Tūrangawaewae of Lost Content

MORE ON MOVING ON

In a recent article, I touched on the problems that the Ethnic English have to face in re-shaping their identity to the modern world. This is an identity that has for some become stuck in mythical time-warped lands like Heartbeat Country and Midsomer County – places where, once upon a time, either nothing too nasty ever happened, or, if it did, it was at least framed by crunchy, graveled drives, dormer windows and exposed beams.

As Housman so wistfully versified:

‘What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content’.

So, as I am now a member of an at least nominally bi-cultural society, it is interesting to observe how Maori are coping with the need for the next ‘Cultural Refresh’ here in New Zealand.

And they have some great words that bear on the adjustment process, like rangatiratanga (tribal identity), tangata whenuatanga (collective affinity to a locale), mana (pride of stance), taonga (tribal treasures) and turangawaewae.

The latter is particularly interesting as it describes something that Europeans find hard to call:

‘Tūrangawaewae are places where Maori feel especially empowered and connected and that they can call “our foundation, our place in the world, our home”. The word is a compound of tūranga (standing place) and waewae (feet), and it is often translated simply as ‘a place to stand’.

Let’s start then with the haka (see story below and the embedded video).

HISTORIC MERE PRESIDES OVER HAKA DEAL – HAKA DEAL BETWEEN NGATI TOA AND NZRU

[by Michelle Duff, Dominion Post, 18/03/2011]

‘Before the first drops of ink had touched the document, the kaumatua (tribal elder) of the Ngati Toa tribe / iwi, Mr Taku Parai gestured to the weapon on the table.

The sleek greenstone mere had belonged to his ancestor, the famed chief Te Rauparaha.

With a grin, Mr Parai told New Zealand Rugby Union chief executive Steve Tew that the weapon would not have to be used on this occasion.

"It does have a few dents, though," he joked, before the pair signed a historic agreement between Ngati Toa and the union, giving the All Blacks the right to continue performing the Ka Mate haka.

The haka, which has been performed with varying degrees of success by All Black teams since 1905, has been widely used since the 1980s and featured heavily in NZRU advertising. It is said to have been first performed by Te Rauparaha.

Ngati Toa has filed an application with the Intellectual Property Office to trademark phrases in Ka Mate, to prevent its misuse.

It has previously been reprised by the Spice Girls, and appeared in a Japanese Coca-Cola advertisement and on tourist merchandise.

It has taken the NZRU and Ngati Toa months to come to the agreement, of which the exact details are still confidential.

At Porirua's Takapuwahia Marae yesterday, Mr Parai said it was a step forward for both parties.

"We look forward to future dialogue we know we've come a long way since 1905 when the haka was first performed, with little Tinkerbell fingers and one foot."

He issued a challenge to the All Blacks to attend Ngati Toa haka training, saying afterwards it would give them a chance to "see what the spirit of the haka means to us as a people, and carry it for the nation".

There was no financial aspect to the contract, but Mr Parai said this would be discussed in the future.

‘Mr Tew said it would be a privilege to perform Ka Mate with Ngati Toa's formal blessing, and did not rule out attending a practice session. "Signing this agreement confirms an understanding that has been in place for some time ... what we've done is captured it in a document that will outlive the people who are standing here now."



ANOTHER LOST WORLD

Reviewing a new exhibition at the Pataka Museum that covers ‘The Pa [Maori stockade settlements] of Porirua’, (on the western coast of the Wellington conurbation), Dominion journalist Bronwen Torrie reminds us of the end game of ‘The lost world of Te Rauparaha’ (Te Rauparaha is the Maori chief who is the reputed author of the Ka Mate haka).

Te Rauparaha (1760s-1849) was a Maori chief and war leader of the Ngāti Toa tribe who took a leading part in the pre-European Musket Wars in Aotearoa – New Zealand. For the 20 years prior to the onset of European colonization in 1840, his coalition of tribal forces, armed with muskets purchased from British traders, dominated both shores of the Cook Strait. He was known then as the Napoleon of the South Pacific.

