Ma¯ori name sought for Abel Tasman

The country’s most popular national park should also have a Ma¯ ori name, says the author of a new book.

Acclaimed conservationist Philip Simpson has suggested To¯taranui National Park as an alternate name for the 23,000ha Abel Tasman National Park, which has one of the country’s Great Walks along its spectacular coastline.

Simpson, a botanist based in Golden Bay, has written a painstaking natural and cultural history of the park, Down the Bay, that will be launched this week. He said a Ma¯ ori name was overdue and would ‘‘redress the balance’’ lacking in the park despite its long history of iwi settlement.

Only last year – to mark the 375th anniversary of the encounter between Dutch explorer Abel Tasman and Ma¯ ori in Golden Bay in 1642 – were Ma¯ ori carved pou installed in the park with explanations of the ancestral connections.

Simpson said To¯ taranui would be appropriate because the area was named by Ma¯ ori after a rare stand of totara trees near the popular beach of the same name at the northern end of the park. The woman who drove the park’s creation in 1942, Nelson’s Perrine Moncrieff, was also motivated by the lowland bush near To¯ taranui.

In his book, Simpson says the Abel Tasman name was suggested by the then Nelson Conservator of Forests, Herbert ‘‘Hub’’ Roche. The link with Tasman was also considered a political gesture of goodwill with World War II ally the Netherlands.

Moncrieff favoured Tasman National Park but the New Zealand Geographic Board secretary of the time said this would be confusing because Tasman was already widely used.

Other suggestions were Heemskerck, after one of Tasman’s ships, and Janszoon, Tasman’s middle name. There were also some Ma¯ori suggestions, such as Tonga, after the island in the middle of the park, or Tumatako¯ kiri, the long-lost iwi in residence when Tasman arrived.

Ro¯ pata Taylor, a general manager with Nelson-based Ma¯ori business development company Wakatu Incorporation, said local iwi had never stopped referring to features in the park by their original names. Te Tai Tapu, for example, was the name for the park’s coastline.

He said there was no one overall name for the area contained in the park, which was an arbitrary creation.

Taylor said the tribal memory was that Moncrieff had promised consultation about the name with iwi, but failed to do so and ‘‘erroneously communicated to the Crown that she had gained our support to name our ancestral lands after a foreigner. We would never agree to this’’.

Abel Tasman had no connection with the land in the park, other than sailing past it, he said.

Iwi had been focused on establishing a visible presence in the park and on its restoration, Taylor said. But while there had been no discussion yet about pushing for a Ma¯ori name, it would be an interesting exercise.

He quite liked the To¯ taranui suggestion, but said it was hard to find a name relevant to the park’s expanse, spanning Marahau to Wainui.