700 years ago Māori arrived to Aotearoa, or New Zealand. 200 years later seven Moa species, the Emu’s ancient relative, were extinct. 200 years later still, Europeans determined to catalogue all nature into a series of relationships. Millions of species were amassed from across the world for public and academic contemplation.
In New Zealand Europeans saw parts of the huia bird upon the most revered men and women and heard of its sacredness. They scoured the high mountains to capture these birds for their intriguing sexual differences – the long, curved beaked females, and the short straight beaked males.
Another 200 years later Huia were extinct. But in 1949 Hēnare Hāmana and Robert Batley, one descendant of Maori the other of Europeans, combined the skills of their heritage to record on plastic a whistled rendition of male and female huia calls.
The birds’ power – its mana – has circulated across the globe through these whistled calls: recorded memories of distant landscapes recalling a time before humans regretted their passing to remind us of the dangers that lie ahead when we fail in this basic act of regard for another species.