However, Te Rauparaha’s political power and influence ebbed away after he was arrested by the British in 1846. His chief settlement the Taupo Pa was then forsaken and its wooden palisades rotted away. It has therefore been entirely appropriate for the agreement between Ngati Toa and the NZ Rugby Union on the future use of Te Rauparaha’s haka to be signed at the modern replacement for the Taupo Pa, the Takapuwahia Marae in Porirua.

But if we want to study cultural change and adjustment, it is hard to find more abrupt shifts than those faced by Maori like Te Rauparaha. What lands of lost content must he have mused of in his confinement?

And there is also an Island Bay connection here (known as Tapu-te-Ranga to Maori).

At some time around 1800, a high-born Maori princess named Tamairangi (reputedly of strong character and great beauty) crossed Cook Strait to marry into the Ngati Ira iwi which then controlled Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Wellington Harbour) and the Porirua area. There were at least two children from her marriage to the chief Whanake, one of whom was a son Te Kekerengu.

In the early 1800s Tamairangi queened her way around Cook Strait, as a local celebutante. Apparently, when she travelled she was carried on a litter by male attendants and on public occasions she wore the finest of new cloaks and carried a carved taiaha (battle mace).

All this came to an abrupt halt in the 1820s when the area was encroached on by the Ngati Toa from Taranaki and their allies the Ngati Tama and the Ngati Mutunga. Te Rauparaha and his nephew Te Rangihaeata were the master minds of this coercive colonisation.

For the first few years an uneasy peace prevailed, broken by occasional skirmishes and squabbles over food resources and living areas. However, about 1824, the Ngati Mutunga chief Te Poki, uneasy about the future security of his people, put forward the idea of a pre-emptive attack on the Ngati Ira.

Eventually, the Ngati Ira were overwhelmed and Tamairangi, her children, and a remnant of their people took refuge on the small, rocky island called Tapu-te-ranga in present day Island Bay, Wellington. A stone-walled pa had been built on the island, to the east of the main rock.

However, when Ngati Mutunga arrived to attack the pa, Tamairangi's people put her and her children in a canoe, and they escaped westward by way of Rimurapa (Sinclair Head) to Ohariu. There they were captured by a party of Ngati Mutunga.

Thinking that she was about to be killed, Tamairangi asked permission of her captors to make a formal farewell to her lands and her people. She sang a waiata (song, prayer or poem) she had composed, of such beauty and pathos that Te Rangihaeata, who was visiting Ngati Mutunga, was moved to offer Tamairangi and her family his protection. He took them with him to Kapiti Island.

But Tamairangi's handsome and headstrong son Te Kekerengu seduced one of Te Rangihaeata's wives and they had to flee again, crossing Cook Strait to Arapawa Island, Tamairangi's old family home. When rumours reached them of Ngati Toa attacks south of Cook Strait they fled further southwards and took refuge with the large South Island Ngai Tahu iwi.

Tragically for Ngai Tahu, granting asylum to Te Kekerangu's coincided with Te Rauparaha's plans to attack them to wrest away control of the trade in greenstone (used for war clubs and jewellery). In a creative PR exercise, Te Rauparaha was therefore able to claim that avenging the slight to Te Rangihaeata's honour justified his aggression.

Late in the year 1829 a large Ngati Toa war party headed by Te Rauparaha attacked the northern Ngaitahu stronghold at Kaikoura and massacred large numbers of the garrison. It seems that the Ngai Tahu regarded Te Kekerangu as the main cause of their misfortune and subsequently executed him.

WHAT NOW FOR THE WARRIORS?

Now all these events are not really that distant. New Zealand is a young country.

Earlier in the year, my young son Sam was fossicking in a rock pool along the Island Bay shoreline and he found a piece of stone that looked to my eye to be a Maori club or ‘mere' (see photo below).



I took it dutifully to our national museum Te Papa and had it assessed by the Curator of Maori Taonga. She was unable to confirm that it was man-made and let me keep it.

I do think though that its resting place just across the inlet to Tapu-te-Ranga makes it a possible witness to Tamairangi’s defeat and flight in 1824. And something a woman curator perhaps would not understand so well – it feels just right in balance and weight if you are seeking to use it to break open someone’s skull.

