Māori women give voice to their stories in new online exhibition

Making Māori women more visible through their voices – this is Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision's new online exhibition: Maioha – Te Reo o te Māreikura.

Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision has announced the launch of Maioha – Te Reo o te Māreikura, an exhibition that profiles an important collection of radio interviews with Māori women, originally broadcast in 1993.

The exhibition is now live on our website.

The interviews were the result of a project instigated by the Waiatarau Branch of Te Rōpū Wāhine Māori Toko i te Ora – The Māori Women’s Welfare League (MWWL), to mark the International Year of the World's Indigenous Peoples and the centenary of Women’s Suffrage.

Ngā Taonga Pou Ārahi, Honiana Love says: “This was a project with the stated aim of making Māori women more visible through their voices. Twenty-five years later and on the 125th anniversary of New Zealand women gaining the right to vote, Ngā Taonga is thrilled to be sharing these insightful and often very personal stories again.

Fifty women, chosen for their local, national or international contributions, were interviewed in the language of their choice – a radical idea for 1993. The ones we have chosen for this exhibition are mostly in te reo and many of the women took the opportunity to talk about their experiences growing up Māori. Their kōrero allows us a glimpse of a world now gone,” says Ms Love.

Maioha – Te Reo o te Māreikura is the fourth and last of the online exhibitions launched over the past 12 months from Ngā Taonga Kōrero, the archive of RNZ’s Māori radio programmes.

The other three exhibitions are viewable online:

• Te Pūtaketanga o Ngā Taonga Kōrero – the opening of Tūrongo House at Tūrangawaewae Marae in 1938.
• Te Hokinga Mai o Te Rua Tekau mā Waru – the return of the Māori Battalion from World War Two in 1946.
• Te Reo Pāpāho – the story of te reo on air featuring the broadcasters who championed te reo Māori on radio.