Lifelong fight against a great injustice
To understand Te Rira Puketapu you have to understand the way Te ti Awa have been treated by the Crown.
Born in April 1939, Puketapu died last week, aged 84, and is survived by his wife, Potiki Amoe (Patsy). Known universally as Teri, he grew up in the Lower Hutt suburb of Waiwhetū, on a small farm near the Awamutu Stream.
In 1943, the Government decided it wanted his family land, along with land belonging to 17 other Māori families, for a housing development.
A memo written by an official at the Ministry of Housing in 1940 stated an alternative site had been secured nearby, but the sections owned by Te
ti Awa members were ‘‘more favourably situated’’.
The real motive was made clear when that same official wrote, ‘‘the segregating of the natives in one locality is not desirable, as it is considered that a better standard of living and upkeep of the security would be obtained if the residences to be occupied by the natives were scattered over the whole block.’’
In other words, he did not want Māori living together in their traditional tribal mode. It was racism at its worst.
Te ti Awa landowners were understandably grumpy, but were eventually forced to accept compensation of £47,000. To add injury to insult, much of the money was then taken by the council to cover outstanding rates.
Although the government seized the land in 1943, life continued as normal for Puketapu until his whānau moved from their house five years later to a state-owned rental in Puketapu Grove, near the marae.
Like many of their neighbours, the family eventually bought their state house under a tribal trust, covering 23 homes in the street under one mortgage, for which an interest rate of 17% was charged. The mortgage was finally paid off in 2005.
Half of the forcibly taken land has never been used for housing. Instead, it was used to store military vehicles in World War II. It was then leased to the council and then transferred to council ownership in 1979. The council turned it into Te Whiti Park, which is now used for community sport. Two large sections were sold to churches.
I first got to know Teri in the early 1990s covering the civic round. His areas of interest included housing, the continued pollution of the Waiwhetū Stream and funding for the marae.
As a journalist with an interest in history, I quickly realised he was a knowledgeable source of information and someone who could be relied on for informed comment.
Looking back at my stories I have some regrets. Although I sometimes hinted at the reasons Puketapu took such a passionate interest in the area, I never spelt out the size of the injustice that had been done to mana whenua and his family in particular. In 2021, a colleague, Brittany Keogh, put the story together as part of Stuff’s Pou Tiaki project.
The truth is that Puketapu had every reason to be angry. The council returned only a small section of the land to Te ti Awa. Eventually a Treaty of Waitangi claim would be successful, but it did not directly involve the return of land wrongly confiscated.
As Te ti Awa kaumātua, Puketapu never stopped advocating for his people and keeping the memory of the disgraceful behaviour of the Crown and council alive.
The name Puketapu has long had prominence in the Hutt Valley. In 1935 his father, Ihaia, was a founding member of the first Labour government’s Māori advisory committee. His brother Ihakara Puketapu, known as Kara, was Secretary of Māori Affairs and a sister, Erenora Puketapu-Hetet, was a noted weaver and author.
In the 1950s, Teri qualified as a carpenter putting his skills to use. The wharenui was his first building job and he took it on with pride and honour. It was his first act of service to his iwi, Te Ati Awa nō Runga-i-te
Rangi. Building the wharenui Arohanui ki te Tangata was like entering into a lifelong relationship with a human where he lovingly took care of and nurtured the building as its kaitiaki, providing his commitment of manaakitanga.
Later he became a city councillor and, incredibly, the first Māori elected in Lower Hutt. In 1992, when he lost his council seat, the then mayor, Glen Evans, paid him a fitting tribute.
‘‘He is a man of great mana in the community, a man of wisdom, a man of strength and a man who has the respect of all who worked with him.’’
Over the next 30 years he would continue to lobby the council, especially about the Waiwhetū Stream. For decades the council turned a blind eye to the pollution in the stream, which had been a source of food for the Puketapu clan.
‘‘When I was 10, we relied on the stream. Coming from a family of 10 we needed the watercress and eels to put food on the table,’’ he said in 2016.
The council continues to treat the stream as an overflow for treated¯A effluent from the Seaview wastewater treatment plant.
Last year, he spoke about the unusual cluster of military street names near the marae.¯A After the confiscation of his land, the government had tried to give all the streets in the subdivision English names. Puketapu’s family had had to fight¯toAget a handful of Māori names near the marae.
‘‘Why have all these military names in and around the land they took from us? It does rankle a bit with me.’’
Despite all the provocation from the Crown, rankle was about as angry as Teri ever got. Speaking at his funeral on Monday, Lower Hutt mayor Campbell Barry summed up his life well.
‘‘Every day throughout his life, he strived for better – for Māori, better for our environment, and better for all our people here in Te Awakairangi . . . he was relentless in this pursuit.’’
‘‘The segregating of the natives in one locality is not desirable.’’ Ministry of Housing official in the 1940s