The adjustments then that have been forced on Maori since 1840 have been huge.

Not long after I settled in New Zealand in the early 1990s, my employer, the NZ Ministry of Energy, funded me to undertake a 2-day residential course on Maori culture and the Treaty of Waitangi. This was held at the Raukawa Marae (meeting house)in Otaki. The campus included the adjoining and beautifully crafted Rangiatea Church that had been built in the period 1849-1850, under the direction of an Anglican missionary the Reverend Octavius Hadfield.

And it was the great Te Rauparaha, no less, lately released from his captivity on a British warship, who sponsored the construction of the church, believing that European cultural influences were becoming irresistible - though he himself remained sturdily pagan.

The course that I attended was led by Professor Whatarangi Winiata, who has Ngati Toa affiliations and who subsequently became the founding Tumuaki (Vice-Chancellor) of the Maori university at Otaki, Te Wānanga-o-Raukawa. A kindly and wise man, during his presentation, he made what I thought at the time was a rather too obvious statement.

He pointed out that on a recent visit to England, he had again been struck by the one-to-one correspondences between English culture and New Zealand culture – everything from tea and scones to driving on the left hand side of the road.

But in the tradition of great Maori chiefs he was speaking softly, expecting that those who were prepared to listen would hear beyond the words. In essence, he was drawing attention to European indifference at the degree to which Maori culture had been casually supplanted by banal and mundane Englishness - in essence, a process of Midsomer-ization.

So what of those who complain about the erosion of Englishness in The Shires?

Perhaps they could do worse than recognize the plight and fight-back of indigenous cultures like that of the New Zealand Maori which were initially overwhelmed by colonization and that now face further threats from globalization and the sameness of modernity.

It’s great to see the haka performed at Twickenham – and just maybe we may see a version licensed for use by England one day!

Let’s all get then on with saving the best from the past and making the best of the future.

Wakefield - troubles with the 'Mechanics' and the Maori

THE VERY HIGH WAGES REQUIRED BY MECHANICS

As I previously quoted, Wakefield had already figured by the time he left England for New Zealand that it was ‘hard to get good servants there’ – or workers to do one’s bidding.

He had written of his imagined settlement in New South Wales:

‘I soon found (seeking an estate with a large domain, pleasure grounds, park and game preserves, and tenant farmers) that a (‘good’) house would, though stone and timber were to be had for nothing, cost three times as much as in England.

This was on account of the very high wages required by mechanics … the whole colony did not contain as many masons, carpenters, glaziers, painters, black and whitesmiths, and other mechanics as I should have required’.

So it is nice to know that his scheme to reproduce the rural English Class System of the early 19th century into New Zealand met some snags.

When the first settlers landed in Wellington Harbour, they did so in what is now Petone at the mouth of the Hutt River. This fleeting first settlement did not prosper as the immigrants had chosen the delta and floodplain of an unpredictable river for the site of their new city ‘Britannia’.

It was though the site of an interesting exchange over labour conditions and terms in the new colony.

Arriving on the English ship ‘The Duke of Roxburgh’, George Hunter who was a shipping agent, asked around on the beach for a carpenter, among those who disembarked, who could erect a prefabricated storehouse for him.

Samuel Duncan Parnell stepped forward. He had been born in London where he had worked in a large joinery shop.


Parnell’s words to Hunter have become immortalized:

‘I will do my best, but I must make this condition, Mr. Hunter, that on the job the hours shall only be eight for the day ... There are twenty-four hours per day given us; eight of these should be for work, eight for sleep, and the remaining eight for recreation and in which for men to do what little things they want for themselves. I am ready to start to-morrow morning at eight o'clock, but it must be on these terms or none at all.

'You know Mr. Parnell,' Hunter replied, 'that in London the bell rang at six o'clock, and if a man was not there ready to turn to he lost a quarter of a day'.

'We're not in London', said Parnell.

With few tradesmen in the young settlement, Hunter had little choice but to accept the carpenter's terms. As Parnell later wrote, 'the first strike for eight hours a-day the world has ever seen, was settled on the spot.'

