Time now to answer our Geo Quiz.
The National Museum of New Zealand is located in the city of Wellington, on New Zealand's North Island.
A delegation from Chicago's Field Museum has travelled all the way to New Zealand for a special repatriation ceremony as the World's David Leveille reports.
The trip to Wellington represents the end of a long, strange journey. In 1893, at the time of the World's Fair in Chicago, the Field Museum purchased a collection of human bones from a New York dealer. They are the remains of Maoris, the indigenous, or First People of the islands of New Zealand.
That was back in the age when museums wanted to have collections not only of fish bones and fossil plants and so forth, but also representative samples of what it was like to be a human physically around the world
John Terrell is Curator of Pacific Anthropology at Chicago's Field Museum. In recent years, he says the museum forged friendships with Maoris in New Zealand and recognised the importance of returning the bones.
My understanding is that other museums returning human remains to New Zealand have basically packed them up and sent them off, this time around I felt that it was really important for both personal reasons but also as a statement to the world at large, that this wasn't only a return but in fact that we wanted to stand there in Wellington and embrace the idea of showing this kind of respect to the ancestors of other people on earth.
The actual remains consist of a preserved and tatoo'd head..as well as skeletal bones of 13 other Maori individuals. No one knows exactly who they were, or precisely where the remains were collected.
But Arapata Hakiwai regards them as sacred, he oversees the Maori collections at Te Papa Tongarewa, the National Museum of New Zealand. He's been working to repatriate Maori remains that are held in as many as 150 museums worldwide. This week he went to Chicago to pack up and escort the remains home:
It's impoprtant because they represent our ancestors, and for Maori people, our ancestors are very much living, if you like, in our culture and life.
Hakiwai says the repatriation process is a solemn affair. To better appreciate its significance, Hakiwai says it helps to understand how Maoris regard their past:
We have a word which means "in front of us ", mua is actually a word we use for our past so it gives you an idea how we relate to our past and the relationships we have with our ancestors. In our culture its very real, it's who we are.
Hakiwai says he hopes this repatriation agreement with the Field Museum will encourage other museums to so the same. Meanwhile, the Maoris are giving something to the Field Museum.
Maori singing at Field Museum in Chicago.
Earlier this year members of the Maori community at Tokomaru Bay in New Zealand came to Chicago.
They came to celebrate a Field Museum cultural exhibit that emphasizes their way of life...it's an intricately carved 19th century Maori meeting house.
It's the only one in the US. Curator John Terrill says the exhibit is an example of a new trend: to make museums a place for people to come and learn from each other:
"Museums are not impersonal places where we simply exhibit material for people to gawk at or admire or learn from, but museums are also places where we are reaching out to people to other parts of the world to form partnerships, and this is a very real demonstration."
John Terrill and Arapata Hakiwai of the New Zealand Museum are now in Wellington where a ceremony to mark the repatriation of the Maori remains is set for Monday. Hakiwai says there will be Maori prayers and songs to celebrate his ancestors' homecoming.
