An English auction house is selling an 18th-century Māori hei-tiki for an estimated asking price of about NZ$50,000.
The greenstone pendant is one of 28 taonga (items of historical significance for Māori) listed in Woolley and Wallis' upcoming 'Tribal Art' auction. Other items up for sale include Peruvian carvings, Inuit weapons and a Navajo apron.
A September 5 tweet advertising the hei-tiki was recently deleted after a wave of New Zealanders voiced their outrage online at the commodification of Māori culture, which violates the Treaty of Waitangi.
Dr Ngarino Ellis is a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland specialising in art history and cultural heritage.
She told Newshub all the big auction houses in the UK have Māori pieces, many of which were made in the late 19th century specifically for the booming tourist market.
"It was a way for carvers to put bread on the table."
Now those items are being sold for huge amounts - the hei-tiki pendant has an asking price of £25,000 - £30,000 (NZ$48,100 - $57,700), while others range between £150 (NZ$290) and £5000 (NZ$9600).
They're typically bought by private dealers who hold onto them for a few years before selling them on for even more.
Article 2 of the Treaty guarantees taonga - which can refer to both physical and intangible heritage - will be looked after.
"It's painful for Māori to see our taonga being bought and sold in this white gentleman's club, knowing we can never afford to buy them back," Ellis says. "They're bought by people who see them as objects rather than ancestors."
She says the kinds of people who buy taonga "think of themselves as very cultured" but tend to fetishise Māori as a primitive civilisation who still use the carved fish hooks and clubs of centuries past in 2019.
"These collectors have no contemporary Māori art and no interest in the contemporary politics of being Māori... it's all about their aesthetic value."
The prioritisation of personal gain over collective benefit means items of historical value often remain on the other side of the world, with little hope of returning to the place of their creation.
"The sad thing is taonga often don't come back to the tribes, who know they don't have the money to buy them back," Ellis says.
Iwi often have to lobby museums to try to get the piece back, which, if successful, will end up somewhere like Te Papa.
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The 18th-century hei-tiki has what Ellis calls an "incredibly rare" feature that any expert would have spotted. The feature is not mentioned in the item's description, leading her to believe Woolley and Wallis haven't done their research. She says this is incredibly common, with auction houses often selling knock-offs for full price because they can't tell the difference.
Ellis thinks the since-deleted tweet about the hei-tiki was a good thing, as it has alerted New Zealanders to its existence.
"Lots of auction houses don't put stuff like that online so they can keep it secret. We need social media to let us know it's happening."
Woolley and Wallis has been approached for comment.
In August, another English auction house planned to sell a rare Māori cloak that was discovered in the back of an antique cupboard. The auction was called off after an enormous backlash from Kiwis.
Newshub.
