Ki te Kapu o Taku Ringa – In the Palm of My Hand

Tom Roa (Ngāti Maniapoto, Waikato) and Rodrigo Hill

Ōtorohanga Museum
15 Kākāmutu Road, Ōtorohanga

14 June - 16 August 2024

Opening and book launch 14 June, 4pm

We warmly invite you to the opening of our exhibition and photobook launch titled Ki te Kapu o Taku Ringa – In the Palm of My Hand at the Ōtorohanga Museum June 14 at 4pm. This line is from King Tawhiao’s ‘Maioha mō Waikato’, composed while he and his Waikato brethren were living with their Maniapoto relations at Whatiwhatihoe and other places in Te Nehenehenui. The exhibition is part of our Waikato University research project titled Te Nehenehenui - The Ancient Enduring Beauty in the Great Forest of the King Country, a collaboration between Professor Tom Roa and Dr Rodrigo Hill.

The project focused on photographing wāhi mana (places of significance) such as Maungatautari Mountain Sanctuary, Pirongia, Kāwhia, Ōtorohanga, Te Kuiti, and Mokau , asserting a decolonising of the lens. Each photograph is informed by wānanga, mana whenua accounts embedded with local Waikato-Maniapoto narratives as a way to reassert and reclaim mana over ancestral knowledge, landmarks, flora, and fauna.  

The primary assertion in the book and the exhibition is that the colonial lens is used to tell that story. Our exhibition and photobook celebrates our use of the photographic lens telling our stories in our way ...

Mauri ora ki te whai-ao, ki te ao-mārama.