AHIKAAROA

The other day a cuzzy asked about Ahikaaroa... what it means... and what it’s all about. The term ‘Ahikaaroa’ literally translates as.... ahi = fire, kaa = burning, roa = long. In Maori culture the ‘long burning fires’ is a reference to the central fire of the iwi, hapu or whanau. In every village there was at least one fire that was kept burning at all times. In pre-European Aotearoa there were no matches... it was extremely important that each whanau group maintain their fire... night and day. It was a gift from Mahuika... it was a sign of life... a sign that all is well... it showed how healthy the people were... how healthy the land was... how strong the iwi was. Te Ahikaaroa was a symbol of mana whenua... It keeps the people warm... the people grow strong... they keep the fires burning.

It’s also a powerful symbol of survival... it’s a central gathering place for the iwi... it’s where the tribal memories were shared... the tribal knowledge is past on... and the tribal histories are told. Long before the arrival of Cook... we use our ahikaaroa to claim ownership and occupation of the lands around Muriwai and Whareongaonga... our fires were many. When Joseph Banks sailed into Turanganui on Oct 9th 1769... He made the following note... “The bay appears to be quite open without the least shelter: the two sides of it made of high white cliffs; the middle is low land with hills gradually rising behind one another to the chain of high mountains inland. Here we saw many great smoke stacks, some near the beach others between the hills, some very far within land, which we looked upon as great indication of a populous country” ...he was right... Turanga-ara-rau (all roads lead to Turanga) 

There were heaps of Maori and many ‘ahi’ burning. Today the term Te Ahikaroa is about the people. The ‘ahikaroa’ is without doubt the whanau who bring our marae to life. The unsung heroes of home... those who are there to get things ready... those who prepare the beds... those who collect the food... those who prepare the food... those who set the tables... those who set the hangi... those who take care of our visitors... those on the paepae... those doing karakia or karanga... those who do the dishes... those who clean things up... and those who pack things away ready for next time. KOINA ko Te Ahikaaroa... collectively they are the pulse of our tribal aroha and the heart-beat of our tribal mana... THANK YOU ALL NGAI TAMANUHIRI... and... MAURIORA.... TOITU TE AHIKAAROA

LINING UP THE STARS AT NIGHT

If you got clear skies above you... 

and tonight Tamaki is cloudy so I can't see them... but if you can... this is what it looks like straight above us right now. If you find Tautoru which is Orions Belt and one of the easiest to identify because its three stars in almost a straight line... then you can get your bearings in a sky full of stars. If you follow the line of the three stars out toward the east you will find Takurua or Sirius... then if you follow the same line out toward the west... thats where you will find Matariki or Pleiades. Puanga (Rigel)... Parearau (Saturn) and Whaka-ahua (Castor) run in a line on about a 90 degree angle to the other one forming a cross of sorts. Puanga is the bright star that sits above Tautoru... This is the summer sky... as the months progress... there is a procession of constellations that our tipuna knew and understood beginning with Matariki and ending with Takirau. 

Mauri Tu... Mauri Po... Mauri Ora

TE PAE KAKANO #tekorowairawhiti

Thanks for supporting TKR and registering for the online wananga you guys. Anei koutou...
Noel Pohatu, Marianne Pohatu, Warren Pohatu, Manaia Pohatu-Hardiman, Paora Pohatu, Jermaine Murch, Vanessa P Awatere, Josie Morete, Oriana Rarere, Cyrus Vance Waitere, Theresa Alison, Veronica Stuart, Kaytrina Underwood, Rapata Putaranui, Wings Waihi, Rihari Wilson, Tui Vazey, Wakely Wilson, Kylie Taggart, Georgina Pomana Waihape, Lily Davis, Aroha Allen, Miszcuzybro Seb N Cherish, Mike Te Hau, May Rickard, Ray Barrow, Elton Pohatu, Hira Morgan,Tania Hayden, Diane May Akuhata-Brown, Tia Johnstone, Te Aorangi Harrington, Maori Role Models, Rina Kerekere, Kaye-Maree Dunn, Uma Te Kani, Matai Rangi Smith, Pahau Mackey, Athena Emmerson, Karl Riki, Carla Te Hau, Wiki Thomson,Rangi Pohatu, Terry Walker, Kaylene Mahisian Pohatu, Tania Rapana-Stowers, Mitchell Te Hau, Dallas Crombie, Jackey Henry, Pene Nepe, Ihipera Whakataka, Pita Tetauoterangi, Marama Pohatu, Shirley Teirney Kiripatea, Reina Kahukiwa, Hemi Pohatu, Kadi Pirihira Matenga, Ria Roberts, Sybil Tunoho, Pera Tamihana, Whetu Hautapu, Jacky Naylor and Kenneth Brown.



