Replica of Endeavour won’t be calling in at Mangonui
Dover Samuels: We’ll have it
An Australian-based replica of Captain James Cook’s Endeavour will not be calling at Mangonui as originally planned as part of Tuia 250, a national commemoration of 250 years since Cook’s first encounter with Ma¯ori in 1769.
The decision was made in response to objections from Nga¯ti Kahu, whose chief executive Anahera Herbert-Graves described Cook as a barbarian, and said the Ministry of Culture and Heritage had not consulted the iwi before including Mangonui in the list of destinations.
“They never approached Nga¯ti Kahu. They were approached by a local tauiwi organisation and were invited to come into our rohe. I don’t think it occurred to them to contact Nga¯ti Kahu,” she said.
“About four or five months ago we saw the programme come out. They were going to land in Mangonui, inside Tokerau, and we put it back to the mana whenua hapu¯. The three hapu¯ were very strong in their opposition. They said no way Jose. I was instructed to let the ministry know, which I did.”
The Ministry of Culture and Heritage has since removed Mangonui from the programme, which begins in Gisborne on October 5. The flotilla will arrive in the Bay of Islands on November 7.
Ms Herbert-Graves said she also objected to Ma¯ori stories being used to promote myths that colonisation was invited, welcomed and beneficial.
“Cook was a naval officer on a naval vessel with instructions to claim land wherever he could. They were building an empire. Under the doctrine of discovery you could do whatever you wanted to remove people’s control of the land,” she said.
Cook’s contemporary, French explorer Jean Francois Marie de Surville, did call into Doubtless Bay in 1769, just days after Cook sailed by in the other direction. Relations with Ma¯ori were cordial at first, but de Surville responded to the theft of a small boat by kidnapping the chief Ranginui, who died aboard the St Jean Baptiste several months later.
One of the St Jean Baptiste’s anchors, one of three that were abandoned when a storm threatened to drive the ship on to rocks, is displayed in Kaitaia’s museum.
Cook never landed at Mangonui — he sailed past, recording in his journal what was ‘doubtless a bay,’ but Tamsin Evans, deputy chief executive of the Ministry of Culture and Heritage, said it had been included as a Tuia 250 destination because it was the home of master navigator and waka-builder the late Sir Hekenukumai Busby. The ministry had thought it had sufficient iwi support, after talking with an iwi representative.
“I think the ministry engaged with a small community organisation, the Doubtless Bay Promotions Trust, on which there was somebody in an iwi liaison role,” she said.
“It was felt sufficient that through the promotions trust we had a wider engagement with the community, which included someone we believed was liaising with iwi.”
While there had been some opposition to the voyage, most communities wanted to take part.
“We always knew that Tuia would cause some mixed responses. We fully appreciate the mamae and the hurt that exists very strongly still in some communities. Our job is to open the books, let’s look at all the history, and let’s start to talk about this,” Ms Evans said.
Ms Herbert-Graves said Cook had never landed in the Nga¯ti Kahu rohe.
“It’s a fiction for him to ‘re-visit’ us because he never came,” she said. “He was a barbarian. Wherever he went, like most people of the time of imperial expansion, there were murders, there were abductions, there were rapes, and just a lot of bad outcomes for the indigenous people.
“He didn’t discover anything down here, and we object to Tuia 250 using euphemisms like ‘encounters’ and ‘meetings’ to disguise what were actually invasions.”
Gisborne iwi Rongowhakaata sees the commemoration as an opportunity to ensure that stories of the first European encounter with Ma¯ori in Tu¯ranganui a¯ Kiwa are told from a tangata whenua Former Ma¯ ori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels says the Endeavour is welcome to drop anchor at the Cavalli Islands.
Mr Samuels said his ancestors had paddled out to Cook’s ship in 1769 with a “gift of friendship”, araara (trevally), prompting the explorer to name the place where the encounter occurred the Cavalli Islands.
He accepted that some coastal iwi had negative experiences with Cook, and he understood they wouldn’t welcome the replica, and the same would be true if he had arrived at Matauri Bay with cannons blazing, “but it’s part of our whakapapa, our history. We should embrace it with the good and the bad.”
“lens”. Rongowhakaata Trust general manager Amohaere Houkamau told RNZ last year that Tuia 250 would give the iwi a platform to tell their story, and seek an apology for the atrocities when Cook arrived.