In France, the majority of the Māori taonga are housed at the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac in Paris, where 268 taonga are registered in the collections of the museum. Based on previous research conducted during my M.A. and my Ph.D. at the University of Strasbourg, France, I found that the oldest taonga in French museums travelled from Aotearoa to France in the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries. For many years, Māori specialists across Aotearoa have sought to access more information about taonga in museums around the world. My postdoctoral research is intended to help meet these needs and to demonstrate the richness of the taonga tuku iho biographies and agencies, particularly in terms of their mnemonic qualities, when reunited with the tangata whenua of Aotearoa and other taonga tuku iho.
This paper presents the state of my research in relation to 4 kākahu, 2 hei tiki, 3 taonga pūoro, and 1 rākau atua associated with the voyage of French explorer Jules César Sébastien Dumont d’Urville on board l’Astrolabe in 1827.
