Waitangi Day 2025: Inside Tent City, the 1000-person waka camp

Every year, hundreds of kaihoe (paddlers) from across New Zealand travel to a camp site in Waitangi known as “Tent City” to prepare for a pageant led by the world’s largest ceremonial waka, Ngātokimatawhaorua. It’s the 185th anniversary of the signing of Te Tiriti and 85 years since the launch of Ngātoki. NZ Herald journalist Julia Gabel spent four nights at the camp watching paddlers prepare for an event 20,000 people come out to see.

In a field 10 minutes drive from the Treaty Grounds, one hundred men, women and children stand in formation.

At a single-syllable call from their leader, the men drop to a knee and everybody chants.

Ka tū te ihiihi, ka tū te wanawana.

Around the corner, 50 people wait in two straight lines holding hoe (paddles).

It’s 10pm and there is no lighting. The only thing alerting you to their presence are their chants and the flicker of the white tips of their hoe in the night, like a school of bait fish on the surface of the water.

This is Tent City, a camp site near Paihia for the kaihoe paddling in the Waitangi waka pageant. Kaihoe from across New Zealand come here with their families in the week prior to the country’s national day.

The camp started in the 1970s. There was a time when 100 people came to paddle one waka. But today, there are more than 1000 people staying at Tent City and 25 waka, including crews from around Tai Tokerau, Te Arawa, Tauranga Moana and Ngāti Whātua.

Tent City, a camp site near Paihia for the kaihoe paddling in the Waitangi waka pageant. Photo / Julia Gabel

The camp receives a mix of Government funding and donations from iwi. It’s run by three men, my uncle Robert Gabel, Joe Conrad and Martin Bercic.

My uncle tells me everyone who wants to paddle is welcome at Tent City.

“It gives our young people an opportunity to connect with their culture. For some people, it may be the only time in the year they connect with te ao Māori.”

He has brought his kids here since they were very young. This time, he is here with his 13 grandchildren who all paddle.

Days begin early at Tent City. Kaihoe are practising in the field before the dew from the night before has dissipated.

A group are chanting the same words over and over, lifting their hoe up and down.

To a novice eye, it looks perfect – but the trainer yells “stop”, spotting the subtle imperfections most of us can’t see.

He yells stop again and the whole group is directed to do push-ups. And then they go again.

Kaihoe practise in the field. Photo / Julia Gabel

My young nieces, Hineraukura and Christine, are painting their family waka, meticulously applying tape and refreshing the black and red coating.

Hineraukura’s father and my cousin, Rutene Gabel, is a camp leader. He has been coming to Tent City since he was 4.

He now brings his four daughters so they can experience what he did as a child.

“I want them to be part of a kaupapa where they can learn the customs and knowledge of their ancestors in a space where their language is spoken naturally and where tikanga is the norm.

“They get to meet people and other rangatahi of all different backgrounds and they also have the opportunity to develop different skills through waka, whether that’s being part of a crew, or learning how to steer or lead the waka.”

Hineraukura Gabel paints her family waka at Tent City near Paihia. Photo / Julia Gabel

Robert Gabel painting the family waka ahead of Waitangi Day. Photo / Julia Gabel

Breakfast is from 7am-8am, often a choice of cereals and meat with toast. Meals are eaten in the wharekai tent just like a marae.

Here, everyone eats, sleeps, trains, cleans, sings and prays together. As Kylie Simeon, a weaver by trade, reminds me: Māori are communal people.

“We do everything together. Here, nobody is telling you you are too Māori or you can’t be Māori, you just are and that’s what I like about it.”

Simeon is here to help in the kitchen. Her commitment to the kaupapa gets her up at 5am and keeps her up, sometimes, until 2am.

“Sometimes we don’t know if we are having 200 people or 600 people [to feed].

“Practically we are winging it. If it works out, yay. If it doesn’t work out and we don’t have enough kai, well we are in there trying to make some more.”

'Sometimes we don’t know if we are having 200 people or 600 people.' Photo / Julia Gabel

After breakfast, it’s straight on to cooking lunch, and then dinner and dessert. Once the camp is fed for the day, the kitchen team of sometimes five, sometimes 20, prep meat for the next day and process the koha (donated) kai.

“Last night we got a whole heap of kina. We got 15 bins of snapper, Te Rarawa made a koha kai today of hua rākau [fruit] and meat and all sorts.”

I met Simeon while she was weaving flax into threaded rope to hang on the back of the waka for the procession. She came to the camp because she wanted to show her kids the work involved in being in a waka crew.

Flax is threaded into rope to hang on the back of the waka for the procession. Photo / Julia Gabel

Weavers at work. Photo / Julia Gabel

“They think you come here and you paddle a waka, and everything’s cool, but ... you’re going to be tired on Friday, I’m telling you now. I want them to know what it is really like to be on the ground, how much hard work it is.”

Days end at Tent City with a karakia, waiata and hymns. Camp leaders share their knowledge to inspire the tired kaihoe to keep going until the big day.

There are 15 hot showers and phone charging stations. But the proper bathrooms in the kitchen block are for kaumātua and kuia only. “So if you haven’t got grey hair, go over there,” one leader says, pointing at the portaloos and portable shower block.

Dishes are done in an outdoor station. I meet a couple who have travelled from the Netherlands to be here for the procession.

Another man on drying duty tells me he comes here every year to reset for the year ahead.

Another has been coming here since the 70s and today has three generations of his family in the camp.

The dishes station at Tent City. Photo / Julia Gabel

The hoe, ready for the waka pageant. Photo / Julia Gabel

It’s 11pm on the eve of the big day and a supply line of volunteers are making 700 sandwiches for the paddlers’ lunch tomorrow.

I fall asleep listening to someone singing waiata at a camp nearby. It feels like the night before Christmas, even though I am not paddling.

I have come to realise that as much as this place provides a sense of whānau and aroha, the hard work that goes into the waka pageantry is a gift to the many thousands who come to watch.

The big day starts before dawn to get everybody and their waka down to the grounds on time.

On the beach in front of Te Tii Marae, hundreds of men, women and children stand in formation.

At a single-syllable call from their leader, they let out an almighty “hi!”

Waka ceremony at Waitangi. Photo / Dean Purcell

The paddlers get ready. Photo / Dean Purcell

Waka and paddlers on the water. Photo / Dean Purcell

It is the type of unified sound that takes hours of practice to perfect. The paddlers perform a mass haka to the crowds. As they move to their waka, a line of women in long dresses stand in the shallows.

As the waka move away, they karanga.

A man standing next to me on the beach tells me how he desperately wants to be involved. He says he felt a strong urge inside him to join the haka, to grab a hoe and paddle.

He paddled on Ngātoki on Waitangi Day when he was 10.

Fifty years later, he yearns for that feeling once again.

The feeling of being connected.

Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.

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