The tiny island that took on the world

Six elderly Ma¯ori leaders are in the battle of a lifetime, staring down powerful opponents ranging from the Crown to the fishing industry, in a bid to restore and protect their island home following the years of neglect and the environmental degradation

When he was a kid, Umuhuri Matehaere was allowed to visit mainland New Zealand once a year – as a treat.

‘‘We would buy ice-cream, lollies, school uniforms and maybe see a film at the theatre,’’ he recalls.

‘‘It was like a foreign place to us. We had no idea how they did things there. We ate with our hands – we did not even know what a knife and fork was, we didn’t know how to use a cup and saucer, we would pour hot tea into the saucer to cool it down. No-one knew any different.’’

Matehaere was born on Motiti Island, 22km off the Tauranga coast, in 1943. At that time, he lived among a population of about 150.

The community was mainly clustered around Te Karioi pa¯ , which has been the island’s ‘hub’ since the mid 19th century. On one side of the main thoroughfare, houses were green-roofed – the residents members of the Ratana church. On the other side, those of Anglican faith lived in homes with red roofs.

‘‘Back then, life on Motiti was an existence of its own, with virtually no contact with the outside world: no telephone, no radio, no television,’’ Matehaere says.

When they weren’t at school, the children did chores and helped with farming.

From the 1960s, life on Motiti began to change. Black rot infected the ku¯ mara harvest, green caterpillars attacked the maize fields and farming quickly became unprofitable.

‘‘The migration to the mainland began because people saw no future on the island. Those that were left were mainly retirees, who could not manage the workload,’’ Matehaere explains.

Today, the island has around 30 permanent residents, with a dozen children, and most still live close to Karioi. Many of the properties are holiday homes, with owners visiting their ancestral land a couple of times a year.

The once thriving arable land is now fallow, covered in waist-high fennel stalks. Well-worn paths are mud-churned tracks, passable by only the sturdiest four-wheel drives. The main thoroughfare – pitted with steep drop-offs and boulders – runs from the airstrip, past homesteads, a tiny church, marae and down to Wairanaki Beach.