TE KARAKA - Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu

Tūtehuarewa: a wahine to unite, 100 years on.

Easter 2023, as whānau made the journey to Koukourarata from near and as far as Australia, Tūtehuarewa herself was dressed to the nines to welcome them home.

A take without end

23 September is a pretty significant date on the Ngāi Tahu calendar. A small number of us recall it was on 23 September 1997 that Crown and Ngāi Tahu negotiators, led by Tā Tipene O’Regan, initialled the Ngāi Tahu Deed of Settlement, approving it as the final form of the Settlement, which would be recommended to Ngāi Tahu Whānui for ratification.

Te Kereme always speak

It was commonly said in the 1980s and 1990s, as court decisions began to give real effect to legal references to the principles of the Treaty, that “the Treaty always speaks.” That is to say, the Treaty is always relevant in contemporary Aotearoa/New Zealand, and how it is to be applied must be determined by the circumstances of the time.

Tātai Aroraki

Kaituhituhi Arielle Kauaeroa met Kāi Tahu astronomer Victoria Campbell in the heartland of Te Waipounamu stargazing – Takapō – for a kōrero just before the setting of Matariki earlier this year. He aha kā hua o tē kōrero nei? The emerging fruits of this conversation? The whakaaro that our people are empowered through the collective revival of our ancestral knowledge.