Mahara Arts Review – Kāpiti and Coast Independent

Show now featuring in Waikanae

By Cushla McGaughey

The Mahara Arts Review opened at the District Gallery on 2 December and will run until 14 January 2018. The exhibition comprises a wonderfully varied range of new artworks from 74 Kapiti and Horowhenua artists.

Warmest congratulations to Julie Leibrich, who contributes Sonnet of the Month on Kapiti Independent News.

Her watercolour and ink, Intimate Connections, won the Special Merit Award sponsored by Picture Perfect Framing.

The little guys in the penguin family

My painting of the world’s smallest penguin is life size. Males usually have longer, thicker bills and so this penguin is a female.

Little Blue Penguins tend to lean forward, instead of keeping upright as other penguins do.

The blue tinge on their feathers is not due to pigmentation.

It comes from light, reflected by fibres about 200 times thinner than human hair.

The Picture Perfect framing represents the nest boxes provided under the Places for Penguins programme.

They give some protection from dogs and seagulls. Crossing busy roads to reach a nest site can also be avoided. Little Blue Penguins readily adopt the nest boxes and have equal or better breeding success there.

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STORY OF THE WEEK

Kāpiti’s proposed Te Uruhi Gateway at Paraparaumu Beach has been voted through after a day-long debate which include a haka in the District Council chamber and angry protests.

The Kapiti council faced a government deadline for $4.45 million project, with half to come from the Covid Recovery fund.

Vote went 7-4

It wasn’t until after 5.30 pm when the councillors and mayor voted 7-4 to give the go-ahead. The four anti votes came from councillors Jocelyn Prvanov, Gwynn Compton , Martin Halliday and Bernie Randall.

100 Years Ago — and the Maori Long March begins

Māori politics was dominated by the influential MPs (and sometime Cabinet ministers) Māui Pōmare ( Waitara statue photo above) and Apirana Ngata.

The 1920's also saw the rise of Tahupōtiki Wiremu Rātana’s religious movement, and the emergence of Te Puea Hērangi in Waikato.

Ngata worked hard to foster Māori scholarship and education and preserve traditional arts and culture.

He convinced the government to establish a Board of Maori Ethnological Research (1923), a Maori Purposes Fund Control Board (1924) and a School of Maori Arts and Crafts in Rotorua (1927).

The Reform government also took the first, tentative steps towards settling longstanding Māori grievances.

Agreements with Te Arawa in 1922 and Ngāti Tūwharetoa in 1926 recognised their respective rights over the Rotorua lakes and Lake Taupō, and led to the establishment of trust boards with some government funding.

Commissions of inquiry which examined Ngāi Tahu grievances (1920–21) and the Waikato and Taranaki confiscations (1926–27) recommended that modest compensation be paid.