Roger Neich

Roger Neich was a New Zealand academic whose role within museums and galleries included ethnology, anthropology, curation, internal and external research. His experience and influence spanned the following institutions: Auckland War Memorial Museum, the University of Auckland, National Museum of New Zealand, University of California, Berkeley, and the British Museum. The improvements and alterations to the displayed collections of Māori and Pacific taonga for Auckland Museum were led by Neich, resulting in Indigenous voices being emphasised in that museum space. His work within Auckland was further recognised when he became personal chair of the University of Auckland Anthropology Department in 2000.

Upon his passing a tribute to Neich was written by contributors to the Journal of the Polynesian Society including Geoffrey Irwin, Alan Jones, and Jeffrey Sissons. It was published as a 441 page collection inclusive of 18 of his own essays that he had arranged to be included prior to his death, over 200 illustrations and various bibliographies and indexes including one detailing all of Neich's publications. PAA have a journal entitled Pacific Arts that has published annual issues since 2006, but officially began in 1990. The journal also increased online accessibility in 2020 by distributing content to eScholarship platforms

Neich was a keynote speaker at the July 2005 PAA Conference that took place in Salem. Within his discussion on the process and designs featured in over 80 of these houses, the art form is talked about and not just as it was originally intended, as a reaction to missionaries' thoughts on interior design choices of Māori churches. The oral history consists of a journey Rua underwent to free his son from the Tangaroa's house down in the ocean, where along the way he discovers the ability for the interior carvings to speak, while many exterior posts did not. Upon setting the house alight from the porch area, it is said that many of Tangaroa's children did not survive the blaze, but many posts, even those unable to speak, were transported elsewhere.

The material process of wood carving also appear in Neich's work. For instance, the choice of tree used is dependent on the desired outcome. Whilst the book details all recognised Ngāti Tarawhai carvings, contains maps, black and white and colour images, and information on whakapapa, the reader is also introduced to the prominent figures and makers behind the pieces as well as the social histories that the works embody. Māori Art and Culture, 1996 Pacific Tapa, 1997 Traditional Tapa Textiles of the Pacific, 1997 Pounamu - Maori Jade of New Zealand, 1997 Carved Histories: Rotorua Ngāti Tarawhai Woodcarving, Auckland University Press, 2001 Pacific Jewellery and Adornment (written with Pandora Fulimalo Pereira), 2004 The Oldman Collection of Pacific Artifacts, 2004 Pacific Voyaging After the Exploration Period in Vaka Moana - Voyages of the Ancestors, 2006 The Maori Collections of the British Museum (written with D.C. Starzecka and Mick Pendergrast), 2010