Over 3000 claims have been made to the Waitangi Tribunal during its first 40 years of existence.
Having worked on historical district enquiries, the Tribunal now endeavours to complete the kaupapa enquiries — which cover issues of national significance. Wai 262 claim is a kaupapa inquiry — often referred to as the Flora and Fauna claim.
A report was issued in 2011 for the claim, brought by six iwi, but there is a continuing feeling of dissatisfaction with that report as unfinished business. All six original iwi representatives are now deceased. The breadth of the claim is immense:
The report encompassed the issues of taonga works and intellectual property (trademarks and copyright); taonga species and intellectual property (patents and plant variety rights); management of the environment generally (the Resource Management Act) and the conservation estate specifically (the Department of Conservation); te reo Māori (including tribal dialects); rongoā Māori; the negotiation of international agreements; and the Crown’s control or funding of mātauranga Māori across archives, libraries, museums, the regime governing protected objects, education, the arts.
He Manutukutuku is a commemorative issue for the 40th anniversary of the Waitangi Tribunal. Paul Hamer, p. 56, describes the Wai 262 claim:
Wai 262 is also regarded as the Tribunal’s first ever whole-of-government inquiry, in that it scrutinised the policies and performance of 20 government departments and agencies.
“This version is the full 2-volume report and addresses the Wai 262 claim concerning New Zealand law and policy affecting Maori culture and identity. Te Taumata Tuarua describes the claim in depth and gives the Waitangi Tribunals findings and recommendations concerning intellectual property in ‘taonga works’ created by weavers, carvers, writers, musicians, artists, and others; Maori interests in the genetic and biological resources in indigenous flora and fauna, which are the subject of increasing scientific and commercial interest; Maori involvement in decision-making on resource management and conservation; Crown support for te reo Maori, the Maori language; Crown control of matauranga Maori (Maori knowledge and ways of knowing) in arts, culture, heritage, broadcasting, education, and science; rongoa Maori or traditional healing; and Maori input into New Zealand’s positions on international instruments.” (Description from Fishpond)
Tēnā koutou katoa, e te whānau! Matariki is a time for recollection and remembering, as well as hope for the new year. In this post, Ann Reweti, our Māori Customer Specialist, brings together a range of resources that outline the history of place names here in Te Whanganui-a-Tara and farther afield.
“The adage ‘to name is to claim’ has been central to discovery and exploration since time immemorial – Māori call it tapa whenua, whakaingoa whenua or whakahau whenua
Naming places involved a number of customs, including:
transplanting Polynesian ancestral names and symbolism to New Zealand places
taunaha (naming after body parts) to emphasise personal claims to land
naming places according to their features
naming places after people
naming for historical or spiritual reasons
naming to celebrate cultural icons.”
Ngā Ingoa Peka Māori: Our Māori Branch Names
Our whare pukapuka each have a Māori name. The stories of these names, and the places they relate to can be found on our branch names page.
Online Kōrero
“Taunaha Whenua: Naming the Land”
This Matariki, Wellington City Libraries were proud to tautoko a kōrero by Honiana Love, Tumu Whakarae of Ngā Taonga, called “Taunaha Whenua: Naming the Land”. Honiana spoke about history of place names used by mana whenua in this rohe, packing out the National Library Auditorium.
“Memorials, Names and Ethical Remembering”
The day before, the National Library also held their first Public History talk for the year, “Memorials, Names and Ethical Remembering”, with Morrie Love, Nicky Karu and Ewan Morris.
We’re glad to be able to share links to recordings of both those kōrero.
Books
Illustrated Maori place names / Reed, A. W.
“Many Maori place names date back to the very earliest days of habitation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Some, in fact, originated in the Hawaiki homeland and were adapted to the new land. Whatever their origin, most reflect the Maori’s closeness to the forces of nature and incorporate common words for everyday things. Lavishly illustrated, this dictionary explains and interprets over 1500 place names as well as providing a guide to pronunciation.” (Catalogue)
Making our place : exploring land-use tensions in Aotearoa New Zealand
“Fascination with the interplay of people and place inspired the editors to bring together New Zealanders from different backgrounds and disciplines to explore some of the stories and sites of conflict and change to be found amongst our sacred, historic, rural, urban and coastal landscapes.” (Catalogue)
Exploring Aotearoa : short walks to reveal the Māori landscape / Janssen, Peter
“Take a short walk with this book and see the Maori landscape through fresh eyes. Maori culture has close ties with the landscape, in pa and early battle sites, and in myths and legends. From north to south, nearly 200 of the most accessible and memorable landmarks can be visited including volcanic summits, headlands, lakes and islands as well as pa sites urupa (graveyards), and hunting and fishing grounds.” (Catalogue)
Boundary markers : land surveying and the colonisation of New Zealand / Byrnes, Giselle
“In a country where land disputes were the chief cause of conflict between the coloniser and the colonised, surveying could never be a neutral, depoliticised pastime. In a groundbreaking piece of scholarship, Giselle Byrnes examines the way surveyors became figuratively and literally ‘the cutting edge of colonisation’. Clearing New Zealand’s vast forests, laying out town plans and deciding on place names, they were at every moment asserting British power. Boundary Markers also shows how the surveyors’ ‘commercial gaze’, a view of the countryside coloured by the desire for profit, put them at odds with the Māori view of land.” (Publisher’s Description).
