The Revival of Raranga: Dr Jo Diamond on Māori Art and Identity

When I asked Dr Jo Diamond, “Who are you?”, she did not begin with a list of professional achievements.

She began with two life-changing experiences: becoming a mother and completing her PhD on the revival of Māori weaving. Although one belonged to her personal life and the other to academia, both were acts of creation. Together, they reveal the essence of Jo’s journey—curiosity, creativity and a responsibility to carry knowledge forward.

Recovering what was once discouraged

Jo grew up in a generation for whom Māori culture was not always readily available.

Te reo Māori was her parents’ first language, yet members of their generation—including their siblings—were punished for speaking it. Believing English would give their children the greatest chance of succeeding within the dominant system, her parents made it the primary language of their home.

They could not have imagined the possibilities that exist today for learning te reo Māori and reconnecting with Māori culture.

Jo describes herself as living through a turning tide, witnessing the revival of a culture her parents’ generation was pressured to suppress. While she celebrates the recognition Māori culture now receives, she is also clear that the journey is not complete.

Creativity, however, was always present in her whānau.

Her mother became a teacher and writer, producing children’s books in both English and te reo Māori. Her father worked on the railway but expressed his creativity by painting kōwhaiwhai around the family’s fence and letterbox—a visible signature of Māori presence.

Looking back, Jo recognises both of them in herself. Her mother’s influence lives through her writing, research and self-expression. Her father showed her that art did not need to be separated from everyday life.

When raranga found her

Jo’s academic journey took shape while she lived in Australia and raised her son. Motherhood deepened her determination to study and strengthened her sense of responsibility towards culture and identity.

She eventually began a PhD at the Australian National University. She originally intended to research kapa haka, but her work shifted when she returned to the Hokianga.

A cousin took her to a marae under construction near Kaikohe. Inside what would become the wharekai, people were weaving for the wharenui.

When her cousin asked whether this was the kind of thing she was interested in, Jo replied:

“Cuz, is the sky blue on occasion?”

Jo stayed for nine months. She wove alongside the community, formed relationships and recorded what was happening. Yet she did not fully recognise the story emerging through her research until she returned to Canberra and gave her supervisor a draft.

Her supervisor placed it on the desk and said:

“This thesis is about raranga.”

In that moment, everything fell into place.

Jo had entered the community looking for a research subject. What she encountered was something living—knowledge carried through relationships, practice, memory and the people who shared it with her. Many of those weavers are no longer here, but Jo continues to acknowledge and carry them in her heart.

A culture cannot be covered by one person.

Jo’s appointment at the University of Canterbury in 2004 prompted her to complete and submit her thesis. It also brought her face-to-face with the limitations of academic institutions.

While other lecturers could specialise in particular periods or traditions of Western art, Jo was expected to teach the entirety of Māori art—as though the creative knowledge of a whole culture could be contained within one person and one course.

Her area was raranga. She did not feel comfortable presenting herself as a specialist in whakairo rākau simply because institutions classified both as “Māori art.”

The contrast revealed something deeper. Western art was permitted depth, divisions and specialisation. Māori art—and often Pacific and Asian art—was treated as though it could be easily covered.

For Jo, Māori art is not an optional addition or cultural luxury. It is vital. Yet institutions often try to place culture inside systems that were never designed to understand it.

Culture lives through people. Systems organise people into categories. Something essential can be diluted when the system becomes more important than the knowledge itself.

Despite these limitations, Jo’s academic work travelled internationally. In 2008, a Fulbright lectureship took her and her son to Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. There, she introduced students to Māori culture before broadening the journey across Indigenous histories and experiences throughout the Pacific and North America.

The experience placed Indigenous knowledge within spaces shaped by enormous institutional power—and reminded her that people, cultures, and histories existed long before those institutions.

The whenua remembers

Jo now describes academia as a former life, but the knowledge has never left her. It has moved into her weaving, painting, storytelling and community practice.

Her project Whenua Remembers combines fibre, paint and story. One work grew from a council activation celebrating land that had once been used as a rubbish dump and was later restored as parkland.

Jo created ika from harakeke—known as kōrari in the north—and shared the weaving process with children and whānau. The work developed across canvas, woven fibre and imagery connecting the moana, ngahere, tāone and whenua.

Her art does more than represent a place. It acknowledges that place as living and remembering.

As Jo says:

“We remember the land, but the land remembers us too.”

Another work explores a gateway between the physical and spiritual worlds. It reflects her growing freedom to create from a space she could not have accessed as a younger woman or even while completing her PhD. Her art now allows the past, present and future to exist together.

We belong to the land.

Kaitiakitanga is central to how Jo understands her responsibility.

She speaks of ancestral land in the north and her hope of creating a sanctuary there for future generations—possibly incorporating solar energy and an eco-village approach.

The vision is not based on possessing the whenua.

“The land doesn’t belong to me. We belong to it.”

Although realising this vision requires navigating succession, the Māori Land Court and other forms of bureaucracy, Jo sees those challenges as small compared with the intergenerational change the land could offer.

She wants future generations to know where home is—not to wonder how to find it, but to recognise that they are already part of it.

For Jo, being a kaitiaki means caring for the land, the environment, the home, cultural knowledge and the relationships connecting one generation to the next. What she has received is not hers to keep. It is a taonga to be protected, lived and passed forward.

What are you creating?

Towards the end of our conversation, Jo shared a kōrero about the different forces that can arise within us during moments of anger or conflict.

One voice wants to destroy. Another reminds us to breathe. Then the creative voice asks:

“What are you creating?”

It is a simple question, but it carries the essence of Jo’s life.

What are we creating from what we inherited? What are we creating when systems cannot accommodate us? What are we creating from grief, anger, uncertainty or privilege? What are we leaving for those who come after us?

Jo believes creativity exists in everyone. Through wānanga, she wants to create spaces where people are not restricted to being either the teacher or the student. Knowledge can move between people, and anyone can experience the freedom of making something.

When asked what she would say to her younger self, Jo’s answer was equally simple:

“Never give up.”

Her life has not come with a blueprint. She has had to discover each step through curiosity, relationships, discernment and the knowledge of her people.

Dr Jo Diamond is a weaver in every sense. She weaves fibre, but she also weaves generations, cultures, stories, institutions, whenua and wairua. Her work reminds us that identity is not something recovered only for ourselves. It is something we carry forward—and something we help make possible for others.

Watch the full conversation: The Revival of Raranga: Dr Jo Diamond on Māori Art and Identity