Mārama Henare-Waho and her mother Gloria Te Huia descendants of Teremai, the last person to be buried at Te Naunau.
For a century, iwi battled the establishment of a subdivision “on the bones of our tūpuna” at Mōkau. Now some of those houses are battling erosion. Sigrid Christiansen looks at the controversial history of Te Naunau.
Waitomo District Council has been told it should plan a managed retreat from the Mōkau spit and people living there should leave.
The land has been the subject of dispute since the 1920s, according to a 2014 Waitangi tribunal report on the management of the Mōkau river mouth.
It has been in the news recently after a Taranaki businessman was fined for unconsented work on a rock wall on the spit.
For a century, mana whenua and custodians of Te Naunau burial ground in Mōkau have claimed the land should never have been sold – because the whole area is an urupā.
But in that time more than three dozen houses were built.
“Te Naunau was stolen by the Crown, illegally given to Waitomo council, then sold off by them for profit.
“The land was taken wrongly and it should be returned.” Mārama Henare-Waho said.
Henare-Waho, speaking on behalf of her whānau, Te Paerata, said houses should not have been built in the first place.
“They’re living on the bones of our tūpuna, and they should leave.”
Henare-Waho said the rock wall was part of a larger historical story.
“The bach owners conveniently forget that they bought a property on a sand dune – now they’re trying to stop the sea from coming in,” she said.
Instead, “the council should put in place a managed retreat”.
The same message was reflected in a report titled Cultural Impact Assessment Report – Digger Activity at Te Naunau, Mōkau, 2023, submitted by Te Paerata during the recent court case.
The whānau are descendants of Teremai Ngahau Whāriki Te Ripo and Te Ripo Te Huia, who were interred in the burial ground and they say the whakapapa connection gives the mandate to care for their ancestral lands.
Māori have advocated for the return of Te Naunau since the appearance of squatters there in the 1920s, Henare-Waho said.
A Waitangi Tribunal report, ‘The Environmental Management of the Mokau River Mouth,’ which contained a case study of Te Naunau – said concerns about the urupā were first recorded as being voiced to the Government a hundred years ago.
“Local Māori appear to have first sought protection of Te Naunau by the Crown in 1921,” it reports.
That year, the then Minister of Lands, DH Guthrie, spoke with “local Māori,” and later wrote to the Mōkau Harbour Board stating that the Ministry “had inquired into the position regarding the area of sandhills near the Mōkau Heads which the natives desired to be set apart as a burial ground.”
The Ministry concluded that the land was “unsuitable” for building on.
The report says two men, Pahiri Wiari and Tanirau Eria lodged an application in the Native Land Court in November 1923, asking for the title to be investigated.
Henare-Waho is the great-granddaughter of Teremai Ngahau Whāriki Te Ripo, the last person to be interred at Te Naunau in 1953.
Teremai spoke at the first Māori Land Court sitting relating to Te Naunau in 1953 – she described the burials of her close family members at the urupā, including her husband, who died in 1935.
Incidents of Māori land dispossession in Mōkau were described by the Waitangi Tribunal as “some of the most brazen acts of bad faith identified in this inquiry”.
An inquiry covering the King Country referred to the “Jones Affair” in which land Māori had agreed to lease was sold from under them to a Joshua Jones who later lost it in a failed business deal.
“The owners of the Mōkau Mohakatino block were severely prejudiced by the Crown’s actions in respect of the Joshua Jones lease.
“They had expected that, by entering into a commercial arrangement with Jones, they would enjoy economic benefits from their land while also retaining control and ownership of that land. Instead, as a result of the Crown’s treaty breaches, they lost ownership of their land entirely. Approximately 56,000 acres were alienated from their ownership, leaving some owners effectively landless as a result,” the Te Mana Whatu Ahuru report said.
Henare said Te Naunau had always been wāhi tapu, a sacred place, and no one ever agreed to sell it.
“The whole sand spit, not just the smaller burial reserve, is, and has always been an urupā.”
