Highly-regarded curator and author rounds out recent appointments
📸: Te Unua Museum of Southland staff, from left, Tyra Ryan (Kaitiaki Mana Taoka), Ayden Dove (Registrar), Dougal Austin (Senior Curator – Māori), and Tiffany Jenks (Team Leader – Collections), view a patu pounamu once owned by Kāi Tahu rangatira Tūhawaiki at Te Pātaka Taoka Southern Regional Collections Facility. The patu was placed in the care of the former Southland Museum and Art Gallery by Naina Kihau Russell in 2001.
The lure of Murihiku Southland’s new regional museum has drawn one of the country’s leading experts in taoka Māori home.
As the mahi to bring Te Unua Museum of Southland to life continued, Invercargill City Council’s museum and heritage services team was being developed to deliver it.
The most recent appointment made to the team at Te Unua Museum of Southland was that of respected Māori curator, historian, and author Dougal Austin (Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu, Waitaha), who last week began in the role of Senior Curator – Māori at the regional museum.
Originally from Ōraka (Colac Bay), Austin had previously spent a remarkable 32 years working at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. He had served as Senior Curator Mātauranga Māori at Aotearoa New Zealand’s national museum for a number of years, and was particularly well-known for his expertise and research on hei tiki: the carved pounamu pendants worn by Māori.
His mahi had also included curating and supporting exhibitions such as Kura Pounamu. The largest exhibition of taoka pounamu ever shown at Te Papa was displayed between September 2009 and July 2011. It had also toured China – visiting Beijing, Guangzhou, and Hangzhou – Paris, and domestically throughout Aotearoa New Zealand.
In 2019 Austin also published the book Te Hei Tiki: An enduring treasure in a cultural continuum, which explored the origins and enduring cultural significance of hei tiki within Māori society. He had also served as a trustee of Te Kupeka Tiaki Taoka Southern Regional Collections Trust since 2023 - though he had since resigned following his appointment to the Te Unua team. Te Kupeka independently governs the regional museum’s art and heritage collection on behalf of the community.
Austin said he had jumped at the opportunity to return to Murihiku.
“It’s a real form of reconnection. When you’re back on your whenua, it recharges you – you feel recharged spirtitually as well as physically. I’ve been coming down from Wellington every year – I haven’t missed a year for about 25 years – and staying out at Ōraka, but those stays always feel too short. This is a really exciting time to be getting involved with the new museum opening – it’s a great opportunity to get in on the project and just a great bunch of people to be working with,” he said.
He was particularly looking forward to working with iwi to tell the pūrakau (stories) of the takiwā.
“That’s my passion – working with taoka. It’s hard to put into words. You feel drawn to work with those taoka. They’re windows into the lives of our ancestors, and the knowledge that they held. That’s something that, when you try to unpack the significance of it, is actually quite big,” he said.
“Taoka are not considered inanimate objects. They have a mauri, they have a life force, sometimes they have a known whakapapa – but they all have a whakapapa, though it may be unrecorded. It’s a privilege to be able to find those connections, or contextualise that taoka, in ways that can inspire and uplift us today.”
Te Unua Museum of Southland Experience Team Leader David Dudfield said Austin was regarded as one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s leading specialists on Māori culture and heritage, the cultural meanings of taoka Māori, and mātauraka Māori.
“It is not everyday you get someone of Dougal’s calibre joining the team, and we are absolutely delighted to welcome him back to his tūrakawaewae. His return to the south is a tremendous taoka for our whole community,” he said.
Te Unua Museum of Southland Director Eloise Wallace said Invercargill City Council’s committment to the takiwā was evident within the appointments it had made to the museum and heritage services team.
“Dougal’s appointment is just the latest in a series of exceptional kaimahi joining our team. Our team is made up of people who live here, move here here, work here – and they all play a vital role in telling our stories and caring for our treasures. Objects and artefacts do not just care for themselves. They’re an intergenerational legacy, and they require specialist resource to ensure they’re able to be displayed, to be cared for, to be accessed, to be digitised, to be made available for research purposes, and more,” she said.
Austin joined several recent starters within the wider museum and heritage services team.
Tyra Ryan (Kāti Māmoe, Kāi Tahu, Waitaha) had joined the team from Te Rūnaka o Awarua to take on the role of Kaitiaki Mana Taoka. Two new collections technicians had also been appointed: Jessica Roylands had relocated to Invercargill from the Hawke’s Bay, where she had worked as part of the team responsible for collection relocation at that region’s new museum storage facility in Hastings, while Yiying Yang had previously worked within the collections team at the Auckland War Memorial Museum.
Meanwhile, Tiffany Jenks had also begun in the role of Team Leader – Collections. She had previously worked as the Community Heritage Coordinator at Clutha District Libraries, and prior to that had worked in Southland as part of Project Ark.
“It’s not just about building a regional facility: it’s also about rebuilding our museum and heritage services function, which at its heart is all about people, and enriching the Invercargill and Southland communities,” Wallace said.
Physical construction of Te Unua was on track to be completed later this year. It will be opened to the public in 2027, following the completion of its interior fit-out and experience development.
