Bone / Jade

Maori Bone Carving

The vigorous production of stylisations of such items of normal everyday fishing implements reaffirms the value of the role that these items played within pre-European Maori society.

The stylised matau (hook form) then becomes an icon of a whakapapa relationship to the deified personification of the moana (sea), Tangaroa. It also recognises the skilled artisans who developed and refined the various devices to catch the offspring (fish, shellfish) of Tangaroa and it reaffirms the role of kai (food), which when contextualised in a pre-industrial tribal society immediately becomes the mediating factor between life and death.

As kai was the "hub" of the Maori economic system, and the bounty that the sea could offer was extensive, we then impregnate the matau with connotations of life, of good health and wealth.

The traditional role of Koiwi (bone) in a pre-European context.

Traditional Maori customary burial practices allowed for the decomposition of the human body in a waahi tapu (sacred area). A set time later a group of people who occupied the consecrated role of 'the bone scrapers' within that particular social grouping would then collect all of the koiwi, clean them and then prepare them to be placed in a restricted secure domain. This careful preparation and care is the acknowledgment, that the last remains the bones contain the mauri (remaining life essence) of the deceased. Sometimes koauau or other Maori instruments were created from the bones of tupuna(ancestors), and became revered taonga (treasures). Whakapapa gives essence to the use of bone and teeth of other animals as well in the production of taonga by Maori.

The use of Whakapapa as a central concept in the use of bone as a medium

The whakapapa, or association of the medium through genealogy and/or provenance has always held importance in the Maori epistemological view of our environment/world. The pervading understanding of the concept of mauri (life essence) ties all actions and events into meaningful and deliberate occurrences that are mediated between that of the physical world and the metaphysical.

In the emulation of classical Maori forms through whakairo (carving), many seek to inquire as to the motivations that led our tupuna to develop the forms that we are now familiar with, and now define as 'Maori'.

Therefore the attempt to replicate elements of those 'classical' icons of ethnographic material culture of the Maori becomes another continuation in the teaching-learning process, and a re-affirmation in the connection to those who have past on, to us who are living. The contemporary explorations of bone carving are an extension of that historical narrative, but seeking new pathways of expression that tell their own respective stories.

For Maori the wearing and handing down of Taonga tuku iho (family heirlooms) mirrors the whakapapa process. As the taonga is passed down through the generations it becomes imbued with the mauri of each that wears it. It becomes the aho (sinew) by which you can sew into your existence those tupuna in your whakapapa and gives effect to connecting you spiritually to their lives and events and they (whether living or deceased) to your life and events.

Similarly, the creation of taonga (treasures) from bone celebrates the life of those who have relinquished their physical state, and is acknowledged as an appropriate way of maintaining the mauri of the animal and/or the tupuna.

Rangi Skipper
Carver
September 1998

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