Tahitian unsung hero on Cook’s voyage of discovery [1]
Friday, September 28, 2018 - 16:11
A procession highlighting the role of Tupaia, a Tahitian navigator and priest in James Cook’s successful exchanges with Maori people in New Zealand, will be held as part of an exhibition marking Cook’s voyage from Plymouth, UK to Australia 250 years ago.
Professor Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll, an artist and historian at the University of Birmingham, will lead the procession on September 30, in a series of events highlighting how much credit should be given to Tupaia, who died in Batavia during the voyage back from the Pacific.
Tupaia’s remarkable navigational skills and Pacific geographical knowledge were utilised by Cook during the voyage to Australia.
Besides being a performance, the piece is an act of mediation in a larger process guided by Professor Carroll's findings from her research project committed to redressing the history of HMS Endeavour from indigenous perspectives in Australia and New Zealand. The findings analyse how Western institutions obtained, curate and display non-Western intellectual property and material culture, making a case for its repatriation.
Cook’s New Clothes
The project, called Cook’s New Clothes, is a collaboration of international artists led by Professor Carroll, including Māori weaver Keren Ruki, piratologist Simon Layton, designer Ruby Hoette, filmmaker Ludovica Fales, sculptor Nikolaus Gansterer, choreographer Kirill Burlov, composer Mo’ong Johanes Santoso Pribadi and a fleet of Tahitian boats and waka.
Professor Carroll said the procession is a community building performance, whether political, personal or religious. On one hand the funerary procession and on the other the civic commemoration for Tupaia lays bare legacies of colonialism centred upon colonial heroes. "We say: ‘Dare to see, the king is naked. History is ours to redress’ "
The outdoor procession will be led by the group on the banks of the River Tamar, in Plymouth, in a performance that will redress the departure of Joseph Banks and Lieutenant Cook aboard HMS Endeavour 250 years ago.
It will include music, regalia, dance, drawings and spoken words in a participatory performance at 3pm on Sunday 30 September at Plymouth’s Royal William Yard and will lead to Devil's Point, where the performance will end.
Items such as a Māori cloak woven from plastics, gathered from the Pacific Ocean, will be included as well as an orchestra performing music composed by Mo’ong on instruments also made out of recycled plastic found in the ocean.
There will also be a multi-media installation exhibited site-specifically in the historical dockyard at The Atlantic Project in Plymouth from September 28 to October 21.