Te Morehu O Te Wao Nui A Tane

Mana (Auckland), Volume 2, Issue 2, 20 April 1978, Page 1

Te Morehu O Te Wao Nui A Tane

by

Sonny Waru

Rangi Makawe Rangitaura, kaumatua of Te Ati Awa trib,e Taranaki travelled from Waitara to attend the Bastion Point trial, which commenced Monday, 3rd April 1978.

Born May 10, 1880 in Parihaka, the marae of peace, he is of the Te Ati Awa, Ngati Ruanui, Nga Rauru, Waikato, Ngati Whatua and Ngati Kahungunu tribes. “Te morehutanga o nga totara nui o te Wao tu nui a tane.” “The remnant of the gigantic totara trees of the great standing forests of Tane.

He is the nephew of the late Sir James Carroll, an elder cousin (tuakana) of Sir Maui Pomare and an Uncle of Sir Peter Buck.

He stood several times for the Western Maori seat, in 1932 against Sir Maui Pomare as Independent Labour, 1935 as Independent Labour again, in 1945 as Democratic Labour, in 1948 as Social Credit and has remained an active member of the party ever since.

Joe Hawke and others of Bastion Point were guests of Rangi Makawe over Easter weekend. He escorted them from Waitara to Parihaka, and then from Parihaka to “Te Rere o Kapuni" two-thirds of the way up the southern slope of Mount Egmont, they visited the Manukorihi marae in Waitara and the tomb and statue of Sir Maui Pomare, the Urenui marae and the meeting house “Mahi Tamariki” where Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangihiroa) was found by a kinsman crying on his last day in Aotearoa prior to returning to Hawaii in 1948. It was only after his death in 195 L. that it was realised by his relatives that he was bidding the relices of his past goodbye forever. At Okioki, they learnt that this was the traditional fighting pa of the ferocious Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga subtribes of Te Ati Awa. It was on this hallowed ground that Te Rauparaha and

his Ngati Toa tribe Apihai-te-kawau and his. Ngati Whatua tribe rested for two years while they planted crops and trained their warriors. When they were reinforced by the Ngati Tama and Ngati Mutunga they went south conquering all before them right to the South Island. It was at this sacred spot that Sir Peter Buck returned in 1948 with his elders, including Rangi Makawe Rangi tarua. Sir Peter Buck said, “It is the everlasting hills of one's own deserted territory, that welcomes the wanderer home. It is the crooning of, and the lamentation of waves on a lonely shore, that perpetuates ancestral voices that are now so stilled, by time and inevitable death. Therefore when I die. bury me here.” On a beautiful evening as the sun sank over the horizon in 1951, thousands of New Zealanders and overseas dignitaries bade him farewell as his remains were laid to rest in his tomb, under the prow of his ancestral canoe, Tokomaru.

Beginning in Waitara. where the Maori-Pakeha wars begun in 1859. then to Parihaka, where the pacifist movement was conceived by Te Whili o Rongomai and his Uncle Tohti Kakahi in the late 1860 s, Joe Hawke, a modern young Maori reached back into time immemorial, into his ancestral past, seeking spiritual sustenance and guidance, to accomplish the tasks bequeathed to him. by his illustrious ancestors