Last weekend we delivered the first installment of our online wananga (the title page and a section about Maui). Hope you guys received it and had time to review our humble offering. It has been set up as an A3 landscape doc... if you want... you can print it out... you can customize your title page... you can add your own info... like adding more pages... add your own korero... add your own photos to really make it your very own taonga. 

The korero about Maui is intended to show the link between the land and the people... and the link between the whakaheke and our whakapapa. Iwi should understand that Maui brought many things including death and whakapapa. We will build on our korero from month to month but if you have any comments about the first installment... feel free to comment here. 

I want to use the initial group to develop our resources, understand the technology and fine-tune our delivery options. For the next few months we’ll be focused on how you guys react... what you might recommend or stuff you might request. To that end we have closed our registrations until further notice. May I also say... none of us are tohunga by any measure... we are simply whanau who are passionate about our tikanga and our whakapapa and very willing to share. 

Ultimately we want to develop our iwi resources to build a digital library of our korero. Dreams are free... and we want to thank you guys for being part of the TKR journey thus far... Nga mihi whanui ki nga whanaunga maha...

PAPATUANUKU: the earth mother

Papatuanuku is the mother of all things… she is the earth that we live upon. She stretches out beneath her husband as the foundation of our culture. Ranginui is the great sky father… the vast expanse of the heavens. Papa is of course the nurturing parent and provides sustenance for her descendants. Not only is she the land we walk upon… she is also the life within the land. Everything is linked to the land… the plants, the trees, the birds, the lizards, the seals and the people. Papatuanuku nurtures them all… feeds them all… houses them all and at the end of their life… forms the final resting place for all creatures great and small. Rangi and Papa had many children including Tane, Tangaroa, Tawhirimatea, Tu, Rongo and Haumia. Papa was heavily pregnant with Ruaumoko when the winds of discontent began to blow in the world of darkness.

As the children grew up they became annoyed with life between their parents. Soon they gathered deep in the darkness to discuss the problems of living in such conditions. Tangaroa was very keen to separate his parents but felt he was not nearly strong enough to complete such a task. Tawhirimatea apposed any talk of separation and threatened his brothers with eternal war if they even attempted to break them up. Tumatauenga scoffed at his brother’s emotional outburst and demanded their parents be separated immediately. Otherwise he would kill them himself. Then Tane stood up, “Calm down brothers - Let me try” he said. Tane thought for a while then lay with his back braced against his mother. He raised his feet up and placed them on his father. Tane strained with all his might and eventually he was able to pry his parents apart. Little by little they began to separate. Just then Tawhirimatea roared with anger then rushed off past Tane and the others to join Rangi. Meanwhile the light flooded into the world… it spread quickly into every corner of the land… and life, as we know it, was born.

This is Te Ao Marama (the world of warmth and light)… and the true beauty of Papatuanuku could be seen at last. Her gorgeous cloak of a thousand shades of green, her impressive snow topped mountains, her abundant rivers, her lush valleys and her generous beaches simply confirm Papa as the mother of absolutely everything. When Tane wanted to create the first mortal women he asked his mother if he could use the sacred red soils of Kurawaka. Papatuanuku agreed to let him use it to mould a body and breathe life into it, on one condition. That if the life ever leaves that body, it be returned to Papa… to become soil again. Tane agreed… thus when we die we enter the underworld via the urupa (uru Papa)… and join our whanau whakapapa link to the land. Our whole existence begins and ends with the land. We are the land… and the land is us. Papatuanuku is the mother, the provider, the life and the whenua. We are the tangata whenua (people of the land).

THE ROCK…

When I was a youngster we were still harvesting the fruits of our moana in the traditional manner and in traditional places. One of Ngai Tamanuhiri’s tribal delicacies is dried shark and we tended to use another of our local delicacies (crayfish) as bait. During our diving expeditions to Taikawakawa and Orongo the fishing fraternity amongst us would often collect extra crayfish to use for that very purpose. In all honesty the crays would have struggled to pass today’s strict measurement regimes BUT… we’re talking about customary practices here… 6 hundy years or more.

