Erika Taeang is an artist and teacher from

Kiribati Kiribati, officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island country in the Micronesia subregion of Oceania in the central Pacific Ocean. Its permanent population is over 119,000 as of the 2020 census, and more than half live on Tarawa. The st ...

. In 2020 Finlayson Park School in

Auckland Auckland ( ; ) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. It has an urban population of about It is located in the greater Auckland Region, the area governed by Auckland Council, which includes outlying rural areas and ...

became the first school in

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

to set up a

Kiribati language Gilbertese (), also known as Kiribati (sometimes ''Kiribatese'' or ''Tungaru''), is an Austronesian languages, Austronesian language spoken mainly in Kiribati. It belongs to the Micronesian languages, Micronesian branch of the Oceanic languages. ...

unit, where Taeang was employed as the teacher. Twenty students were initially enrolled. Also a textile artist and weaver, a tibuta (traditional shirt) made by Taeang is in the collection of the

Tropenmuseum The Wereldmuseum Amsterdam (previously known as Tropenmuseum () between 1950 and 2023) is an ethnographic museum with its headquarters in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was originally founded in Haarlem, Netherlands in 1864 under the name ''Koloniaal ...

, within the

Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen The (NMVW) () is an overarching museum organisation for the management of several ethnography, ethnographic museums in the Netherlands, founded in 2014. It consists of the Tropenmuseum () in Amsterdam, the Afrika Museum in Berg en Dal (village) ...

. Her woven mats are made from fibre from Kiribati, which is sent to New Zealand, and are decorated with bird motifs.

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people I-Kiribati women Language teachers I-Kiribati educators {{Kiribati-bio-stub