Online Resources
The Great Harbour of Tara, by G. L. Adkin.
This work details the traditional Māori place-names and sites of Wellington. It is available in full through Wellington City Libraries’ Recollect site.
Nga Tupuna o Te Whanganui-a-Tara (Vol. 1).
The Nga Tupuna project was initiated by Wellington City Libraries working in collaboration with the Wellington Tenth’s Trust. While the history of Maori ownership of land around the Wellington area was being researched as part of various Treaty of Waitangi claims, it was felt that not enough emphasis was being given to the biographies of the individuals being named in those claims. This document is the first of four volumes of collected biographies. (WCL Recollect).
The Pukeahu Anthology.
“Pukeahu: An Exploratory Anthology” is a place-based anthology of waiata, poems, essays, and fiction about Pukeahu / Mt Cook, a small hill in Wellington, Aotearoa-New Zealand that rises between two streams.
In the early 1800s the stories behind the naming of the land in Te Whanganui-a-Tara were often sourced to Te Whatahoro Jury and three women – Ngarimu Mawene, Mere Ngamai and Rangiwahia Te Puni.
Te Whatahoro Jury
Hoani Te Whatahoro Jury. Ref: 1/2-024828. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23175005
Te Whatahoro Jury was born 1841 in Hawkes Bay — his father worked for William Williams. In 1842 the family moved to Wairarapa. He became a scribe to Te Matorohanga and Nepia Pohuhu and was charged with recording tribal traditions on behalf of his iwi. Some of this material was used later, by Elsdon Best, T. W. Downes, S. Percy Smith and John White. He married seven times. He died 1923 and is buried at Papawai cemetery.
Ngarimu Mawene Hohua
Ngarimu Mawene is listed in documents held at Te Papa. Ngarimu Mawene may have been connected to Hohua Te Atuawera and Hariata Mawene, with links therefore Te Ngatoro and (first?) husband, Wakairianiwa. Te Ngatoro was, in turn, a daughter to Aniwaniwa and Tawhirikura. It is said that, as a young girl, Ngarimu danced on the beach at Pito-one as the “Tory Pioneers” arrived in 1839.[1]
She married, firstly James Harrison, and their children were James Te Tana Harrison and Mere Kapa Ngamai II. Mere later married Wi Tako Ngatata. She was also known as Mere Ngawai o Te Wharepouri.
Mere was a well-known composer — two of her compositions which have survived:
Gold, Charles Emilius, 1809-1871 : Wairau April 1851. Ref: A-329-014. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/23236682
Rangi Te Puni is believed to have been born in Waipa Valley, with links to Tainui and Ngāti Rārua. She succeeded to land at Te Tau Ihu o te Waka. Rangiwahia,(Rangiwhaia) was the daughter of Rangitakaia, and grandchild of Hinehape.[2] Rangiwahia was the wife of Henare Te Puni, who in turn was the son of Honiana Te Puni and Wikitoria Muri-tu-waka-roto.
[Whakapapa of Aperaham Huritapae: Nelson MB, 13/6/89 / [WMB NO. 3, P. 39]
James Cowan
James Cowan at his desk, writing. Ruscoe, Ivan, fl 1990s : Photographs relating to James Cowan. Ref: PAColl-5877-5. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. /records/22311747
James Cowan has written about Māori place names of Te Whanganui-a-Tara in the Evening Post, 1912. These are available on PapersPast, in the Evening Post:
A list of Māori place names of Te Whanganui-a-Tara concludes Elsdon Best’s The land of Tara. Here is a map from that book.
The Land of Tara, by Elsdon Best
Te Whatahoro Jury’s work in transcribing oral histories possibly, formed a basis for stories in Elsdon Best’s – The land of Tara, published first in the Journal of the Polynesian Society, and then in book form, 1919.
