Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Te Matapihi, a Māori cultural group based in Kaiwhaiki, on the Whanganui River not far from Whanganui city, rehearses a haka for the 2002 national Māori performing arts festival.
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Whale rider (2002), a film by New Zealand director Niki Caro, is based on the novel of the same name by Witi Ihimaera. The novel in turn uses the traditional tale of Paikea, who came to New Zealand on the back of a whale. Whale rider enjoyed extraordinary international success and made ...
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Niki Caro’s feature film Whale rider, which won international awards, drew on the Paikea story and was set in Whāngārā, where Paikea eventually landed. This brief clip from the film shows the carving of Paikea on the meeting house at Whāngārā.
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Paikea, the ancestor who came to New Zealand on the back of a whale, is depicted in the carving on top of Whitirēia meeting house at Whāngārā, near Gisborne. Niki Caro’s feature film Whale rider, which has won international awards, was based on the ...
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Rock ’n’ roll was the musical genre of choice for young people in the 1950s. Venues popped up in all the major cities. By the end of the decade smaller cities and towns had their own bands and rock ’n’ roll events in dance halls, church halls and youth clubs. This film ...
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Members of the Hutt Valley Youth Club dance to rock 'n' roll music in the Taita Community Hall on a Sunday afternoon in 1958. In the early 1940s the boogie woogie and the jitterbug had replaced dances of the 1920s and 1930s, such as the foxtrot and the rumba. By the late 1950s, these dances were ...
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
The traditional spear dance these boys are performing warns enemies to run away or face certain death. While the dances tell of battles past, today’s struggles – finding a job and a place to live in Auckland, the world’s largest Polynesian city – are equally challenging.
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
An important forum for the new Pacific Islands cultural identity which has developed in South Auckland is the annual Secondary Schools Cultural Festival or Polyfest. In this clip we see St Paul’s College students performing the kailao (war dance) on the ...
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
In 1991, three new power cables and two new fibre-optic cables were laid along the Cook Strait sea floor. The new power cables are 126 millimetres in diameter, very heavy (1 metre weighs 52 kilograms), and can carry 350 kV 1,430 amps of high-voltage direct current. Watch footage of the ...
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
This animation was used to advertise an exhibition of art, poetry and songs about Parihaka, held at the City Gallery in Wellington in 2000–2001.
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
This Television New Zealand news coverage of 2 March 1987 reports the aftermath of the Edgecumbe earthquake.
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
One of the most dramatic events of the 2004 Manawatū floods took place on 16 February when a house owned by brothers Bill and Pat Herlihy was washed into the Kiwitea Stream. Five days later, the Herlihy’s leather-bound family bible was found resting ...
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
This news footage of March 1988 shows some of the effects of Cyclone Bola on the East Coast farming community.
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
An Abbotsford resident and a news reporter describe the aftermath of the landslide that destroyed or rendered uninhabitable 69 houses on 8 August 1979.
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
This footage from 1993 shows the damaged state of the two Cook Strait power cables that were laid in 1964.
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
The Ngāi Tahu claim was not finally settled until the 1990s. A 1998 act of Parliament offered economic compensation. The Crown also apologised for the deprivation and cultural dispossession Ngāi Tahu had endured. This video is of Ngāi Tahu leader Sir Tī...
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Irish cultural traditions have made a continuing difference to New Zealand life. The Irish political tradition of resistance to British authority found expression within the union and labour movements. Damien O'Connor, Labour member of Parliament for the West Coast, refers to his Irish heritage ...
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Prime Minister Peter Fraser and fellow members of the Cabinet pay their respects to MP Toko Rātana at Rātana pā, near Whanganui, in November 1944. Rātana had succeeded his father, T. W. Rātana, as leader of the Rātana church and had been the member of Parliament for Western Māori ...
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Some campaigns just won't go away. In 2009 the Pay Equity Challenge Coalition got going again, beginning another phase of the fight to lift women's wage rates to those of men doing comparable work. The immediate catalyst for the campaign’s renewal was the government’s axeing of a pay ...
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Ministry for Culture and Heritage
Hinewehi Mohi's decision to sing 'God defend New Zealand' in Māori before a rugby test match in England in 1999 led to fervent debate and, ultimately, a new tradition. From that time, it became customary to sing the first verse of the anthem in both Māori and English on such occasions.
Ministry for Culture and Heritage