Ariana Tikao (Ngāi Tahu) is the curator of an exhibition at the Turnbull Library in Wellington called Borderland: The World of James Cowan. The exhibition explores the life, work and legacy of the writer James Cowan (1870–1943).
Cowan grew up on a Waikato farm, on land confiscated from Māori, who had fought against the Crown in the wars of the 1860s. The farm included part of the battlefield of Ōrākau, just north of the King Country – a region that remained in Māori control after the war. This environment gave rise to Cowan’s lifelong interest in Māori and colonial history, and to his fluency in te reo Māori.
For part of his career, Cowan was based in Christchurch, as a journalist for both the Canterbury Times and Lyttelton Times. While there, he became acquainted with Teone Taare Tikao and interviewed him for a book called Maori Folk-tales of the Port Hills.
Ariana is the Māori specialist in the Arrangement and Description team at the Alexander Turnbull Library. She worked on a large collection of Cowan’s working papers last year, which the library had acquired the previous year.
“Among the papers were handwritten notes that Cowan had made when he interviewed our Pōua at Rāpaki,” Ariana says.. “He even sketched a little drawing of the mauka, Te Poho o Tamatea, as it looked to him that evening”. This sketch and a sample of the interview notes are included in the exhibition.
There are also other items that relate to Ariana’s wider whānau and hapū of Banks Peninsula, including some laments that Puwai wrote after surviving Te Rauparaha’s raid on Ōnawe in 1832. “It is a very rich manuscript collection, with many gems just waiting to be rediscovered,” she says.
In the opening week of the exhibition, the Alexander Turnbull Library hosted a one-day symposium about Cowan, in conjunction with the Centre for Colonial Studies at Otago University. Over 65 people attended and it was a great opportunity to discuss the wide range and influence of Cowan’s writing on various aspects of New Zealand culture.
The exhibition is on until 26 April and is open Monday through Saturday, 10am-5pm. There are some associated events in April. Find out more from the exhibition page on the National Library website www.natlib.govt.nz
Ariana Tikao and George Waitai Tikao in front of a photo of their pōua, Teone (Hone) Taare Tikao, at the opening of the Borderland exhibition. Photo by Mark Beatty.