Best’s list of names was revised and greatly expanded by G Leslie Adkin in:
Māori have long had an interest in the spiritual value of land: it pervades their sense of identity and how they relate to others. But land is also the foundation of their survival, in economic as well as cultural terms [3]
Giselle Byrnes, writing of surveyors as Pākehā boundary markers, shows that these men were also naming the land, and “owning” the whenua for their colonial government in a way that parallels the Māori concept of Tapa Whenua.
Boundary markers suggest that the surveyors colonised the land through language, literally inscribing it with new meanings and ways of seeing: place naming and mapping are perhaps the best examples of this [4]
For Māori, in oral tradition, naming the land was essential for defining iwi and hapū boundaries. Sites of tribal significance — maunga, awa, moana then become key elements in kawa o te marae, and whanaungatanga, in rituals of encounter, where politeness decrees that you ask not “ko wai koe?/ who are you?”, but rather, “nō hea koe? / where are you from?”
Surveyors extended their sketching skills to record not just Pākehā boundaries, but also snapshots of the life and times of our tūpuna.
Somes Island
Legend has it that both Matiu and Makaro Islands received their original Māori names from Kupe, the semi-legendary first navigator to reach New Zealand and get home again with reports of the new land. He named them after his two daughters (or, in some versions of the tale, nieces) when he first entered the harbour about 1000 years ago.
Somes Island : Matiu (1990)
“After European settlement, the island was known for over a century as Somes Island. In 1839 it fell under the control of the New Zealand Company along with much of the greater Wellington region.”
“The island was renamed after Joseph Somes, the company’s deputy-governor and financier at the time. In 1997 however, the New Zealand Geographic Board assigned the official bilingual name of Matiu/Somes in recognition of the island’s colourful European and Māori histories.” [5]
I look forward to Morrie Love’s kōrero to reveal the layers of history that lie both beneath our feet and before our eyes, and to provide an opportunity to understand the heritage of Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
References
Stories in names / Tohunga. New Zealand Railways magazine ; vol. 9, issue 6 (1934)
Maori Land Court. Nelson Minute Book. 13/6/89. P. 39.
Recently I breathed in the gentle gentility of the Wellington Club, The Terrace, whilst held in awe of Helen Riddiford’s meticulous and deeply researched account of the New Zealand Company’s finest member, Dr George Samuel Evans.
By evening’s end, there were surely more than the just the two of us who would attest to his right to be named Wellington’s founding father, – a man who stood tall on the principles and the application of the Company’s constitution and held a desire to include tangata whenua in te ao hurihuri, / an evolving new life. In the words of one of our two official languages – here was a man truly worthy of the description: he kōtuku rerenga tahi.
For all the sentiments expressed above – how many people , today, remember any details of this man who gave his name to that inner bay (Evans’s / Evans Bay) and whose contribution to the settlement placed him second only to Colonel Wakefield, in his roles, which included that of chief judicial authority for the new colony.
When Edward Gibbon Wakefield accompanied Lord Durham to Canada, it was Dr Evans who stepped forward to place his hand firmly on the tiller of the colonial ship.
But who was this man? George Evans grew up in a household where civil and religious liberty was embraced. He was a brilliant scholar who excelled in Latin, Greek and Hebrew – His later work spanned the fields of education, judiciary and journalism. In 1928 he became, briefly, headmaster of Mill Hill School, London.
It was here that he met school matron Mrs Riddiford, whose husband passed away in 1829. George and Harriet married, 16 January 1930, and George became the stepfather of Amelia (13 years) and Daniel (16 years) – he, Daniel, who was to become the founder of the Riddiford farming dynasty at Orongorongo and the stations around the Wairarapa coast of New Zealand.
There is so much detail of Evans’ life within the pages of this book. There’s the interesting story of his involvement with Nayti and Hiakai, two passengers on the Mississippi who became stranded at Le Havre, were rescued by the New Zealand Association and provided with lodgings by Wakefield and Evans, in the 1830s. With Hiakai’s help George Evans was introduced to Māori customs and reo. He began a grammar of Te Reo Māori, which was completed in 1839, but never officially published. Wellington City Central Library holds a copy of this Manuscript of a Maori grammar.
The top view stretches across Thorndon Flat with Dr Evans’ house on the left, a range of early houses and businesses along the waterfront and on the right, Colonel William Wakefield’s house with flagpole.
(Source: Brees, Samuel Charles, 1810-1865 :Pictorial Illustrations of New Zealand. London, John Williams and Co., Library of Arts, 141, Strand, 1847.. Ref: PUBL-0020-22. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand. http://natlib.govt.nz/records/22816178)
Dr Evans fulfilled a designated role as advocate for Māori in all legal disputes – with varying degrees of success. Helen’s easy- read documentation of Dr Evans life and work in the new colony makes this book an absolute must for those of us mindful of the view – that you must first understand and embrace the past in order to move forward.
