Hemi Pomara

Hemi Pomara (born c. 1830; sometimes spelled Pomare) was a Māori man of chiefly status, from the Chatham Islands. In his youth, he was taken to Sydney, and then London, before returning to New Zealand, via Barbados, where he was shipwrecked. A daguerreotype of Pomara is the oldest known photograph of any Māori person. A novel and a planned film are based on his life.

Early life
Hemi Pomara was born in around 1830, the grandson of Wiremu Piti Pomara, a Māori chief of the Ngāti Mutunga, an iwi (tribe) on the Chatham Islands (Wharekauri). His family were massacred by a rival tribe, leaving him an orphan.

Sydney


In late 1844, Pomara was taken on the brig Coolangatta to Sydney, the capital of the then Colony of New South Wales, by the artist George French Angas, who became his guardian. While there he attended an English boarding school. Angas took Pomara with him as he gave lectures in New South Wales and the neighbouring Province of South Australia, and painted a watercolour portrait of Pomara to use as an illustration in a lecture series called "Illustrations of the Natives and Scenery of Australia and New Zealand together with 300 portraits from life of the principal Chiefs, with their Families". This portrait survives, and is now in the collection of the National Library of New Zealand. Pomara is depicted wearing a traditional Māori cloak, or korowai, befitting his high status.

London
Departing on the Royal Tar on 10 September 1845, Angas took Pomara to England, via Rio de Janeiro. They arrived at Gravesend on 23 February 1846. Angas documented the voyage in his 1847 book Savage Life And Scenes In Australia And New Zealand, in which Pomara is mentioned but once, and briefly, as "My young New Zealander, Pomara".

Pomara attended the March 1846 opening of an exhibition of Angas's watercolours at the Egyptian Hall in London. He was then exhibited there, alongside Angas's paintings. On 3 April 1846 he was introduced to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, during a private viewing. A woodcut depicting Pomara was published in The Illustrated London News, 18 April 1846 edition, where he was named as "James Pomara" who "has been educated in New South Wales, speaks English fluently, and is a very intelligent person.".

In late March or early April, he attended a meeting of the Royal Society, where he was presented to an audience including Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, and Antoine Claudet. The later was a pioneering French daguerreotypist, working in London. Pomara sat for Claudet, wearing the same cloak that he wore for the Angas portrait.

Shipwreck
Later in 1846, Pomara sailed on the Caleb Angas, which was shipwrecked off Barbados. He survived, and put to sea again, on the Eliza. During that voyage, he was assaulted by the ship's first mate, who was later prosecuted as a result. By 1847 Pomara was in Auckland.

Later life
Little is known of Pomara's activities, after his arrival in Auckland.

In 1864 Hare Pomare, his wife Hariata, and baby Victor Albert visited London was part of a Māori delegation. It is possible that Hare and Hemi were the same person.

Legacy
The title character of The Imaginary Lives of James Pōneke, a 2018 novel by Tina Makereti, is based on Pomara. As of July 2020, a film version, produced by Taika Waititi, is planned.

In 2020 Claudet's hand-tinted daguerreotype was identified in the National Library of Australia, having been purchased for the library in 1960, by Eric Keast Burke. It is the oldest known photograph of a Māori person.

Contrary opinion
An unnamed writer in New Zealand doubted Angas' story regarding Pomara's origins:

"Advertisements and flourishing paragraphs have been going the round of the London Journals, calling upon all the curiosity hunters to visit the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, in order to feast their eyes with the sight of Mr. G. F. Angas' young New Zealand Chief. This ruse of Mr. Angas (who it will he recollected is the young artist who perambulated some of the districts of this Colony) is probably profitable, but certainly is not very reputable. We happen to know the history of this young man, whom Mr. Angas is palming upon the English public as the son of Pomare. He is a half-caste, the adopted son of Mr. David Scott, by whom he was maintained, and at whose expense he was educated at Sydney. The young lad knows as much about the real character and habits of his mother's race, as the fools who go to see him. He was committed to the care of Mr. Angas we believe, on the understanding that, he was to be taught the profession of an artist. His present occupation is perhaps the initiatory process by which Mr. Angas proposes to fit him for the labors of the easel. "0 tempora, o mores!""