WILDLIFE
A thousand years ago, before the arrival of humans, the islands now known as New Zealand were abundant with bird and marine life. The only endemic land mammals were small bats that inhabited the thick, native forests. The arrival of early Polynesian settlers was the first of many waves of invasive species – especially the Polynesian rat (kiore) and Polynesian dog (kuri) – that would severely degrade the unique biodiversity of the islands. Humans quickly hunted the legendary flightless moa to extinction, and the loss of this primary prey soon also saw the demise of the Haast’s eagle (the largest raptor ever known to have lived).
Popular contemporary birds include the famously elusive kiwi, as well as the attractive fantail (pīwakawaka) and highly vocal tui, distinguishable by the bright white tuft under the throat. The country is also home to the tuatara, a genetically unique species of reptile that is often known as a ‘living fossil’ due to the death of all common ancestors millions of years ago. These animals now share the landscape with a wide variety of intentionally-oraccidentally released foreign species, everything from predatory rodents such as rats and possums, to early hunting targets such as wild pigs or deer.
NAME CHANGES
There has certainly been significant memorialisation occurring throughout the year in Gisborne, but promoting very different voices than memorials from the past. Cook’s obelisk has recently been joined by a new structure: a large circle of tukatuka panels. Utilising a distinctive Māori method of building homes – as well as the canoes that first carried Polynesian migrants to Aotearoa – the structure was designed by Nick Tupara, a Ngāti Oneone artist. It requires two people to weave the panels together, passing the threads back-and-forth. It’s one of many ways he and other artists are using Tuia 250 to embrace Māori heritage, and wrestle back the narrative surrounding this place. Possibly the most significant recent memorialisation event in Gisborne occurred back at the start of the year. In 1769, upon abandoning this first bay, Cook recorded in his diary: ‘I have named [it] Poverty Bay, because it afforded us no one thing we wanted’. As easily as that, Cook had bestowed upon the coastline a new name: Poverty Bay. And so it would remain, recorded and reproduced in official documents for nearly 250 years. But the bay already had a name: Turanganuia-Kiwa,
after the great Polynesian voyager Kiwa. And so a few years ago, with the anniversary looming, schoolchildren from the local Kaiti school began a campaign, lobbying Gisborne council to change the bay’s name back to this pre-Cook identification.
‘They presented me with a petition,’ explains Meng Foon, until recently Gisborne’s mayor. ‘We said, fair enough, this is the children’s future. Why don’t we actually start the process of changing the name?’
Unsure what the most appropriate step would be, a long consultation with the community followed, with hundreds of letters and petitions being delivered, arguing their case towards one of the options. ‘There was no compelling reason why we should go with one or the other,’ concluded Foon, ‘so we stuck with Tūranganuia-Kiwa first, acknowledging the indigenous people, the tangata whenua [‘people of the land’] of our place, but also continued with Poverty Bay as a dual name.’
After requesting approval for a name change with the New Zealand Geographic Board (NZGB), which conducted its own consultations, at the start of the year Minister for Land Information Eugenie Sage officially confirmed that Poverty Bay would henceforth be known as Turanganui-a-Kiwa/Poverty Bay. While not universally accepted, especially among some Pākehā (New Zealanders of European ethnicity), the change has been broadly well received, according to Foon. ‘I dare say that in a few years time, “Poverty Bay” won’t even exist,’ he muses.
A subtle change of name may appear to be merely symbolic, but Tupara believes this has been vital for truly processing the events of (and after) 1769.
‘Probably after 250 years I think, maybe it’s time for a bit of discussion,’ he says with a laugh. ‘We’ve decided as a community to change the name, and that gives me some hope that people are prepared to engage in the discussion of what occurred back then, so that we can put in place things to help us go forward from here.’
DUE CONSIDERATION
Given its unique cultural heritage and symbolic geography, the implementation of Turanganui-aKiwa/Poverty Bay has been a particularly high-profile example of Māori names being officially reintroduced into New Zealand. But it’s certainly not alone. Every year, the NZGB meets to discuss proposed changes to settlements and geological features across the country (including small islands and undersea features).
In a typical year, the NZGB will review and rule on around 500 cases, explains Wendy Shaw, secretary of NZGB. ‘For any sort of proposal, either to assign a new name, or change an existing name, the board will always consider whether there is an existing Māori name that was in place for that particular feature or place,’ she outlines. ‘If there is, it’s got a very strong requirement to restore that name.’
