From Porgy and Bess to haka, to Elsdon Best and Tuini Ngāwai, Pūkana will range far and wide to give a sense of the ihi, wehi and wana, inherent to Maori performance.

Paul Diamond is lead curator for the Pūkana exhibition, and talks about the background to the exhibition which celebrates Māori performance across time. Paul (Ngāti Hauā, Te Rarawa and Ngāpuhi) was appointed as Curator, Māori at the Alexander Turnbull Library in 2011. He is an author and has also worked as an oral historian and broadcaster.

Pūkana opens on 14 September, 2019 and runs until 23 May 2020 at the National Library of New Zealand, in Wellington New Zealand.

These monthly Public History Talks are a collaboration between the National Library of New Zealand https://natlib.govt.nz/ and the Ministry for Culture and Heritage https://mch.govt.nz/.

Recorded live at the National Library of New Zealand, 4 September 2019.

Please note, due to copyright restrictions, some of  the audio and video excerpts played during the presentation are not able to be republished and the presentation has been edited to reflect this.