Other employers in the new settlement tried to impose longer hours, but Parnell enlisted the support of fellow workmen and informed those arriving on incoming ships of the local custom. In October 1840 a meeting of Wellington workmen apparently resolved to work eight hours a day, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. – anyone offending would be ducked into the harbour.

In the early 1840s Parnell bought land in Karori and established himself as a farmer (to the chagrin no doubt of the Wakefields).

Back in England, things were not so dandy. There was a struggling eight-hour day movement, which had its origins in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, where industrial production in large factories regimented working life and imposed long hours and poor conditions. The use of child labour was common and the working day could range from 10 to 16 hours for six days a week.

A shorter working day and improved working conditions were part of the general protests and agitation for Chartist reforms and the early organization of trade unions.

While the industrialist and philanthropist Robert Owen had raised the demand for a ten-hour day in 1810, and instituted it in his socialist enterprise at New Lanark, it was not until 1847 that women and children in England were granted the ten-hour day.

However, most employed people had to wait to the early and mid twentieth century for the eight hour condition to be widely achieved through the industrialized world through legislative action.

As the 50th jubilee of European settlement in New Zealand approached in 1890, the emerging trade union movement looked to its origins. Parnell was invited to write a short narrative of the introduction of the eight-hour day, and Wellington citizens formed a committee to honour him during the first annual Labour Day demonstration on 28 October 1890.

Seated on a brake drawn by four horses, he headed the march to Newtown Park where he was heralded as 'the father of the eight hours movement'.

Parnell fell ill a few weeks later and died on 17 December 1890.

A meeting chaired by the mayor decided to give him a public funeral and on 20 December a crowd of thousands, headed by the Garrison Band, marched in procession from Cambridge Terrace to the cemetery.

RAVISHING THE LAND AND DIS-INHERITING MAORI



As recorded by the history books, Wakefield’s extended family descended on New Zealand hoping to make a quick quid. They included brothers William, Arthur and Felix and at least one nephew.

The most dangerous and possibly most despicable of these Wakefields were William and Arthur who set a pattern of double-dealing, fraudulent transactions and payment avoidance in their purchases of land from the local Maori.

Unlike the English labourer ‘mechanics’, local Maori were ill-equipped to contend with the unscrupulous settler establishment. The consequences of the patterns that the Wakefields developed remain a burden to New Zealand even today.

Let’s look briefly at a couple of examples.

In 1839 the New Zealand Company bought land in the Wellington Harbour area, Porirua and Queen Charlotte Sound in advance of the settlement. The Company was acting on its own behalf, with no backing from the British government.

The following year, English immigrants began arriving by the shipload prompting one local Maori chief to marvel at and regret their numbers and ability to collaborate.

The demand for land and pressure on the areas occupied by Māori pā and settlements therefore steadily increased.

The New Zealand Company had sold sections already occupied by Māori to the new settlers. To resolve this issue, Lieutenant Colonel William Anson McCleverty was appointed to obtain deeds from the tribes concerned, exchanging their settlements and cultivations for land elsewhere.

The McCleverty awards of 1847 were the final allocation of lands for Māori in the Wellington Harbour area. Pā such as Te Aro, Pipitea and Kaiwharawhara became less desirable as their food-growing areas were replaced by less productive and more remote land, mostly outside the town of Wellington.

The pressure on the Te Aro people was such that by 1881, a census showed only 28 Māori still living at Te Aro, and nine at Pipitea.

The New Zealand Company purchases were all investigated by a special commissioner, William Spain. He accepted some of the company’s claims to have purchased land (for example at Wellington and Nelson) and disallowed others (including at Porirua and in the Wairau Valley).

Where a claim was allowed, the governor then issued the New Zealand Company with a Crown grant, allowing it to complete the many transactions it had embarked on with private settlers. Both the Nelson and Wellington grants exempted Māori cultivations, villages and burial places.

William Spain also confirmed that Māori were entitled to the ‘tenths’ reserves, agreed by William Wakefield. These set aside one-tenth of all the surveyed sections in New Zealand Company settlements for Māori in the Port Nicholson Block, which stretches from Wellington’s south coast to the beginning of the Tararua ranges.

