A website has been launched as a portal for finding marae, helping reconnect Maori to their tribal identities, writes Rebecca Blithe.
Rereata Makiha and Krzysztof Pfeiffer laugh as they recall tales from their intrepid venture north in search of marae to photograph and record.
From intricately carved, meticulously maintained marae to barren sites where a meeting-house once stood, the two men spent much of the summer finding and photographing Northland and Auckland marae, part of more than 800 throughout New Zealand to be added to a new website, Maori Maps.
"We ended up on tracks, not even roads, that just got narrower and narrower. To get to some of them, you'd have to park your car and walk through water up to here," says Mr Pfeiffer, an Auckland War Memorial Museum photographer, drawing a line across his chest.
The site represents years of work which began when Mr Makiha, a freelance television journalist, teamed with Otago University's director of Maori Studies, Professor Paul Tapsell, to establish Te Potiki National Trust five years ago in 2006.
The trust aims to connect young urban Maori, known as the Potiki generation, with marae and their tribal identities.
"The key focus of Maori Maps is the social challenge. The Potiki generation, it's a real lost generation because they don't see the value in marae any more. We're losing that knowledge because 90 per cent live in the city," says Mr Makiha.
The result has been the loss of traditional knowledge and little focus on tribal identity. Mr Tapsell says many marae are beyond repair and at great risk of disappearing as those who maintain them die. "The Historic Places Trust has noted 75 per cent are in a state of crisis."
"I'd got hold of the old surveys from the Maori Affairs Department. One person still held the database," says Mr Makiha. "In official surveys they're not mapped.
"We went into this area north of Kaeo - I remember going there as a kid because it scared the hell out of me. There were these gravestones - I remember looking through them to the lights of the marae. We had to wander around and find someone who knew where it was."
Peter Dowling, a trust director, says the website is based on interactive Google Maps and acts as a gateway. "We're not speaking for Maori, we're representing a portal, a channel to home. At this stage we've covered off traditional ancestral marae because the focus is on reconnecting people with their whakapapa."
The site will include a te reo version with phone and iPad applications and has garnered good feedback.
Mr Tapsell says the response from around the country has been outstanding. "This is wonderful, and tangatawhenua.com voted it the coolest website of 2011. It's great to be able to turn academic research into something that directly supports the people and creates something that they can feel they own."
Auckland - home to the largest Maori population - is complete. The next stage will be to document Waikato and the Bay of Plenty.
Titiromai - Look here
Those involved in www.maorimaps.com are working largely on a volunteer basis. Funds have been provided by the Tindall Foundation, FoRST and the ASB Community Trust. The universities of Auckland (James Henare Maori Research Centre and Business School through Icehouse/SPARK) and Otago (Te Tumu School of Maori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies), and Chapman Tripp, are supporters.