Listen: Forgotten Taonga Māori in Russia, My Te Papa Talk 14 March 2021

In mid-March 2021, in one of the halls of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, I gave a talk about the visit to New Zealand by the First Russian Antarctic Expedition of 1819-1821. This story was based on my research that was published last year in the Te Kaharoa Journal of Polynesian Studies at Auckland University of Technology (Dr Olga Suvorova “Forgotten Taonga Māori in Russia: The 1820 Visit of the Bellingshausen-Lazarev Expedition to Queen Charlotte Sound” (Te Kaharoa, 15(1) 2020).
About 80 people gathered in the room, including the Ambassador of Russia to New Zealand Georgy Zuev and his wife, and several employees of the Russian Embassy, Dame Claudia Orange, Chief historian of Te Papa, Professor of the History of Antarctica Rebecca Priestley, Professor of Museum Heritage and Art Peter Brunt, staff of the Te Papa Museum, members of the Society of Friends of Te Papa, representatives and researchers of Maori culture and many others interested in learning the little-known fascinating pages of the history of Russian-New Zealand relations.
The fascinating story of the Russian visit in 1820 to New Zealand and the taonga they gathered was the subject of my talk and I hope you enjoy the audio! Follow the link to the FREE podcast: https://www.patreon.com/posts/audio-my-te-papa-50101076