The study of the settlement of Wellington is a very complex exercise – but – don’t be confined only to those official publications — the reports and commissions, and records of deeds of release – Here lies, within these pages, the flavour of that era. This is a far more interesting journey by way of Helen’s archival research and her detailed account of Dr Evans work.
Dr Evans returned to England, 1846-52, and was dealt to harshly by the Company, in clearing the debts on his town and country sections in Wellington. It was an example of Wakefield’s ‘ability’ to turn against his closest allies.
George Evans and Harriet moved to Melbourne, 1853. He planned to undertake legal work but also began working with the Melbourne Morning Herald. He later gained a seat in the legislative assembly. His journalistic output was legendary. George and Harriet returned to New Zealand, 1865, but Harriet died 31 March 1866, and Dr Evans’ death followed in 1868.
In the words of Helen Riddiford “In the colonies he was head and shoulders above many of his peers in education and ability. He operated within an influential network of men, but was always independent in his views, which isolated him from many of his contemporaries. He was viewed as a ‘singular character’ a gentleman almost unique in this setting. His many visionary ideas were handicapped by a volatile temperament and principles that were compromised by circumstances, an unpredictable man of reckless courage whose steadfast commitment to the creation and success of Wellington was fully acknowledged after his death. Amongst others, The Independent noted that he was ‘one of the founders, if not the real founder of this colony. There is scarcely an official document of the period in which [his] name is not conspicuous”.
Here was a man truly worthy of the title bestowed by his Māori friends – Nui, Nui Rangatira
Orongomai Marae, Upper Hutt was the chosen place for a very special evening on Monday 17 October – the launch of the book Te Oka – Pākehā kaumātua : the life of Jock McEwen written by Mary McEwen.
“He lived by the philosophy of ‘saying little and doing much’”
We speak sometimes of special people amongst us who have travelled successfully in two worlds. Quite often there follows the story of one such- of a minority culture who has seamlessly stood tall and proud not only in his/her own culture but also in the mainstream – i.e. – Pākehā or Palagi world.
Jock McEwen was living proof of that the reverse may well occur.
Whanaungatanga
On Monday many dear friends and relatives of Jock McEwen gathered to honour a man whose ancestral roots were in Scotland and Perthshire, but whose great-grandparents reached these shores in the very early days of the new colony at Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
One ancestor – not admired by Māori, was John Bryce who led the Pāhuatanga – the destruction of Parihaka, 5 November, 1881 and others of Jock’s family became fluent speakers of Te Reo.
Whanaketanga
But Jock began his school days at Taonui, where his father was headmaster at the local school – which lay very close to Aorangi Marae. It was there, through the guidance of Meihana Te Rama-Apakura, and Kahurautete, and their whānau that he began to absorb te reo , te māoritanga me he kōrero nehe, tō te iwi who would later inspire his writing of the book Rangitane.
At a very early age, inspired by carvings at the wharenui of Ngāti Kauwhata, he began his lifelong interest in whakairo, creating a patu which he deemed appropriate for himself as leader of the Feilding Boy Scouts’ haka. At secondary school, he excelled in languages – English, French and Latin, but the depression deprived him of the opportunity to leave school to take up, immediately, a university bursary and so he began his university studies whilst still at Palmerston North Boys’ High School.
Tū Rangatira
Please take the time to track down this biography, to acquaint yourself with the details of the life of this unique man, – hei whānaunga, hei kāiarahi, hei kaimahi kawanatanga – including Niue, his niche at Māori Affairs, his work with inmates at Wi Tako prison, his development of a carving school.
Important to him were his roles as a founding member of Ngāti Poneke Young Māori Club, – his involvement with Kingi Tahiwi in composing and supporting waiata in Wellington and later, his huge mahi within the community at Upper Hutt and in the creation of an urban marae – Orongomai , where, along with Dovey Katene-Horvath, he assisted Māwai Hakona Māori Club to became a force to be reckoned with, in the development of regional and national cultural competitions.
This book invites us to understand the immense contribution that Jock McEwen made to the lives of all New Zealanders.
Most people – however much revered – are, in death, more or less ‘replaceable’ in the continuum of life on earth – Jock, himself, came close to proving that there are some who are not.
Six years after his death we are blessed with this story written by his daughter-in-law, Mary McEwen.
Kua wheturangitia a Te Oka, i te korowai o Ranginui.
“Taunaha Whenua: Naming the Land”
“Memorials, Names and Ethical Remembering”
