The original art galleries: protecting New Zealands hidden Mori rock art

Few know of the drawings scattered across Aotearoa, some of them dating from first arrival of humans, but iwi and scientists are working to change that

There are two tricks to seeing Māori rock art. The first is to let your eyes slowly adjust to the black and red markings on the limestone and allow the images to float out of the rock like a mirage: the coiled tails of taniwha (revered water spirits), the outspread wings of the now-extinct giant eagle, figures holding weapons and tools, plants, sea creatures and waka (canoes).

The second trick is knowing the art exists in the first place.

There are more than 750 Māori rock art sites now recorded in New Zealand’s Te Waipounamu/South Island, but many New Zealanders are unaware they exist.

The Māori practice of painting on to rock is thought to date back roughly 800 years, to when the first people arrived in Aotearoa. The practice continued until European explorers began sailing around the island.

“You can see birds like the moa, or the pouākai – the giant eagle – that have been extinct for 500 years or more drawn into the rock,” says Amanda Symon, a pākehā (European) archaeologist and trustee at Ngāi Tahu Māori Rock Art Trust, which was set up to help Māori regional councils manage the sites.

Roughly 95% of sites are on private farmland, which may partly account for why the drawings have not garnered much public attention. The deliberate repression of Māori culture after colonisation and a lack of understanding about the importance of the art form are likely to blame for the lackadaisical approach to preservation.

But the drawings are now being brought back into the light, and are undergoing huge preservation and restoration efforts, thanks to a collaboration between iwi (tribes), scientists, artists and enthusiasts.

‘Ink that would stand forever’

Ōpihi – nicknamed Taniwha Gully – lies in South Canterbury, two hours south of Christchurch, and is the most impressive rock art site in the country. There, a network of 14 limestone caves and overhangs is tucked into 10 hectares of rolling regenerating farmland. One houses one of the more striking pieces – an incredibly rare image of a pregnant taniwha.

“It just took my breath away,” says Francine Spencer, Ngāi Tahu artist and a mana whenua (someone with tribal links to an area) trustee for the Trust, of the first time she saw the work. “It felt like going back in time. As soon as I walked in there, it was like I had met all my tīpuna [ancestors], I could feel that spirit of welcome.”

The site has “a lot of mauri – spiritual feeling”, adds Rachel Solomon, the team leader of Te Ana Māori Rock Art Centre, a community organisation that acts as guardians over the rock art on behalf Ngāi Tahu, the largest iwi on the South Island.

Much of the art’s meaning has been lost and Solomon and Spencer are reluctant to theorise why their tīpuna drew what they did. But they agree that the works likely go beyond the purely decorative and that in some cases, the land and the art are in conversation with one another.

“One of the few things we know for sure … is the recipe for rock art paint,” Symon adds. In the 1920s an ethnographer collected the recipe from kaumatua (elders) in the South Canterbury area. The ingredients included resin from the monoao tree, tarata tree gum, crushed rautawhiri berries, and either shark liver oil or weka fat. One of the kaumatua described the pigment as “an ink that would stand forever”.

Restoring and protecting the ‘original art galleries’

Ōpihi, designated a nationally significant Māori ancestral site in 2017, is becoming the showpiece for the type of protection and restoration that can be achieved when mātauranga Māori – Māori expertise and knowledge – intersects with western science.

An ecological restoration project, spearheaded by the trust and the crown institute Manaaki Whenua Landcare Research, is attempting to reverse more than 100 years of detrimental farming practices to return the site to its original state.

A senior researcher in botany at Manaaki Whenua, Dr Peter Heenan, approached the trust in 2016 with the idea to restore the badly degraded landscape. In 2018, they began planting the first of about 47,000 trees, and further funding means that number can be scaled up to 80,000 trees over 10 years.

“[Visitors] used to just walk down the gully through paddocks with animals in them,” Heenan says. “Very shortly, they will be walking through emerging forest up to four metres high.”

Recently, a pupil on a school tour described the area as “paradise”, Heenan recounts.

“It almost brought tears to my eyes, because that’s what we’re trying to achieve: you go there to get the cultural experience of the rock art and now we’ve added in the natural biodiversity layer – you get the whole experience.”

Meanwhile, another of their projects was awarded $250,000 in 2021 to conduct a “deep” ecological study on the site’s cultural and natural values.

Preserving the art comes with challenges. Most works are in porous limestone caves or overhangs that are not always well protected from the elements, while intensive farming in the area that often relies on irrigation also poses a problem for the rock, which easily absorbs moisture.

Education is the best way to protect the art, Symon says. “The main problem is that people don’t know the rock art exists,” she says, adding that it is important for landowners to learn they have rock art sites on their property and understand what can harm the work. So far, farmers have been receptive to the team’s ideas.

For Solomon, who regularly runs tours to the sites, restoring the landscapewill allow visitors to establish a deeper connection.

“You get a feel for why people were in the valley: there is water, there is shelter, there is bird life for food, plants for medicinal services.”

And that, in turn, will hopefully compel people to preserve what was on the brink of being lost, she says.

“That’s why Te Ana was created, to highlight what was in this area, but also to highlight rock art nationally,” Solomon says.

“These are the original art galleries of New Zealand. They need protecting.”

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