Ruatepupuke II: A Māori meeting house in a museum

Our contribution to this volume is not written in the same form as most academic articles, but rather as a kōrero – a term in Te Reo Maōri that is sometimes translated into English as narration, talk, discourse, account, conversation, and is also used as a verb, or something one does. To kōrero is to dialogue, converse, address, speak truth. The kōrero that follows is a sharing of thoughts and ideas that, like all kōrero, may or may not conclude with a clearly stated argument, and which requires from the reader active listening and trust that, in the act of our speaking together, meaning is being made. Their kōrero refers to engagements that Gray had in August 2017, with his father’s ancestor/ancestral whare (house), named Ruatepupuke II, currently held in the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, USA. These engagements, which Shea Murphy witnessed, involved Gray and several dancers visiting with Ruatepupuke, dancing in and with it,3 and then presenting these movement engagements in a dance work at a theatre across town in Chicago.