Labour MP Willie Jackson has made an impassioned plea for the return of seven mokomōkai — preserved Māori heads adorned with moko — from the British Museum in his winning Oxford Union debate speech in Britain.
“As I speak to you now, I sense the presence of my ancestors who are trapped in your museum prison,” Jackson said in his opening feint.
Arguing against the motion that British Museums are not very British, he highlighted the empire’s colonial past saying it was “very, very, very British to take from indigenous people and never hand it back”.
“Who else has the audacity to arrive on distant shores, and declare that they now own everything in the name of their God, their King and their country no matter who was originally living there? The British, that’s who.”
Speaking to 1News Europe Correspondent Mei Heron after the debate, Jackson said he wanted to take the opportunity to raise some important indigenous issues, “whether we won the debate or not”.
He said he wanted to remind the British “how British they’ve operated” but that there was still hope for them to do the right thing by Māori in returning the mokomōkai.
“You can’t just think only you can look after indigenous artefacts. You got to trust that countries like ours know what to do, so I’m looking forward to watching what happens in terms of Te Papa and those seven mokomōkai.”
The call was made by Labour MP Willie Jackson, who was debating the Britishness of British Museums.
The speech
The empire’s quest to colonise and appropriate from cultures around the world was a point Jackson continued to emphasise throughout his speech, and it drew equal parts applause and reflective pauses from the audience.
He quoted Dame Jenny Shipley who first suggested that Māori artefacts should be returned during her Oxford debate speech in 2021, asserting the British Empire is a national disgrace by highlighting the atrocities it committed against Māori.
“I can tell you,” Dame Jenny said in her speech at the time, “it is a deep insult to Māori that there are ancestral relics — for them these are human, they are people, they are their whānau and family, and they live in the basements of museums neglected and listed as if they were an item of irrelevance.”
Jackson said she was “one hundred per cent right”.
“The British Museum holds the largest Māori collections outside New Zealand, including items of major artistic and cultural significance. Māori view these artefacts as our ancestors.
“The British Museum has collected our ancestors together as curiosities, divorced from the culture that produced them — a little bit like a chicken tikka masala is to the British.”
The artefacts in the museum include seven mokomōkai — preserved heads of Māori adorned with moko, Jackson said.
“From Cook’s first visit, Europeans were fascinated by the heads, which had been traditionally preserved to remember honoured ancestors, but such was the level of European demand to take mokomōkai back home as curios, and such was the need of iwi to get muskets for the musket wars, an ugly, filthy trade took place. The great thing was that the English and Māori leaders decided to stop that trade, which was brilliant.
“But for 200 years, the remains of our ancestors have lain in distant lands, in the archives of museums and other collections. Many have been returned but the British Museum still holds seven mokomōkai.
“Many of our people believe these mōkai cry out to us. I was there the other day — they talk to us. They want to go home.
“I implore you, on behalf of my people, to honour the partnership agreement between Māori and the British Crown, that is the Treaty of Waitangi, and let our ancestors come home.”
Jackson and his debating partner Gary Vikan, an american author, were the winners of the debate.