Desecration of Iwi sites

merlin -perhaps if you bothered to check some of that language using an online translator, it might not be that foreign.....and seeing as this is a new zealand site, why should maori have to translate anything? would you translate native american words if they were on a site local to your area? please try and be a little less ethnocentric in your comments :)

Good luck! If I was in Wgtn I'd join in. I know there is Maori anger over the same issue in parts of Auckland - for instance, in the southeast, where the Manukau City Council has allowed some wealthy people to build big houses on pa sites along the Hauraki coast.

Can I just say that not all pakehas go about desecrating cultural sites or supporting such practices. I presume you had developers etc particularly in mind when you used that word, but it's also how I identify myself so I don't like being lumped in with the likes of them. I saw the site before it was covered by the archaeologists and I feel lucky and privileged to have done so. I would like to see it preserved rather than built upon, but given the extremely developer friendly approach taken by this council, realistically I cannot see this happening. Good luck with any occupation though.

Lets be clear here, there is excavation going on, and then they will pile a building over the top of it. I think this site is significant to all Wellingtonians - and should be preserved as such, at least any destruction of the site shouldn't be driven by profit.

I think there is a quite a bit of typical oversensitivity going on here, which is ignoring the obvious potential loss of history that is happening right under our noses.

"Pakeha, in their desire to put profit before the rights of iwi".

isn't this an issue more about capitalism than culture? capitalism will always subordinate genuine human needs to the profit motive. plenty of maori elites complicit in just that.

and after yous got allthat stuff whos gonna grab it,we need we want freebies? how much do the wastrels want now?the self sufficient warriors can bring the beer and the smokes? those on the dole and not looking for work will still be on the hand outs?who cares about an old maori longdrop?

Kia Ora Morrie me koutou ma

Much of the environs of wellington particularly the te aro area clearly shows in the writings, commentaries, paintings and sketches by earlier peoples some settlers and some not that there were other tribes here as well. This was well before the amiowhenua runga whenua expedition of 1817 - 1819 which is the expedition that included nga puhi, te ati awa or ngati awa, taranaki whanui te roroa, ngatï whätua, terarawa and others where they encircled the land. this precipitated the migration for a time into the area by mainly taranaki tribes, they didn’t stay long, however some did. If Ngätata I te rangi was here and that’s what you base your claims on then so was te kaeaea, tuwhare, rangihaeata, hongi hika, waikato, te wai-wera as well as Te rauparaha and others. They were a collective of ariki who had volunteered at the behest of the ariki-tänga or the united tribes or the te whakaputanga o nga hapu o 1835 to mirimiri the land. The taiopuru in 1847 was waikato tairea te whareherehere he led the expedition. Te Rangi Topeora the sister to Te rauparaha also had a stint at being the taiopuru. The amiowhenua was ratified by the confederated tribes in Waitangi and from there the ones who came to the Te whanganui a tara area were visitors and have been that ever since. Prior to that the collective tribes were known as the te kohuiarau and each rohe had its own te whakaminenga, or it was a collective o nga hapü o te whanga nui a tara, so what you say does not add up, it lacks crucial details such as who had mana whenua, was it the kohuiarau, the te whanganui a tara whakaminenga or the päkehä (they weren’t even here in enough numbers to warrant our being pushed around by them) and where exactly ngätata I te rangi and his son witako had their whare can not be clearly shown and no amount of asserting it will make it any clearer so until we have an archaeological examination of the site there will not be any satisfaction not on my part or on the part of all the other disenfranchised Iwi in the area. Check this Iwi source Hohepa Te Rake (1926) Iwi symbolism.

Doing an extensive archaeological examination of the site of course with indigenous archaeologists will go a long way towards giving us the evidence that we need to show not only what the material and technological cultural practises of our people were at the time, it will also show us maybe who the land owners were. I’m suggesting that it belonged to the whakaminenga, and that te äti awa and the other three named tribes of this area are the self asserted kaitiaki of the land, among their role as kaitiaki is to care for the rest of the iwi who are from te upoko o te ika, not to disenfranchise them as the päkehä require. A stratified site examination has to be done to determine these pertinent questions, such as who was there/here then before we will be satisfied by the council and the käwana theory. A site stratification methodology would help in this regard as it could go down thirty feet or however far we determine it to go, as ten inches could represent one generation, this way we will be able to look back into the 12th century and earlier thus adding to the knowledge of this area and of our people and how they lived, which on many fronts we seriously lack conclusive documented evidence of. But if what I think you are trying to imply in this instance is that our rights as the tangata whenua of this area have been extinguished by te ati awa, then that is incorrect. So for all intents and purposes and so as not to offend the tenths trust, te ati awa or anyone, having the site examined by indigenous Iwi archaeologists at this point is the only way to assure the people.

