Unique migration story to be revealed
Leading into our 100th edition of Tihei Kahungunu, we have introduced Pa¯ mai to¯ reo! a one-page chronicle of the journeys of the Waka Takitimu and its origins from Te Moananui a Kiwa and its steady migration over 300 years to its eventual resting place in Te Waipounamu, Aotearoa.
Previous to the Takitimu voyage however, we can trace our whakapapa through Polynesia into Melanesia through Micronesia into Austronesia from our origins in Asia. There is an archaeological memory of Ma¯ ori being in China, but the cultural memory doesn’t begin until Taiwan.
I have been lucky to visit these places, talk to experts in their fields and I have knitted the journey together with historians in the Pacific and our own Ma¯ ori experts who took me under their wing.
I learned from people such as Uncle Wi, Uncle Taanga, Uncle Charlie and others who honed my instincts around whakapapa and history.
Ta¯ Pita Sharples, first chairman of Nga¯ ti Kahungunu, was an anthropologist who studied Ma¯ ori linguistics through the Pacific into the
Solomon Islands and further back to the Islands of Palau and Guam.
Dr Pat Hohepa has studied our Ma¯ ori language, tracing it all the way back to Taiwan while Dr Adele Whyte studied the whakapapa of 70 Ma¯ ori women back to Taiwan.
Nathan Rarere and others have studied the sailing traditions and the voyaging waka back into Indonesia, the Philippines and Taiwan while others studied Ta¯ moko and mau ra¯ kau all the way back to Taiwan.
I have also observed long houses or wharenui throughout Asia with decorated ridge poles not unlike our tahuhu.
Over the next 12 months, (just how I’ve learnt most of this information), this unique migration of our people will unfold as I share what I’ve learned with you.
is Nga¯ ti Kahungunu Iwi Incorporated
Chairman