Our favourite shark fishing rock was called Te Kaupapa and it was situated about half way along the northern face of Te Kuri about 400 meters from Papatewhai. There is an ancient pa site called Tunga-Kaka directly above it and they were probably using this fishing spot when that pa was active. Te Kaupapa or ‘The Rock’ as we called it was a flat boulder approx 4m by 8m and we’ve been using it as a taunga-ika for well over 600 years. It was about twenty meters from the main cliff face and was only accessible for an hour each side of low water. It was a flat platform about 4 meters off the low water mark but at high tide the water level would rise to within a meter of the top and surrounded the whole rock. The path to Kaupapa ran along a vertical wall of sandstone about 100 meters long and 4-5 stories high. At low tide there was a small corridor of sand to access Te Kaupapa but within an hour of the turning tide… the waves would be lapping against the rock wall and by mid tide the water is 10 feet deep with waves surging against the rock face… it was now impossible to pass until the next low tide.

We weren’t exactly technical fishermen… but tikanga is such a comforting support mechanism… and we all started in the same way. We came with our tuakana and we done what they done… and when they were young they done exactly the same as us… that’s how tikanga works. My older cousin Nuna always took me fishing and diving with him. He taught me all about our moana by showing me our way of doing things, our system and our special places. Nuna (Rapihana Hawaikirangi) is a first cousin on the Wyllie side and he has an absolute wealth of knowledge about our coastline including the names of every nook and cranny from Muriwai to Mahia. He’s spent his whole life diving and fishing along our coastline and has an intimate knowledge of our tikanga e pa ana ki te moana me nga tini taunga-ika o Tamanuhiri.

We would always fish the summer morning tides. We knew that if low water was at 6am… we needed to be there no later than 7am. High tide would be at 12 noon and the next opportunity to leave the rock would be about 5pm… so don’t forget your lunch. There was enough room on kaupapa for 5 fishermen… and we all needed to be on-2-it. We’d take our equipment… we had thick-as line (bootlace thick). We had huge hooks… and our anchor collection was quite impressive too (chains, nuts & bolts, diving weights)… and of course heaps of cotton. When we got there we’d bait our lines… taking a whole crayfish tail… threading our hook through it… and then use the cotton to secure the bait to the hook… E ai ki nga tohunga hi-ika… this would discouraged the smaller fish from nibbling our bait to bits.

Then we’d take turns throwing our lines in. It was like a bloody hammer-throw competition… we’d stand at one end of the rock and start swinging our anchor round and round to build up momentum. By the time we were ready to launch we’d have about three meters of line with a heavy metal weight swinging wildly over head… and hopefully… you’d release the weights in the right manner… and more importantly in the right direction. Nine times out of ten it was sweet but I did witness a few tenth time close calls… ANYWAYS… when we finally got our lines out there… the waiting game began but usually It wouldn’t take long before we’d get some company… Could be a shark or maybe a stingray… or if we’re a bit unlucky a Snapper or Kingy. We were after shark on this rock and anything else was a bit disappointing… shark was our favoured fish for drying and storing… my old man loved it.

When ever you hooked up… you knew all about it. They weren’t huge sharks… mainly schoolies up to 6 foot but it was fun and they could fight. We were old-school and you usually had two options… you either pulled it in… or you didn’t. We didn’t play the fish…. there was no give & take or letting it run… just pulling it in… or not. And there was no such thing as ‘catch & release’ either … there was catch & use for bait… catch & have for brekky… catch & give to nanny… but catch & release was never an option on this rock. I went fishing at Te Kaupapa with many whanau members … fulla Nuna, fulla Tu, fulla Jody… Uncle Viv, fulla Taro, fulla Mita, Uncle Bub, fulla Mud, fulla Snoop and my tuakana Solly & George.

We caught heaps of shark, plenty of rays and the odd kingy… life was sweet. I felt good contributing to our household and I enjoyed taking home kaimoana like… koura, kina, paua, pupu, pipi, whitiko, kutai, karengo, inanga, tuna, haku, kanae, kahawai, tamure, patiki, araara, tawatawa, kuparu, rawaru, hapuka, moki, whai, wheke and of course the tribal power food… mako. I knew where to find them… I knew which beach was best for each… I knew how to collect them and what to look for… it was knowledge passed from generation to generation…knowledge that links us to Tangaroa Whakamautai.

We are the moana… and the moana is us.