These 'tenths' reserves were rarely allocated in practice and Maori were essentially disinherited from much of the land.

In 2008, some redress was awarded in a Treaty settlement signed by Wellington Tenths Trust chairman Dr Ngatata Love. This ‘ended’ a 21-year legal battle over the Port Nicholson Block claims and closed over 160 years of grievance.

Part of the settlement includes an option to buy back 24 sites of cultural significance, including prime Wellington sites, and $25m in cash.

The Taranaki Whanui will also be given the opportunity of taking control of the former Shelly Bay air force base, as well as title to three islands in Wellington harbour, and Rimutaka forest park.

Dr Love says these are “iconic,” and the new owners will want to give the community more access to them. The Govt has high hopes Maori ownership of the Miramar peninsula, where’s NZ’s film industry is located will open up the prospect for development of a tourism project, perhaps in association with film industry interests, to showcase Maori culture which would be an international attraction.

This could be a model for Maori economic development.

But in the Wairua Valley things went even less well.

The New Zealand Company had built a settlement around Nelson in the north of the South Island in 1840. The settlement had been planned since its conception in April 1841 to be 200,000 acres (810 km2), but by the end of the year, even as allotments were being sold in England, the company's agents in New Zealand were having difficulty in identifying, let alone buying from local Māori, sufficient land to support a settlement.

In January 1843 Captain Arthur Wakefield, who had been despatched by the New Zealand Company to lead the first group of settlers to Nelson, informed the New Zealand Company, that he had located the required amount of land at Wairau, an average distance of 25 km from Nelson.

He held a deed to the land, having bought it from the widow of a whaling Captain John Blenkinsop, who in turn had bought the land from Te Rauparaha of the Ngāti Toa iwi at Tuamarina.

But Arthur acknowledged in a letter to the Company in March 1843: "I rather anticipate some difficulty with the natives."

Blenkinsop it seems had not even tried to take up possession. Like all land purchases at that time it is likely that the parties were talking entirely at cross purposes; with Captain Blenkinsop hoping he had purchased outright freehold, and the Tāngata whenua believing they had received koha (a gift) from him to simply use the land.

The source of the basic difficulty though was simple: Chiefs Te Rauparaha and Te Rangihaeata, who along with their kinsman of Ngāti Toa owned the land, had not accepted the bargain and had not been paid for the land.

In January 1843 Nohorua, the older brother of Te Rauparaha, led a delegation of chiefs to Nelson to protest about British activity in the Wairau Plains. Two months later Te Rauparaha himself arrived in Nelson, urging that the issue of the land ownership be left to Land Commissioner William Spain, who had begun investigating all the claimed purchases of the New Zealand Company.

Arthur Wakefield rejected the request, informing Te Rauparaha that if local Māori interfered with company surveyors on the land, he would lead 300 constables to arrest the Māori chief.

Wakefield duly despatched three parties of surveyors to the land. They were promptly warned off by local Māori, who damaged the surveyors' tools but left the men unharmed.

Things then went from bad to dreadful.

The Police Magistrate Henry Thompson was asked to issue an arrest warrant for Te Rauparaha.

On the morning of 17 June 1843, the Europeans approached the Māori camp, armed with cutlasses, bayonets, pistols and muskets. At the path on the other side of a stream, Te Rauparaha was surrounded by about 90 warriors as well as women and children. He allowed Thompson and five other men to approach him, but ordered the rest of the British party to remain on their side of the stream.

Thompson immediately adopted an aggressive approach. He refused to shake hands with the Chief Te Rauparaha and said that he had come to arrest him. He then produced a pair of handcuffs, angering the chief further.

Thompson called out to the men on the far side of the stream, ordering them to fix bayonets and advance, but as they began to cross, a shot was fired by one of the English (apparently by accident). Te Rangihaeata's wife Rongo was killed from one of the first volleys fired sparking gunfire from both sides.

The English retreated across the stream, scrambling up the hill under fire from the Ngāti Toa. Eleven settlers and two Maori were killed.

