HE KORERO EXHIBITION AT POMPALLIER

An exhibition of some earliest known examples of Māori engagement with writing and drawing on paper from 1793 to 1835 will take place at Pompallier Mission and Printery on Kororāreka / Russell (from June 24).

The special Matariki exhibition will be supported by a talk by Alison Jones (June 26, 11am also at Pompallier Mission and Printery).

Alison Jones – background info:

Alison is an experienced and entertaining speaker. She is co-author of the award-winning book He Kōrero: Words Between Us – First Māori-Pākehā conversations on paper, and will talk about the earliest Māori engagement with writing.

Alison Jones is a professor at Te Puna Wānanga School of Māori and Indigenous Education at Waipapa Taumata Rau | The University of Auckland. She is a Pākehā who works and writes in the field of Māori-Pākehā relationships. Alison is author of several books including This Pākehā Life: An Unsettled Memoir, shortlisted for an Ockham New Zealand book award.

Come and learn about

• The 1814 letter to hapū in the Bay of Islands negotiating the conditions of the first Pākehā settlement
• Establishment by local Māori of the first school in New Zealand, in 1816
• Unique letters sent in 1818 from England by a young Ngare Raumati man from Pāroa Bay about the Industrial Revolution he was witnessing
• The first letter ever independently written in Māori, addressing ‘te tini rangatira o Ropi’ [‘the many chiefs of Europe’], by a ten-year-old boy named Hongi in 1825

Free entry to the exhibition and talk on Sunday