Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Rēhia celebrate return of Kororipo Pā

Ngāpuhi and the people of Te Tai Tokerau have marked the return of the historic Kororipo Pā in Kerikeri after almost 190 years.

By Māpuna of RNZ

The bill returning one of New Zealand's most historic sites passed in December and descendants of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Rēhia gathered on Saturday to celebrate the return.

Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Rēhia chair Kipa Munro told Māpuna the pā was primarily a site for hapū to gather and discuss issues pertaining to the whole iwi. In later years it was a fortress of Ngāti Rēhia.

"Throughout our region, Te Whare Tapu o Ngāpuhi, there were wānanga sites, and so those wānanga sites would have been used for all sorts of reasons depending on what the occasion was, depending on what the issue was," he said.

The area immediately surrounding Kororipo, at Kerikeri Basin, was the first place Māori and Europeans lived side by side for an extended time and has a long association with the ancestor Hongi Hika.

"It was the departing place of [Hongi Hika's] war parties. So that was where they left from. Kororipo was strategic because it was at the top of the Te Awa o ngā Rangatira, the River of Chiefs," Munro said.

The pā was one of many places of cultural significance that were no longer in iwi hands. With the loss of the land, the rituals and ceremonies conducted on that land were also lost, he said.

"So our whole culture was taken away, not just that piece of land. And so I can use an example of all of those types of rituals, rongoā has only just started to come back. You know, we lost many names. I think we've lost many names of our plants in rongoā because we've stopped practising those rituals that were systematically taken away from us," Munro said.

A board trustee for Ngāti Rēhia, Aroha Herewini, said that during negotiations for the return of Kororipo, everyone acknowledged its significance as a site of pre-British settlement and in the establishment of New Zealand. That was why she believed the return would be the catalyst for the future growth of the iwi.

"There's opportunity that can come from this and there is a lot of growth in the partnership that ngā mana whenua, ahikā and the hapū and iwi of this area can have with the Crown moving forward.

"Whatever that may look like, it's never defined, but the relationship needs to be strong and there needs to be a foundation."

Herewini said Kororipo was taken from Ngāpuhi before the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, when missionary James Kemp claimed to have purchased it.

"It all started in 1838 and there was a whole lot of debate. He purchased some whenua here and included in his tono [request] to that commission Kororipo Pā. And since that time, right until today, that's been disputed because Hongi had passed before 1838 and we could see no validation for that, his tono that he was making. There was a lot of dispute that happened but it wasn't until actually 1854 that that commission, the land commission, gave him the stamp for the pā to be in his name."

Munro said Ngāti Rēhia had been trying to secure the return of Kororipo since 1993.

In one of the many hui with the Crown since, the return was suggested as a mark of good faith and goodwill between the two parties, he said.

"Our task as Ngāti Rēhia was to really secure the return of Kororipo to Ngāpuhi, not to Ngāti Rēhia. There was never in any of my kōrero, or our kōrero, the hapū, that we were negotiating with the Crown for the return of Kororipo to Ngāti Rēhia."

Herewini would have been about six months old when the process started.

"Our tamariki at school are now singing about Kororipo Pā. And that kōrero is growing within them and it's beautiful to see," she said.

"But as a tamaiti, I didn't know what they were doing or the significance of this mahi really until I started to come into the fold and help out. It was really just the tail end that I had come into it."