Te Rauparaha ordered the Ngāti Toa warriors to cross the stream in pursuit. Those Englishmen who had not initially escaped were quickly overtaken. Wakefield called for a ceasefire and surrendered along with Thompson, Richardson and ten others. Two of the English party were killed immediately.

Te Rangihaeata then demanded utu (revenge) for the death of his wife Rongo, who was also Te Rauparaha's daughter. All the remaining captives, including Thompson and Captain Wakefield, the younger brother of William Wakefield, were then killed.

Samuel Cottrell, a member of the original survey team, and John Brooks, an interpreter, were also killed.

Four Māori died and three were wounded in the incident, while the English toll was 22 dead and five wounded.

The news of a reported 'massacre' did not go down well with Edward Gibbon Wakefield's backers and investors in London, where the New Zealand Company was almost ruined by the news of "British citizens being murdered by barbarous natives".

Land sales almost halted and it became ‘obvious the company was being less than honest in its land purchasing tactics and that reports on the events in local newspapers were far from accurate’.

Bronze Age trade across the English Channel - Putting some Bones on the Science

I loved the story that ran today in the UK Independent about the Bronze Age cross-Channel trading vessel that has been found off the coast at Salcombe in Devon.

But it is a story that is all archaeology and interpretation – it doesn’t have much life in it. For sure, the trade led to inter-tribal disputes, conquests and dynastic marriages.

So I’ll complement it with a recent story from New Zealand and some brief comments on the trade in pounamu (Greenstone) across the deadly Cook Strait. This was the jealously guarded monopoly of the South Island Ngai Tahu tribe.

BRITAIN’S OLDEST SHIPWRECK DISCOVERD OFF DEVONSHIRE COAST

By Malcolm Jack, UK Independent, Thursday, 18 February 2010

A 3,000 year old Bronze Age trading vessel – the oldest shipwreck ever found in British waters – has been located off the coast of Devon in South West England.

It went down around 900 BC carrying a precious cargo of tin and copper ingots from the continent, and has lain undetected on the seabed in just eight to ten metres of water in a bay near Salcombe ever since. Experts have hailed the discovery – one of only four Bronze Age vessels found in British waters – as “extremely important,” and “genuinely exciting.”

Investigation and recovery work on the boat’s cargo was carried out by archaeologists from South West Maritime Archaeological Group (SWMAG) between February and November 2009, but the find was only made public this month at the annual International Shipwreck Conference in Plymouth.

295 artefacts – with a combined weight of 84 kilograms – have been retrieved so far, including weapons and jewellery, alongside abundant raw metal.

This cargo points to a healthy and sophisticated trade network that existed between Britain and Europe during the Bronze Age. The find as a whole is testimony to the incredible seafaring capabilities of prehistoric Britons.

A Bronze Age settlement is known to have existed on the coast near Wash Gully where the wreck was found – the boat was probably attempting to land there when it came a cropper just 300 yards from the shore. The waters around this stretch of the Devonshire coast are notoriously treacherous. A nearby reef hints at the most obvious reason for the vessel’s demise.

Sadly none of the ship’s structure remains – most likely it has rotted away over the centuries. But experts have speculated that it was probably a “bulk carrier” about 12 metres long by almost two metres wide, and made out of long timber planks or a wooden frame with animal hide stretched across it. It would have been crewed by about 15 men and powered by paddle.

A narrow row boat might sound like an exposed and treacherous way of crossing the English Channel, but it’s thought that intrepid Bronze Age mariners would have used vessels like this to criss-cross the waterway with some frequency. And directly between Devon and France too, rather than skirting the coast up to the narrower stretch between Dover and Calais, as some people have suggested they did.

The large quantity of copper and tin found aboard the ship – which appears to have come from scattered locations as far afield as the Iberian Peninsula, Switzerland, France or Austria via a wide and complex trade network – would have been used to make bronze, which was the key product of the period. The bronze would in turn have been used to fashion all from tools to weapons and jewellery.

Among other artefacts in the boat’s cargo were a bronze leaf sword, two stone objects that might have been slingshots, and three gold wrist torcs. Four golden Iron Age wrist torcs of European origin were found last year by a metal detectorist in Scotland – these new finds hint at how far back trade in luxury items with the continent stretches.

