1 A BICULTURAL TAONGA Te TĀpenakara o Te Ariki The Wakahuia in St Michael and All Angels Church, Christchurch This large wakahuia hangs at the apex of the chancel arch, high above the principal altar in St Michael and All Angels Church, Christchurch. This finely carved vessel contains the Blessed Sacrament, the consecrated bread of the Eucharist. It is kept in this safe place so that it may be a focus of devotion and available at all times for the sick and dying. Wakahuia are waka-shaped vessels, carved out of wood, and hung high inside a chief ’s house or a marae. They usually belonged to a person of mana, and contained some of the most precious taonga, such as huia feathers, and kept the contents safe from harm. There are many of them on display in museums around the country. 2 In Anglican churches, the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in a tabernacle, a decorated safe on a shelf behind the altar; in an aumbry, a safe fitted into the wall of a church building; or in a hanging pyx. A pyx is a precious-metal vessel designed to hold the Sacrament and may be kept in a tabernacle or an aumbry. A hanging pyx hangs above an altar and is raised and lowered as required. It often has a rich fabric veil draped over it. Some Anglicans are wary of the practice of reserving the Sacrament, and in the 1950s – in a storm of controversy – the bishop ordered St Michael’s to remove a dome-shaped tabernacle that stood above and behind the high altar. With tolerance for the practice much improved in the 1990s, the clergy and people of St Michael’s decided to seek a way to keep the Blessed Sacrament in a more central position, above the new, main altar in the centre of the church. One suggestion was a hanging pyx, but Jonathan Mané-Wheoki – who was a churchwarden of the Parish, was of Ngāpuhi descent, and was later to become a distinguished Māori art historian – suggested that the Parish should consider the Māori custom of the wakahuia as an Indigenous version of the hanging pyx. It was fitting that Blessed Sacrament should be kept in a wakahuia that would usually contain the most precious of taonga. In 1994, the community was celebrating the centenary of the graduation of Sir Apirana Turupa Ngata, the first Māori university graduate, who had attended St Michael’s for Sunday worship while he studied at Canterbury College nearby, and who remained richly connected to the Parish even when he returned to the East Coast. Many see the wakahuia to be preserving a tradition back to Ngata – as well as acknowledging the three tikanga (Pākehā, Māori, and Pasifika) of the revised Constitution that the New Zealand Anglican Church’s General Synod had formally adopted in 1992. After a complicated process of negotiation both with parishioners and Māori, the wakahuia was commissioned and carved. The carver was Riki Manuel, who is of Ngāti Porou descent (as was Ngata). Its iconography or symbolism is drawn from both Māori and Christian sources: ears of wheat, bunches of grapes, and vine leaves refer to the eucharistic elements of bread and wine, while a repeated fish motif is an early Christian symbol. The three figures – one at either end of the wakahuia, and one on the lid – carved as 3 traditional Māori forms, with their eyes set with pāua, represent the Trinity, and the decorative patterning with which the wakahuia is embellished acknowledges the carving styles of the main tribes of New Zealand. It is a magnificent example of the art of the carver. The parish dedicated and raised the wakahuia for the first time at a service on 26 June 1994, which marked the centenary of Sir Apirana Ngata’s graduation. The taonga was given the name Te Tāpenakara o te Ariki (The Tabernacle of the Lord). This is thought to be the first time that a wakahuia has been raised in a church for the purpose of sacramental reservation anywhere in the world. It may also be the largest and heaviest wakahuia ever carved – its size being determined by the enormous scale of the church. The Blessed Sacrament, which had been reserved in the adjacent (Canterbury) Pilgrims’ Chapel since 1915, was transferred to the wakahuia during the Midnight Mass of the Nativity on 25 December 1994. Exactly 180 years earlier, Māori and Pākehā had gathered at Rangihoua in the Bay of Islands for the first Christian service in New Zealand, at which Samuel Marsden preached on the text “Behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy’’. 4 Based on the text by the late Jonathan Mané-Wheoki. Photos by Jonn Nicholson Alfred Walter Averill, Vicar of St Michael’s from 1894, left in 1910 to serve as Bishop of Waiapu until 1914 when he was translated to Auckland. It was Averill who presided over the service of Holy Communion held on Christmas Day in the Bay of Islands at the site of the first Christian service of worship in New Zealand one hundred years before. As Primate and Archbishop of New Zealand (from 1925 to 1940), he oversaw the establishment of the Bishopric of Aotearoa, and he counted Ngata among his friends. Isla Hunter, a member of St Michael’s congregation of long standing (she was baptised in the church by Averill in 1908) was appointed principal of Hukarere Māori Girls’ School in Napier in 1947, a position she held until 1960. It was in very large measure due to her vision and drive that the magnificent school chapel, one of the finest examples of twentieth-century Māori art, was built there. The chapel, whose interior is noted for its splendid carving and tukutuku panels, was designed by Ngata. The foundation stone was laid in 1950, the year in which he died, and the chapel was consecrated on All Saints’ Day 1953 and dedicated to St Michael & All Angels. This namesake of St Michael’s, Christchurch, was thus Ngata’s last great work of art and architecture. He and Frederick Augustus Bennet, the first Bishop of Aotearoa, are commemorated in the chapel by beautiful stained glass windows. (In 2020, the Chapel and School were replaced on a new site, and all of Ngata’s work was incorporated.)