Napier marae finally on its way

Doug Laing
Maori Affairs Minister Parekura Horomia became a master Minister of Rush Jobs and Perfect Timing early today as he turned the soil on the site for a new Napier marae, a dream of some in the city for more than 50 years.
Mr Horomia arrived as much as half an hour before anyone else for the ceremonial blessing of the Pukemokimoki Marae site at on Maraenui Park - starting on time at 5am and on his way 20 minutes later to get to Hamilton for another ceremony at 9.30am.
Despite the rush in a weird dawn humidity which must have mirrored that of the shearing sheds where he once worked, and where he acquired the constitution for such early starts, he had time to apologise profusely for his premature departure, and wish everyone all the best.
"Let's get it going, and worry about how we get it up later," he said.
That, unintentionally, understated the effort which has gone-in in recent years as the Maraenui Marae Establishment Trust, set-up in 1996, has raised almost $900,000 in funding and commitments to a project on which building is expected to start early in the new year, and which has a budget of about $1.1 million.
Most had come in the two years since the trust took on full-time project manager Mike Taane who, after the short ceremony and Mr Horomia's departure, told the gathered people in the nearby Maraenui Rugby and Sports Association clubrooms that by July next year the trust should be in a position to talk about the opening, and the handover to an organisation to be set-up to manage the marae.
Further hui are proposed to develop the tikanga and kawa under which the marae will operate, in a city which the trust chairman says is the only city in New Zealand which has not had a marae to service the whole community, as signified in the ceremonial to all people of the four winds - Nga hau e wha.
It will be the second new marae opened in Hawke's Bay within two years. The first, Te Aranga, was opened, also in a rush visit by the Minister, in Flaxmere in November last year.
Both are taurahere marae, defined in modern policy as where the associated group does not have tangata whenua status in the area, but where there is a need to bring together urban Maori and communities sharing a common purpose or collective aspirations.
The advent of new marae invariably brought debate over such things as protocol and name, which continues.
The community, now with the blessing of the relative representatives of existing marae in the wider area, has chosen the name Pukemokimoki, that of a hill which was once off the western corner of Mataruahou, the land-mass known in early European settlement as Scinde Island, colloquially known as Bluff Hill, or more locally as Hospital Hill.
It stood in the area of the Carlyle Kindergarten, between Carlyle and Thackeray Streets, was designated by Maori parties to the 1851 Ahuriri Purchase deed as the "only portion of Mataruahou reserved for ourselves," but was taken and removed in reclamations which started, in breach of the agreement, as early as the 1870s, the Waitangi Tribunal was told in claim hearings in the Napier area.
Much of the soil from the hill created the area now known as the "railway land."
The name came from a fern which grew there. Women wore the fern in a locket and sang a lullaby as they cradled their newborn.
Napier kaumatua Te Ao Pehi (Percy) Kara blessed the site today, and among those who spoke in the clubrooms soon afterwards was Waiohiki kaumatua Labour Hawaikirangi.
Speakers told of their knowledge of the area, and the aspirations of such people as Hana Cotter and Rangi Taurima, known to have spoken of their dreams for a marae for Napier at least as early as 1950.
Mr Taane later conceded the uniqueness of the tight and brief ceremony, but said it was "perfect." Universally it was seen as a good omen.