Issue 60

Keri Hulme’s tidal tracks

I love walking tidelines. My footprints are evanescent — there at low tide, gone the next tide. Such is the life of footprints. Mostly. I learned as a child that there were fossilised footprints in Aotearoa New Zealand — birds (especially moa) and crustaceans mainly. Because I love my feet (broad and sturdy Polynesian, with…

Between the lines

Ngāi Tahu historian Angela Wanhalla spent five years researching marriage between Māori and Pakeha in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was surprised by the diversity of relationships and liberal views. Kaituhi Rob Tipa reports

Hooked

Greg Summerton left school at 16 to go fishing. Now he is founder and owner of New Zealand’s largest privately-owned long line fishing company and sits on the board of Ngāi Tahu Seafoods. Kaituhi Mark Revington reports.

Kōhūhū, a striking show stopper

Kōhūhū rates as one of the show stoppers of our native bush with its explosion of striking new growth glowing like a beacon of spring, writes Rob Tipa.

Ironically, it is probably better known to gardeners and landscapers by its tongue-twister of a botanical name: Pittosporum tenuifolium. It is also known as kōhūkōhū and black matipo in some historical references, but the latter is apparently incorrect.

Walking into a new world

On a sunny Sunday morning at the top of the Port Hills, a young girl stands flanked by her parents. She looks up for reassurance and her mum offers a warm smile of encouragement. With new confidence, she turns to a group of peers and starts to recite her pepeha. The lineage that she repeats…

He Tangata

Stephen Hay (Ngāi Tūāhuriri – Ngāi Tahu) is a singer/songwriter and musician, originally from Northland. In an email, his mother outlines what she knows of his whakapapa.

“Your great great great grandmother was Irahapeti who was the daughter of a chief, who lived at Kaipoi, near Christchurch. During the Maori wars, the North Island chief Te Rauparaha came down to deal with our tribe and since he had muskets, basically slaughtered our people. Irahapeti escaped inland with a few others and made her way to Riverton at the bottom of the South Island, where she lived and eventually married a white man, Captain Stevens. They had two children, Rachel, your great great grandmother, and her brother, before Irahapeti died.

Trevor Howse – a legendary Ngai Tahu Claim researcher

Photograph: Tony Bridge A weka, so the description goes, is a large brown flightless bird with a feisty and curious personality. Hence the nickname for Trevor Howse – ‘Te Weka Nunui o Te Iwi’ or ‘The Great Weka of the People’. He earned it as the lead researcher of the Ngāi Tahu Trust Board during…

Keri Hulme on her collecting compulsion

I freely admit it — I collect an awful lot of stuff… Some of my collections are understood by most people who encounter them. It makes good sense to have a library of many thousands of books when you live in a remote area many hours’ drive away from a good library (“good” here equals “with…

A quiet sense of achievement

Adam Lord found his passion in life with the help of He Toki ki te Rika. Kaituhituhi Tony Bridge reports. Sometimes it takes time to find your path in life. Adam Lord (Ngāi Tahu, Tuwharetoa, Te Whānau a Apanui, Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu) seems to have found his at the age of 24. Born in…