Somewhere in the stores of Southland's regional museum sit more than 1800 matau, the traditional Māori fish hooks, most of them carved from bone and gathered across generations. For the past month, the team getting Te Unua Museum of Southland ready to open has been going through them one by one, and the Otago Daily Times reports that about a dozen have now been chosen to go on long-term display.

Collections team leader Tiffany Jenks told the ODT the hooks chosen would open a window on Southland's "rich fishing heritage". The collection, she said, varies widely in size, design and condition, and its sheer size says something about the region itself. "Our regional museum has such an extensive array of hooks which really illustrates the importance of our waterways to Southland," she said.

A two-piece matau (fish hook) held by Auckland War Memorial Museum. Te Unua's Southland collection holds more than 1800 matau, mostly of bone. File photo. Photo: Auckland Museum / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
A two-piece matau (fish hook) held by Auckland War Memorial Museum. Te Unua's Southland collection holds more than 1800 matau, mostly of bone. File photo. Photo: Auckland Museum / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

Picking a dozen from 1800 was never going to be only about looks, though some of the hooks clearly earned their places on beauty alone. "Some of the hooks are absolutely beautiful, particularly the ones with pāua inlay," Jenks said. The team also wanted hooks that visitors could recognise at a glance, "so they can start to understand how they were used, and make that connection with the past".

Provenance mattered just as much. Kaitiaki mana taoka Tyra Ryan, who worked closely with the Te Unua team to narrow down the list, said knowing where a hook was found could bring it much closer to the people looking at it. "If a visitor sees a place name they recognise or a location that has special meaning, it makes the object feel much closer to home," she said.

Ryan sees the hooks as part of a much longer story about how earlier generations lived alongside the natural world. "Fishing has been such an important part of life in our community for generations," she said. "It is particularly significant within Māori communities here in Southland and knowledge of the moana, traditional materials, and techniques have been passed down from one generation to the next."

A two-piece matau with notches along its shank, photographed for a museum collection record. It is not one of the Southland hooks. File photo. Photo: Andrew Hales / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
A two-piece matau with notches along its shank, photographed for a museum collection record. It is not one of the Southland hooks. File photo. Photo: Andrew Hales / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0

The month of sorting has had a quieter benefit for the hooks that will stay out of sight. According to the ODT, the whole collection now sits in a more orderly storage system that gives the fragile objects more support and keeps them from shifting, and each record has been checked and updated with measurements and photographs so the details attached to every hook are accurate.

The work is part of the final push before the new museum opens. Building work on Te Unua is close to finished, and the museum is due to welcome the public next year, when the chosen hooks are set to take their place in a long-term exhibition.

For most of the 1800, the next chapter will be a better box and a fuller record. For the dozen that made the cut, it will be a glass case, and perhaps a visitor stopping to read a familiar place name beside a piece of bone shaped by hand long ago.