Academics from Oxford University have taken charge of investigating the discoveries, to see if their exact origins can be determined. It’s hoped that more artefacts will be raised from the seabed yet.

This cargo would have made a tidy profit for the ship’s Bronze Age crew had it reached land; 3,000 years late, it’s finally set to be cashed-in. SWMAG stands to net a healthy return on their find, with the British Museum due to individually value and purchase each piece over the next few weeks.

WAKA IS IN SAFE HANDS

By Rani Timoti, Norwest News, 11/02/2010

Painstaking preservation of a near full-length historic waka unearthed at Muriwai Beach continues. The future of the canoe, about seven metres long with some pieces missing, will be decided after consultation with Maori.

Malcolm Paterson, who has been representing Ngati Whatua o Kaipara in dealings with the Auckland Regional Council and conservator over the waka, says long-term they hope to see it based at Helensville Museum.

"These are the sorts of vessels which used to travel on portages like the Kaipara Harbour. It makes sense for the taonga (treasure) to rest in Helensville where it was found nearby."

"It’s important for our community, especially the local tangata whenua, to be part of the mix with its future. Various iwi can stake their claim on it. With Maori objects, the ownership is with Maori."

“Being involved in helping residents and regional council staff dig up and transport the waka has been really exciting. A lot of people saw it and have been touched by it. Everyone involved did a brilliant job moving the waka in a way that minimised damage, and they showed great commitment during the long hours we spent on site." says the Muriwai Progressive Association acting president.

Housed in a water tank in a secure council depot, regional council historic heritage specialist Robert Brassey says it’s difficult to date the waka because it may be carved from a tree hundreds of years old.

Anthropologist Dylis Johns has been working on its conservation, which could take more than two years.

"The salt will be slow to come out. Getting it completely desalinated is really important."

The Auckland University senior research fellow says she is picking up more interesting information the longer she studies the waka close up.

She believes context is extremely important – where things are in their place and where they belong means everything.

"We’re waiting to do tree-ring dating. Dating an age of the tree doesn’t date the cultural activity though."

BACKGROUND TO THE NEW ZEALAND STORY

Quoting from contemporary Maori leader, Hekenukumai Nga Iwi Busby:

'Ancestors of the Maori arrived in New Zealand from central Polynesia, bringing with them myths, legends, and traditions as they sailed an area of the Pacific known as the 'Polynesian Triangle'. To the north lay Hawaii, Easter Island to the east, and to the south, Aotearoa, New Zealand.

Maori place considerable importance on their origins and the exploits of their ancestors. Iwi (tribe) members pass stories of famous ancestors and the waka in which they travelled from one generation to the next.

Before the arrival of the first Europeans, waka were constantly sailing between islands of the Pacific and New Zealand. Descriptions of a vast temperate land with forests lakes and streams were welcome news for the inhabitants of the over populated Pacific islands.

Large voyaging canoes (waka haurua) of over 60 feet in length were quite capable of carrying ample provisions for early Maori on their 2000 mile journey to New Zealand. These craft were equipped with sail as well as the power of selected men, stout of shoulder to bear the strain of the deep sea paddle. The most important member of the crew was the navigator. His knowledge of star navigation and interpretation of wind, cloud and ocean current would determine a successful outcome.

New Zealand's great forests and abundant natural resources provided Maori with new materials that were to influence the design and construction of waka. As settlements flourished, the twin hulled ocean waka became redundant. In its place, much swifter and manoeuvrable single hulled waka were built and utilised for a variety of purposes. Foremost was the Maori war canoe or waka taua.

Exploration and trade also flourished along the lakes and waterways of the interior, rivalling that of many coastal settlements'.

Taking up the story:

The most important coastal trade route was the crossing of Cook Strait between the North and South Islands of New Zealand – an extraordinarily treacherous stretch of water.

The South Island was the source of Greenstone (pounamu), from which the finest ceremonial weapons and jewellery were made. This led to recurrent warfare as different tribes attempted to control the trade.

