Tumuaki/Director Māori
Auckland War Memorial Museum
Auckland
New Zealand
Dr Paul Tapsell will be presenting on What is a treasure – the artefact or its record? on Monday
Dr. Paul Tapsell has been the Tumuaki (Director) Māori at Auckland Museum since 2000. He provides executive support to the Trust Board and its Māori Advisory Committee. He is a senior member of the Management Executive and responsible for the Māori Values Team. Other roles include managing the Taonga Database Project and the Repatriation of Ancestral Human Remains to Source Communities Project. Recently, he curated the international touring taonga (treasure) exhibition, Ko Tawa.
Beyond the Museum, Dr Tapsell is Adjunct Senior Lecturer at University of Auckland in Anthropology and Co-coordinator of the Museums and Cultural Heritage Graduate Programme. In 2000, he and Drs Neich, Nero and Kawharu jointly won a three-year Marsden Research Fund investigating Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Museums. In 2001, Dr Tapsell was awarded the New Zealand national prize for best first historical book, Pukaki – a comet returns (Reed Publishing 2000), the story of his 18th century warrior ancestor, Pukaki, a rangatira (chief) of the Ngati Whakaue iwi (tribe), whose stylised carved image appears on the reverse of the New Zealand 20 Cent coin. His second major book, Ko Tawa: Māori Treasures of New Zealand (David Bateman Ltd 2006) is about to go into its third print.
Dr Tapsell remains involved in tribal affairs in his homelands in the Bay of Plenty. He is a member a prominent family that traces its descent from the main tribes of Te Arawa, one of the earliest migrant Polynesian canoes to reach New Zealand, and has strong genealogical affiliations throughout the Bay of Plenty and Waikato regions. From 1990 to 1994, Dr Tapsell was curator of the Rotorua Museum which was founded by his grandmother, Enid Tapsell.
Paul Tapsell 
Tumuaki/Director Māori
Auckland War Memorial Museum
Street:
The Domain
Parnell
Auckland
New Zealand
Postal:
Private Bag 92018
Auckland
New Zealand
Telephone: +64 (0)9 309 0443