Others iwi were there then too (Best: 1916: 45-67) some came later (Ballara: 1987). Where the central business district is, Lambton quay, kaiwharawhara, jervois quay etc., are many marae, three major marae spring to mind these were huge marae covering the entire wellington city central business district, up te aro street, brooklyn hill, karori, mt vic, newtown, island bay rongotai etc. The te aro pa was the principal marae at the time what with its easy access to the water and its huge beach for the thousands of waka the whakaminenga had at its command. So by then I doubt whether in the short time te ati awa were in the area after the te amiowhenua expedition that they could have ruled the area by 1839, that is against tikanga. That is unless they want to admit to some genocidal practices which can even today under international court of justice rules not be precluded as evidence in a claim of genocide from those times by other people. An account which I seriously do not believe happened anyway as we only have the evidence of some highly imaginative pakeha who wanted all the natives rounded up and shot, which the settlers of the time duly set about doing in the upper south island. Ngati Tama could claim mana whenua rights at te aro as much as te ati awa or to those that you state can, even our ancestors Rangitane could lay claim to the same area, in fact if we did a stratified examination we would proabaly find evidence of them more than anyone else. So when we see a desecration of our ancestral lands being perpetrated in front of our very eyes we don’t get hoha we try to get even.

There has never been any evidence found to date that conclusively proves that those huts were built by te ati awa alone, nor that the rest of the site, which has been conveniently covered over with 2005 sand, does not have evidence that conclusively proves that there are any artefacts that could be of interest to us. It would seem much more feasible that the huts could have been built by the hundreds of other Iwi and hapu that were here at the time. The amounts of people living on the site and in the te aro environs if you discount pakeha evidence and search out Iwi sources like Hohepa Te Rake, David Simmons, and others that there were other tribes resident in the te aro region, in fact there were hundreds of different Iwi groups, hapu, whanau, individuals and whangai living here. Also it is well evidenced that Iwi society was a highly developed anarchist society, therefore the land the resources of the land belonged to everyone or to the local whakaminenga never to individuals people, tribes Iwi hapu or whanau. The only evidence to show that the land belonged to taranaki whanui exclusively applies if you go along with the colonial governments claims, that the land belonged to terauparaha and was secured by him to te ati awa and others who kept a kaitangata siege of the land launched from kapiti for close to thirty years, just before wakefield illegally bought the land thereby confirming your claims to the land, and only because te ati awa, ngati toa, raukawa ruanui and ngati tama people were there to receive the goods wakefield left on the beach all the rest of the tribes in the area did not want anything to do with the perapatetic pakeha.

Engari, that is not the issue here, it just seems ludicrous that because these sacred sites, and for many of us thats exactly what this refers to, a "sacred Iwi site" can be callously disregarded not only by the kaitiaki of the land te ati awa or the tenths trust or whoever, the land developers and the city council in approving the resource consents. This will destroy any evidence of our existence in this part of the country and it will destroy our chance for us to test the tenths trusts theory, or to test any theory as to who the land belongs to. It will even destroy any chance of us finding artefacts of interest to us, these could be adzes, hair ties, pins, utensils, fish-hooks whatever, these will be lost if we allow this blatant abuse of sacred Iwi sites to go unchallenged. Also, I do not trust the archaeologists that are presently swarming over wellington building sites, how do we know they are not withholding evidence from the bypass sites and other building sites all around the city, and what artefacts have they shoved under the carpet so as to not delay theie bosses building projects. What have they left lurking below the surface never to be seen by us its children, they are being paid by the developers surely that’s a conflict of interest. So we want to know who was there before your tupuna, and who was there before my tupuna, also we want to know anything else of that nature that can be found at the site, because ignorance is not bliss. Case study: Archaeologists in Iraq in the 1930's uncovered the city of Nineveh after the indigenous people demanded that the developers get off some land, where they had uncovered some old workers huts, so the developers archaeologists were sent away and the indigenous archaeologists were bought in, it took them thirty years to fully excavate the site but they got to the main discovery of the find the thousands of papyrus manuscripts that were found in the libraries of ninevah. These were written in such an ancient language that even today they have not been translated. This find may be of a similar magnitude, how will we know if we do not take this chance to see what may have existed on the site, to me it is craziness not to investigate, and the tenths trust should provide us with the means to do this and to assist us if we have to launch an occupation of the site. So as soon as we are satisfied we will persist in occuppying any sites which may contain evidence of our people, so what do say you te ati awa me nga tangata whenua, shall we examine the site I’m in are you, never mind trying to sweep this under the carpet.

Geoffrey Karena

i send my tautoko wano and hope to come in person i was at the ngawha protest it is all about money it doesnt matter what we do or what our tupunas did in the past they will never admit their wrong so go hard wano kia kaha i will remember you all and our wano protesting all over aotearoa in my prayers god bless us all and our beautiful country aotearoa