Growing up next door to my grandmother Takotohiwi... I saw how she dried many different foods in prep for winter. She would dry karengo in the sun and store it in bundles for the colder months. She would dry pipi on a big sheet of iron then store them in her pantry. She even dried some of the small kumara... they were awesome. In summer she would have eels hanging on her fence... fish frames drying on one line... and shark strips hanging on another. Dried shark is a tribal delicacy in Muriwai. We gut and bone the shark... then cut the meat into long strips (about 2-3 feet long and about an inch thick) leaving the skin attached. These are then hung over a line in the hot summer sun to dry. It is important not to get the strips wet once your start the process so the shark is always taken in or covered during rain storms or at night. It will take at least 10 really hot days to completely dehydrate the meat.

When ready the shark strips are stored in a dry place and will keep for a year or more. The strips can be eaten as is (like jerky) or the meat can be re-constituted with boiling water. It’s the same with some of the other dried food like fish and karengo... they can also be reconstituted or added to another meal. My grandmother was born in 1900 and lived a life before electricity... before fridges and freezers... and before any supermarkets. Her thinking was always focussed on our future and summer was spent preparing for winter. Tikanga dictates that in times of plenty you prepare for times when there’s less. The storage techniques devised by our ancestors were born out of necessity and form the foundations of the iwi survival strategy. Drying or dehydrating food was important in that survival plan and as long as the stocks are kept dry... they will easily see you through the winter months...

Unfortunately Te Kaupapa was covered by a huge landslide recently. The erosion around Te Kuri-a-Paoa has completely changed the coastline. Taunga-ika like Te Kaupapa and Rua-Koura are disappearing and all that remains is our fond memories. Since Paoa arrived onboard his waka Te Kaupapa has been central to our survival plan... Noreira... e Te Toka-Tu-Moana o Nga Pari E Ma Mai Ra... Kia eke... Eke Panuku... Eke Tangaroa... Whano, Whano, Hoki mai Te Toki... HAUMI E... HUI E..............................

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HAPU O NGAI TAMANUHIRI

On the 23^rd August 1981 a meeting was held at Muriwai Marae. The meeting was attended by a number of Kaumatua including… Hopa Te Hau, Ada Tamihana, Rangitahi Kaimoana, Moana Kemp, Bertie Ngarangioue, Cooper Carrington, Kaa Matenga, Mars (Mataiata) Pohatu, Kui Emmerson, Oke Raihania, Zoe Winitana, Hine Kemp, Ene Hawkins, Moana Kemp, Rata Pohatu, Maura Matenga, Rimu Pohatu(convenor), Dave Ngarangioue, Murray Raihania, Wi Ngarangioue, Dawn Pomana, Temple Isaacs And Heni Sunderland

The minutes read… “At this point Moana Kemp called for nominations, but before opening it to the meeting, asked that some thought be given to the method of electing those required… i.e. whether nominations should be called from the floor or whether this should be done on the basis of whanau representation. The meeting unanimously agreed that the later suggestion be adopted” …and it was, with the proviso that each whanau select their own representatives.

Those Kaumatua identified five major hapu/whanau of Ngai Tamanuhiri. They are Ngati Rangiwaho and Ngati Rangiwaho-Matua who obviously nominate Rangiwaho as their focal ancestor. The other three are Ngati Te Rangitauwhiwhia, Ngati Tawehi and Ngati Kahutia who all inherit mana whenua from Paeaterangi via Tapunga. It seems these five are groupings of smaller hapu/whanau. At the same meeting the following people were selected as representatives of those respective hapu/whanau

Ngati Rangiwaho: Mataiata Pohatu, Dave Ngarangioue

Ngati Rangiwaho-Matua: Okeroa Raihania, Ene Hawkins

Ngati Rangitauwhiwhia:Zoe Winitana, Maura Matenga

Ngati Kahutia: Moana Kemp, Kui Emmerson

Ngai Tawehi: Toi Wilson, Rangi Wilson

It is interesting to note that those present nominated Toi and Rangi Wilson as representatives of Ngai Tawehi even though they were not present. This indicates a prior understanding of whanau associations as that particular branch of Wilson’s (Te Keepa Wirihana) are indeed the core of Ngai Tawehi. The actual hand written notes offer more clues to hapu origins by listing Ngati Rangitauwhiwhia as the “Waaka/Rangitauwhiwhia whanau” and then lists Ngati Rangiwaho-Matua as the “Rangiwaho-Matua (Wirihana) whanau”. Moana Kemp moved, 2^nd Mars Pohatu – carried that the names of those representatives be submitted to the Maori Land Court forthwith.

Since that meeting there has been much discussion about the hapu lines.

"QUOTE" WARREN POHATU

Quoting myself... beat that...lol....

Sometimes saying nothing 

says so much more...

WNRP