Collected from Mount Tarawera on Aotearoa’s North Island with the verbal permission of a local Māori elder more than a decade ago, the rocks and ash were studied to better understand why the 1886 volcanic eruption was so explosive and destructive, killing over 120 Māori people and displacing local communities.
The return recognises the rocks not only as scientific specimens, but as objects of cultural and spiritual significance to Māori communities. It marks the first time rocks held within the University’s School of Earth Sciences have been formally acknowledged as sacred and cared for according to the Indigenous cultural protocols of the land from which they originated.
Now that the scientific analysis has been completed, the rocks are the focus of a Migrating Rocks exhibition at the University’s Wills Memorial Building, before being returned. The art works and text installations created by Alyson Hallett explore how and why natural objects such as rocks and volcanic ash should be included in repatriation debates in the UK, honouring longstanding evidence that many cultures, including European traditions, attribute spiritual and cultural meaning to geological materials.
For Māori communities, mountains, rivers, and landscapes are living entities. In keeping with Māori tikanga (customs and protocols), the rocks and volcanic ash will be returned to the Trust where people are kaitiaki (guardians) of Mount Tarawera, a landscape of profound cultural and spiritual significance.
As part of the return process, a traditional waerea ceremony was held to lift the tapu (sacredness) off the rocks, and to spiritually clear the path for their safe journey home to Aotearoa. The ceremony took place in London at Ngāti Rānana, the London Māori club, where the waerea was performed by Tanira Fisher-Marmara.
Claudia Hildebrandt, curator of the Migrating Rocks exhibition at Bristol’s School of Earth Sciences, said: “Across the world, laws often treat land and natural resources as things that can be owned or sold, rather than recognising their deeper cultural and spiritual importance to communities.
“In Aotearoa however, Māori see themselves as guardians of the land and some of the mountains and rivers have received legal personhood over the past decade. Honouring the verbal agreement to reunite the rocks with the local community is a very important step towards normalising ethical collecting and collection management, including return.’’
Alyson Hallett, a freelance poet and artist who created the Migrating Rocks exhibition and co-led the project with Claudia, added: “It has been amazing for this project to take place within the School of Earth Sciences where the following question can now be boldly asked in tandem with scientific research: What if this rock is sacred to the Indigenous people of the land it comes from? The more this is asked, the more we are able to take responsibility for treating the rocks with respect and also the people of the lands the rocks were taken from.’’
The rocks will remain on display in the Migrating Rocks exhibition at the EarthArt Gallery in the University of Bristol’s Wills Memorial Building until August 2026 before being returned to Aotearoa. The exhibition is open to the public every Wednesday afternoon from 2 to 5pm.