The dominant tribe in the South Island, the Ngai Tahu, originated from the East Coast of the North Island but they eventually came to command Te Waka O Aoraki (the South Island) by conquest and intermarried with the Ngati Mamoe and Waitaha peoples.

Ngai Tahu were often involved in skirmishes with other tribal groups, but they were also skilful at making strategic marriages which led them to establish kin links across tribes and eventually form a huge network of relationships throughout Maoridom.

Through these extended relationships, Ngai Tahu became rich and powerful, establishing a trade in Greenstone throughout both islands.

The coming of the Europeans overlapped with yet another tribal feud over the pounamu trade – this time between Ngati Toa and Ngai Tahu.

Te Rauparaha (c. 1768–1849), the War chief of the Ngati Toa was an extraordinary man, with remarkable qualities of leadership.

Having subdued the tribes living on the west coast of Wellington Province, Te Rauparaha coveted the greenstone of the South Island. A satisfactory pretext for war was found when Rerewaka, a Ngai Tahu chief of Kaikoura, suggested that if Te Rauparaha dared to set foot on his lands he would rip his belly open with a niho manga (shark's tooth knife).

Towards the end of 1828 Te Rauparaha led a fleet of canoes to D'Urville Island and, after capturing the pas in Northern Marlborough, he surprised and took Kaikoura pa. At the conclusion of this campaign Te Rauparaha acceded to a Ngati Raukawa request to avenge Ruamaioro, who had been killed at Putiki some time earlier.

He went via Wanganui, and reduced Putiki-wharanui pa after a two months' siege. Flushed by these victories the Ngati Toa leader decided to punish Kekerenga – a Ngati Ira chief who had had an adulterous “affair” with one of Te Rangihaeata's wives, and who had later sought sanctuary with Ngai Tahu.

Using this as a pretext Te Rauparaha determined to take the strong Ngai Tahu pa at Kaiapohia (near Kaiapoi). The enemy, however, had been forewarned. Te Rauparaha therefore feigned friendship and sent Pehi Kupe and other chiefs into the stronghold.

Their plot, however, was discovered. Finding his force insufficient to capture the pa Te Rauparaha returned to Kapiti, where he persuaded Captain Stewart, of the brig Elizabeth, to convey a large war party to Akaroa.

There they seized and killed the Ngai Tahu chief Tamaiharanui. A well-armed force then besieged Kaiapohia, which fell to a Ngati Toa stratagem, and the ferocity of Te Rauparaha's revenge has since passed into legend.

The southern Ngai Tahu chiefs Tuhawaiki and Taiaroa arrived at Kaiapohia too late to save the pa. They followed the retreating Ngati Toa, however, and fought an engagement with them at Cloudy Bay (Marlborough). Here the Ngati Toa suffered a severe defeat and their survivors, including Te Rauparaha himself, escaped by swimming to their canoes.

Although not born to the highest chiefly rank, Te Rauparaha early won a reputation for cunning and audacious war leadership. He ranks with Te Whero–whero and Tuhawaiki in this because these were the two chiefs who came nearest to defeating him in battle.

He was renowned for the cleverness of his stratagems and for his unfailing habit of turning his enemies' tricks against themselves. In an age of fierce tribal wars Te Rauparaha was unmatched for his ferocity, and vanquished foes almost invariably ended their careers in the Ngati Toa cooking pots.

Te Rauparaha was a very short, wizened man, less than 5 ft tall.

He was buried near the church he had asked Bishop Hadfield to build at Otaki (on the coast north of Wellington), but, according to Maori traditions, his remains were later exhumed and reinterred on Kapiti Island.

There is also a legend that Te Rauparaha used to be a regular at the Thistle Inn in Thorndon, Wellington. The pub still exists though it nows stands a good distance from the old shoreline.

Apparently, Te Rauparaha would pull up his canoe or 'waka' on to the beach right outside the pub and wander in and order a whiskey - and no one had the courage to charge him.

Te Rauparaha died on 27 November 1849 and Thistle was built in 1840 and rebuilt after a fire in 1866, so he had nine years to drink at the pub. Of course he was in jail from 1846 to 1848 but it's still possible. But the failure by the bartender to demand the reckoning on the free drinks seems very believable!