Horse-drawn carriages on rails seen in the excavation of Pukemokimoki off the southwestern extreme of Mataruahou, the name now restored to the hills named by European settlers as Scinde Island, later Bluff Hill. Photo / Brogen & Co, Michael Fowler Collection
Horse-drawn carriages on rails seen in the excavation of Pukemokimoki off the southwestern extreme of Mataruahou, the name now restored to the hills named by European settlers as Scinde Island, later Bluff Hill. Photo / Brogen & Co, Michael Fowler Collection
Taape Tareha knows she overworked herself.
More than 30 years ago she leapt into the unfamiliarity of hundreds of pages of court notes more than a century old, living every word – both te reo Māori and English – for six months.
But it was worth it, she says. Whatshe got out of it was a narrative from her forebears, handwritten in volumes from the Native Land Court.
They told the stories of the diminishing area of Te Whanganui ā Orotū, from its place as an expansive waterway stretching from Westshore to Awatoto, to what is now known by many as the Napier Inner Harbour.
Similarly, they told of the changing face of Mataruahou, the outstanding Napier feature early European settlers named Scinde Island, but which for most of the time since has been commonly identified as Bluff Hill, even if it was a set of three hills with the “bluff” only at its eastern extremity.
And near its western extremity, in an area now generally the area off Carlyle St from Chaucer Rd to the Georges Drive intersection, was a much-smaller island known as Pukemokimoki.
Pukemokimoki is, in Napier and Hawke’s Bay especially, the proof of the oft-levelled claim that “they stole our land”.
It has been determined neither Pukemokimoki nor Te Whanganui ā Orotū were part of the Ahuriri Purchase made by Crown agent Donald McLean from long-term Māori inhabitants in 1851.
“They took it,” says Tareha, a view that was reinforced when the Waitangi Tribunal delivered its reports on one of the earliest claims it heard, WAI55, in 1995, addressing the loss of Te Whanganui ā Orotū – an estuarine lagoon that was once north and east of Napier.
It had taken over 130 years to get to that stage and in hearings held in 1993-94, claimants argued the Crown took the lagoon and its islands by claiming they were included in the purchase, even though the claimants had never sold them.
Taape Tareha, great-great-granddaughter of 1851 Ahuriri Purchase signatory chief Tareha Te Moananui at the corner of Carlyle St and Chaucer Rd, Napier, the area where hill island Pukemokimoki stood before its mining and excavation in the 1870s, later determined a breach for which settlement has taken over a century and a half. Photo / Doug Laing
In a saga not short on delays in proceedings, one part of the process started in the Native Land Court in 1916, but would be 32 years before the report was finally delivered. It would be another 36 years between the tribunal’s 1995 report and the settlement that came with Parliament’s Ahuriri Hapū Claims Settlement Act 2021, based on hearings initiated with the lodging of WAI55 by the late Teotane (Joe) Reti on behalf of hapū in 1988, .
Pukemokimoki, washed on three sides by the waters of the whanga, provided fill for significant parts of Napier, years before the gift of the land developed from that lifted out of the water in the 1931 Hawke’s Bay earthquake.
Appearing amid the spreading of Pukemokimoki was a sports field known as the Recreation Ground, more or less off Carlyle St, opposite Chaucer Rd, in proximity to the Royal Hotel, and where Napier’s first first-class cricket was played, in 1884.
Out of the swamps, in the early 1900s, would also come McLean Park, named after government land-buying agent Donald McLean, Nelson Park, named after reclamation syndicate member William Nelson, and what is known as “railway land”, part of the settlement package and stretching towards Munro St.
Concerns about the disappearance of Pukemokimoki started from the time the work began, but claimants said they were by and large ignored or put aside.
Such was the case with the inquiry by a Judge Harvey that started in 1916, but wasn’t reported on until 1948, inconclusively, in the eyes of Professor Richard Boast, of Victoria University, who traced 140 years of legal history, from 1851 to 1991, for a 129-page report to the tribunal.
Boast, who in the New Year Honours seven years ago was recognised with the ONZM for services to law and Māori, explored the original sale, interpretations of it, what it included and did not include, and a crucial legal question of whether Te Whanganui ā Orotū was an “arm of the sea” or a distinct inland waterway.
He said as early as 1854, Pukemokimoki was being usurped as a public reserve regardless of whatever agreement had been made.
Significantly, opposition to the removal of Pukemokimoki started at the first sign of the excavation, but tangata whenua, seeing not only the hill taken down but then used to reclaim areas of the great lake that still belonged to them, were being ignored by the Crown, he said.
The Crown was effectively gifting itself land from which settlers could make great wealth at the expense of those who were the rightful owners, he said.
The tribunal had been established under the Treaty of Waitangi Act, the 1975 legislation put in place amid mounting concerns about unresolved grievances from Crown acts or omissions following the signing of the Treaty in 1840. By the end of its first 40 years, in 2015, it had registered 2501 claims, fully or partly reported on 1028, issued 123 final reports, and district reports covering 79% of the New Zealand land mass.
In the 1990s hearings it was argued Crown actions, including the removal of Pukemokimoki, were in breach, illegal and tantamount to theft.
Taape Tareha, who lives in Waiohiki and is of Ngāti Pārau Hapū, one of seven shoreline hapū of Te Whanganui ā Orotū, had the bloodlines – great-great-granddaughter of chief Tareha Te Moananui, a signitory to the 1851 purchase and, as an MP, the first Māori to speak in Parliament.
But she says she wasn’t sure she realised what she was getting into when the work started in earnest – daily trips to the Māori Land Court in Hastings, amid organising the daily whanau schedule around ensuring the children were all in the right places, to immerse herself in the written record.
“It took over my life,” she says, recalling the likely schedule and queue ahead as claims emerged from around the country. “We had to move quickly, we only had six months.”
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today and has 51 years of journalism experience, 41 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues and personalities.
