCosh Clark (1847-1946) and Wilhelm Dittmer (1866-1909) visited Māori communities and collected first-hand information, describing the material being freely given to them. Although both show genuine affection for their topic and even acknowledge their sources to a degree, the material seems to have been selected, retold and illustrated with a European audience solidly in mind.
Maori Tales & Legends nā Kate McCosh Clark i kohikohi, i kōrero anō; nā Robert Atkinson kā whakaahua. London, England: David Nutt, 1896.
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