A Personal Homecoming

The events of Te Maori unfolded on the world stage and also in the individual lives of so many thousands of people.

On the evening of 10 September 1984 I was preparing dinner in my kitchen in Brooklyn, New York. I had been living in the U.S. for more than a decade. But when I heard the karanga broadcast out from the television in the next room, it stopped me in my tracks.

Even though New York is a city of spectacle, it was unimaginable back in 1984 that an exhibition would open with a cultural ceremony at dawn, with a calling that rang out through the city streets. In my experience even as a New Zealander I had rarely witnessed this living Maori culture. The footage of that event was re-broadcast in every edition of the news over those first few days and impressed the hearts of so many of us who witnessed it.

I saw the exhibition then, and again in 1986 at Dunedin, by which time I had moved back here to live. As the exhibition banners unfurled outside Otago Museum I experienced a particularly personal connection to the title Te Hokinga Mai – the return home – under which Te Maori toured New Zealand.

Stephanie Lambert