The board then has the freedom to decide on the appropriateness of both existing and traditional names, and therefore whether existing names should be replaced, if they should stay the same, or – as with Turanganui-a-Kiwa/Poverty Bay – if there should be a dual name. Ultimately, the NZGB has a duty to give names dating prior to the arrival of Captain Cook the opportunity to become part of the country’s official cartographic landscape. ‘Our legislation is quite specific about encouraging the use of original Māori place names,’ says Shaw. ‘And you can only do that by having them on the official maps and charts, otherwise people won’t know about them.’
The 250th anniversary also got the NZGB thinking about the legacy of Cook. To mark the occasion, it conducted the first full count of places and features in New Zealand named by Cook on his various voyages, coming to a final tally of 235. Now, instead of simply responding to individual proposals for name changes as submitted by organisations, councils, or the general public, it is able to go through the list, deciding upon the best course of action for each name. ‘What can we do with Cook names?’ asks Shaw. ‘We can make them official if they’re not, or alter them to dual names where original Māori names exist, or change the name outright to the original Māori name, if there is enough support for that.’
The intention is to broaden knowledge about these 235 names, to tell the full stories behind them, so that the reasons behind the names become common knowledge. ‘Many people don’t know that Wet Jacket Arm [in Fiordland, in the southwest of the South Island] was because as they rowed up there, it started to rain and they got all wet,’ explains Show by way of example. The story behind each Cook-named place has also been uploaded to Google Earth, allowing anyone to learn the reasoning and stories behind each of the names he allocated to features around the country.
Not all Cook-Māori encounters were as antagonistic as those that took place in Turanganui-a-Kiwa. On 3 November 1769, on the northwest Coromandel peninsular, east of contemporary Auckland, Cook pulled into another large bay. Here he intended to undertake an important task he had been set prior to his departure from England, to chart the course of Mercury across the sun. The observation was a success, and the harbour where it had taken place
was duly named in the event’s honour: Mercury Bay. However, to local iwi (Ngāti Hei), ‘Mercury Bay’ had always been known as Te Whanganui A Hei (‘The Great Bay of Hei’, after another ancestral voyager,
Hei, who journeyed from Rarotonga in the modernday Cook Islands in the 1300s). But here there is no clamour for a name change. Locals use both names interchangeably, without any of the baggage in Gisborne, according to Rebecca Cox, director of Mercury Bay Museum. Admittedly ‘mercury’ doesn’t have the same negative associations as the word ‘poverty’, but for Cox, it all comes down to the way history has remembered the Cook encounters in this part of the country.
‘I think it is quite a positive thing here in Mercury Bay,’ she says. ‘From my point of view it is, and from the Māori point of view as well, it’s still quite a positive thing. He was well revered when he was here, the iwi realised that he had that mana (authority).’
This more positive relationship is perhaps why, despite originally giving the name ‘Oyster river’ to the place where the Endeavour first weighed anchor, Cook later amended his notes and recorded the name as Purangi, the Māori name for it.
Mercury Bay illustrates the importance of local histories in the larger narrative of a complex national story such as the arrival of Captain Cook (and the many Europeans who followed). As Cox tells it, instead of the sombre way most of the Tuia 250 events are simply acknowledging the Cook landings, in Mercury Bay it is almost a celebration. Indeed, the 12 days that the Endeavour spent moored in the bay are being amplified through a special exhibit in the museum named ‘Twelve Days 1769’, celebrating the events of those famous dozen sunrises and sunsets when Cook and his crew were present.
In this way, for the residents of Mercury Bay, the arrival of Cook was less a particular moment in history when colonialism arrived on the shores of
Aotearoa, but instead one of many times over the past thousand years or so when ocean voyagers have stopped in this place and left their mark in one way or another. From Kupe, whose wife Kuramarotini came up with the name Aotearoa, to Hei, to Tupaia on board the Endeavour, this has repeatedly become an important stopping point for voyagers exploring the South Pacific. ‘Those three, Kupe, Hei and Tupaia – along with Cook – has made Mercury Bay quite a navigator’s point,’ enthuses Cox.
TALKING POINTS
Back in Gisborne, Nick Tupara wonders aloud whether Tuia 250, instead of replicating the one-sided party atmosphere of 50 years ago, celebrating historical events which for so many are still a source of great pain, can now be an opportunity for discussion, for reflection, and for telling the other side of a famous story.
‘I look forward to celebrating those that haven’t been celebrated before, the other characters that stood on this beach on the day these historical events occurred,’ he says as we watch one of the huge tankers that frequent modern Gisborne slowly pulling in to dock. ‘Ones that you can’t Google and find out information about. Who were they? What were they thinking? Where did they fit into their own communities? I think it’s an opportunity for some celebration for our people, particularly the descendants of those who have not had a celebration in 250 years.’