By Rachel Buchanan. Published by Bridget Williams Books, 2022. (NZD 50). Reviewed by Mary Southee

TE MOTUNUI EPA tells how five significant epa — carved wooden panels of a pātaka (raised storehouse for food and precious possessions of Māori communities) — were stolen from the Motunui area near Waitara in Northern Taranaki and retrieved two centuries later. The story spans that journey: the creation of the panels in the late 1700s, to 1820 when the epa were hidden in swampland for safe keeping while the Taranaki iwi was under attack from northern invaders, to their appearance in an art auction in London in 1978, to 2014 when the New Zealand Government sent a delegation to Geneva to repatriate the epa, and then, finally, to their installation in the Puke Ariki Museum, New Plymouth. Home at last.

Southee personifies the epa, allowing the ancestors they represent to narrate their adventures through the theft, kidnapping and law suits. Central to the story are the questions: Who owns/owned these taonga? Who should pay to bring them home? Prime Ministers from Robert Muldoon to John Key considered the implications of repatriating these significant epa.

Readers interested in art heists, and/or relationships between the Crown and Māori will enjoy this book and its handsome illustrations.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 279 March 2023: 31