AOTEAROA, New Zealand – Contemporary Maori art’s future lies with “rangatahi,” emerging artists working creatively with established artists, say founders of Te Atinga, a committee within the indigenous arts organization, Toi Maori Aotearoa. “He mana tangata, He toi whakairo: Where there is artistic excellence, there is human dignity.”

To that end Te Atinga, founded in 1987, hosts a major gathering every five years. Its first international symposium in 1995, Te Atinga Indigenous Visual Arts Wananga at Apumoana Marae in Rotorua, New Zealand drew the largest ever gathering of Pacific Rim contemporary visual artists.

“For me it all began in 1993 with the Te Waka Touring exhibition of contemporary Maori art that originally toured the country from San Diego, Calif.,” said poet and visual artist Elizabeth Woody. “I encountered the exhibition when it opened at the Burke Museum in Seattle.”

As is customary the Maori requested traditional greetings from the local tribes, dumbfounding the museum staff, who didn’t know what to make of the request. So, they turned to the local American Indian community. “I attended with my Warm Springs aunties artist Lillian Pitt and Jacqueline Swanson to honor the creative spirit of the works,” Woody said. “The Maori artists brought the spirits of their ancestors, to which our ancestors asked, ‘What are they doing here?’”

The Puget Sound tribal leadership answered with song and ceremony. “After a full tour of the show with songs near each piece the Maori contingent finally said, ‘it seems we follow the same customs,’ and we went through the exhibition once more stopping at each piece behind the Maori people this time,” Woody said. “It took us all day and this seemed entirely normal to the tribal peoples, but not to the museum staff who simply winged it with us.”

The involvement of tribal artists points to “the pure magic and transport to our creative origins in the ring of fire (the Pacific) that is ancient, volcanically potent, and precedes written accounts. Our hearts yearn for one another and these gatherings fill a unique void in the artist when like finds like, and kindred wills work towards making the future better without the wounds of racism and colonialism. It draws breath from the steamy hot veins of our earth and cleanses our minds and center like a good rain.”

Pitt had attended the Te Atinga gatherings from their inception and presented the concept to the longhouse Native Economic Development Arts Initiative Advisory Council at The Evergreen State College Longhouse in Olympia, Wash. Longhouse director Tina Kuckkahn, Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe, and Okanogan artist and TESC professor Joe Feddersen attended a 2000 New Zealand gathering to see how they were held. They formally asked director Sandy Adsett permission to bring their international artists to the Pacific Northwest.

With the support of area foundations and tribes the longhouse sponsored an international gathering in 2001called “Return to the Swing,” with a catalogue and touring exhibition called “Hitéemlkiliiksix Within the Circle of the Rim: Nations Gathering on Common Ground A Traveling Exhibition 2002 – 2004.”

Attendance was filled with Pacific Northwest traditional activities. A traditional full regalia Nez Perce horse parade with Nakia Williamson-Cloud singing Yellow Wolf’s song, of the Nez Perce travails with the U.S. Cavalry, and a traditional feast and Native theater sponsored by now deceased tradition bearer and master artist Bruce Miller were the most memorable events of that gathering, said Woody.

She recently returned from Te Tihi – 4th Gathering of Indigenous Visual Artists in Rotorua, New Zealand where artists worked around the clock in several major disciplines including painting, printing, weaving, ceramics and carving at studios in the Waiariki Institute of Technology. An exhibition of all the artists was shown at the Forestry Building on campus.

A poignant moment recalled by Woody was when Maori artist-storyteller Julie Tipene-O’Toole quoted originally from a nameless Ghanian woman when addressing master Maori storyteller Joe Harawira of the Te Awara Tribe, of why the roles of passing on knowledge is imperative, “A story that needs to be told does not forgive silence.”

Te Atinga develops and promotes contemporary Maori art through exhibitions, wananga or symposia, publications and artist networks operating within tribal rural to urban regions and international centers. The organization fosters the development of emerging and established painters, sculptors, clay-workers, print-makers, digital and multimedia artists. Many emerging artists have launched solo careers from exhibitions, with established artists securing other opportunities from residencies to commissions.

Appointment of new members is by invitation of the committee in recognition of the artists’ developing profile and artwork, with an expectation of support to achieve the outcomes of the project.

A Maori proverb advises, “Toi te kupu, toi te mana, toi te whenua: Maintain the empowerment of your ancestral language, your sovereign cultural identity (rangatiratanga) and most importantly the nurture of your land.”