F E AT U R E
The final c o u n t d ow n PHOTOGRAPH BY TOM DONALD
Ngati Kahungunu elder Haami Te Whaiti is about to sign a long-running treaty settlement. He talks to SARAH LANG about a life working for his people.
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reak out the champagne. In December, after a 30-year process, the treaty-settlement deed for Ngati Kahungunu’s iwi in the Wairarapa and Tamaki Nui-ā-Rua (around Dannevirke) will finally be initialled at Aratoi: Wairarapa Museum of Art and History in Masterton. After the document spends two or three months with the Māori community, it will be signed early next year. Then the government will formally apologise, pay $93 million, and hand over 23 Crown-owned sites of cultural significance, four of them to be shared with another iwi. One of the four Ngati Kahungunu treaty-settlement negotiators who will initial and sign the deed is Haami Te Whaiti, a kaitiaki (guardian) of the south Wairarapa Ngati Hinewaka hapū (a sub-division of the iwi). His involvement in Treaty claims stretches back to 1989, when he began helping lodge various claims for Māori fishery rights. More recently, he’s been involved with Treaty negotiations and settlements. His main part-time job for the past eight years has been as Geographic Information System (geospatial) Technician for Kahungunu ki Wairarapa, mapping geographical data, particularly historical and cultural sites relevant to the Treaty settlement. The process of negotiating the Ngati Kahungunu claim has dominated his last four years. The 66-year-old, who has the energy of a much younger man, has also been Aratoi’s Researcher and Curator Māori intermittently for 10 years, and is now a guest curator as needed. Drawing together his two lines of work, he’s curated Te Marae o Rongotaketake: Redressing our Kahungunu History – the first-ever exhibition to take over all of Aratoi (until 3 September). ‘Rongotaketake means enduring peace,’ Te Whaiti says. ‘The iwi has always been committed to nonviolence and that no European blood would be spilled here.’ Explaining both the iwi’s history and the treaty settlement, this ‘exhibition-as-marae’ is divided into sections that represent a marae powhiri, from the karanga (welcoming call) to the ‘kaumatua kitchen’ to socialise in. It’s the largest-ever exhibition of Ngati Kahungunu taonga. The 200 on show include a waka, korowai (cloak), hei-tiki (pendant), hinaki (eel trap), a shark-tooth necklace, whale-ivory amulets, and pounamu spearheads. ‘The 11 Gottfried Lindauer portraits of Kahungunu rangatira (hapū leaders) are really special. Some have never been publicly displayed.’ It took Te Whaiti two years to prepare the exhibition, in-
cluding tracking down and securing the loan of taonga from all over the country and the world. For instance, an ornate carved wahaika (club-like weapon) given to Lord Ranfurly – New Zealand’s Governor from 1897 to 1904 – had found its way to the Fowler Museum in Los Angeles. Te Whaiti grew up with three brothers and two sisters on a Mangakino sheep and beef farm. His father was allocated the farm on tribal lands by the Māori Affairs Department under a scheme to establish willing Māori farmers. ‘Dad gave it up in the late 60s because all six of us had ideas about career that didn’t involve farming.’ Te Whaiti studied social sciences and social work at university, and joined the Māori-rights group Nga Tamatoa, made up mainly of urban and university-educated Māori. Begun by Ranginui Walker, it was active mainly in the late 1960s and 1970s to fight racial discrimination and confront injustices perpetrated by the government, particularly Treaty violations. ‘There was also a big focus on seeing the Māori language get official status.’ Since 1985, Te Whaiti has lived in Masterton, raising three children with his schoolteacher wife, and helping many more. He spent 17 years as a social worker then social-work adviser for the government agency once called Child, Youth and Family. ‘It was rewarding working with families – usually Māori but not just Māori – from lower socio-economic backgrounds who were having a rough time which was impacting on the kids. When I started, there were more opportunities for communitydevelopment work. I always thought you should work with peer influence, not against it, so I set up peer [youth] groups that worked well. Then the approach became much more individualised. For me, it was time for a change.’ In the late 1990s, Te Papa museum asked Ngati Hinewaka to reconstruct a 16th-century wharepuni (sleeping house) that had been discovered during an archaeological dig. Te Whaiti led the group that built the Makotukutuku Wharepuni, which is still on view at Te Papa. ‘Learning about ancestral mātauranga (knowledge), particularly tool-making technology, really opened up that history to me.’ Now the iwi is finally getting back some of what was taken. ‘I’ll be so excited and relieved to witness this historic occasion. Then, at my age, I should probably slow down a bit.’ Meaning more time to visit the marae, and the grandkids in Palmerston North .
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