Ngāti Awa Te Tai

Ngāti Awa Te Tai – the Ngāti Awa Settlement Story was launched on 9 November 2018 at Te Mānuka Tūtahi marae by the Rt Honorable Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Accompanying the Prime Minister was the Green Party Co-Leader Marama Davidson. Ngāti Awa Te Tai was produced in partnership with Te Manatū Taonga and is a series of interviews presented in digital format. Ngāti Awa Te Tai can be viewed across multimedia platforms and has two key benefits for Ngāti Awa: a record of our stories for future generations, and an education resource as a means to break down barriers towards mutual understanding and our advancement. We want a future that embraces the past, a future that includes us and our aspirations, and a future of genuine negotiation with us as a Tiriti partner.

Ngāti Awa Te Tai is painful and affirming. As a raupatu iwi it is painful to recount who was lost, how they were lost and what was lost. It is painful to acknowledge the break in our whakapapa and the destruction of our way of life, our culture and identity. And affirming in that we survived, we have endured, and we have some ability to chart our own course.

The next steps we take today are as important as the decisions made by our tīpuna to resist and reject colonial government and militia. We want our children to know who they are, to have confidence to live as Ngāti Awa on their own terms following their aspirations. We want to live today as Ngāti Awa, in our rohe with our ancestral taonga - our lands, our waters, and our culture and traditions. Ngāti Awa Te Tai is one part of supporting this.

We understand and know that the past guides us and that we live in two worlds – te ao Pākehā and te ao Māori - everyday in Aotearoa. The burden for Māori and iwi has been heavier than for Pākehā, in reaching a place that we respect and acknowledge the history of Aotearoa, and the tangata whenua. Māori and iwi cross the bridge regularly and find Pākehā and government to cross sometimes, or not at all, maybe take a detour around the bridge, or the bridge is moved, closed for repairs or removed.

Our strength as an iwi is our people. We know and understand that what is good for us is good for all of Aotearoa. This is why, we will continue to be on and cross the bridge taking responsibility for our own destiny.

Dr Hohepa Mason said, “We offer Ngāti Awa Te Tai to the people of Aotearoa as a means to communicate our history, our endurance and our future. We desire to live as Ngāti Awa on our lands, as kaitiaki and tangata whenua, with our language, identity and culture flourishing, and with strong and well whānau and hapū. This is who we are. This is our koha to Aotearoa.”