As the Otago Daily Times launches a video series
highlighting Māori place names, Toitū te Whenua, kaumatua
Edward Ellison explains why they remain so important.
As the Otago Daily Times launches a video series highlighting Māori place names, Toitū te Whenua, kaumatua Edward Ellison explains why they remain so important.
Tama-nui-te-rā beams down, casting strong sharp shadows on the whenua below, passing commentaries on the otherwise unchanging body of Papatūānuku.
Between the two, stands Edward Ellison, his own shadow falling across the paepae in front of Tamatea, the wharenui at Ōtākou Marae — close by the old fortified pa of Pukekura, sheltered by the mana of the mauka Te Atua O Taiehu.
Beneath Rangi-nui, he stares out towards Ōtākou, the harbour river that flows from Takaroa towards the town of Ōtepoti Dunedin, the waterway that finally gave it’s name to a province.
It’s a familiar and familiarly beautiful view north from the lintel of Tamatea for Ellison, who grew up here and still farms ancestral land on Muaupoko, Otago Peninsula.
Landmarks here, with their ancient names, remember the stories of his ancestors, describe the land as it was found and used.
As long as those names are remembered in pepeha, in karakia and waiata, in kōrero, they live on, a record of lives lived and lessons learned, standing as signposts to the future.
‘‘The landscape has been the tapestry through which our people have recorded their history and maintained their kōrero down the ages,’’ Ellison (ONZM), upoko and kaumatua of long-standing at Ōtākou, says.
Edward Ellison
Edward Ellison
It was a process that extended through the land as successive migrations explored every corner of the motu, from the arrival of Waitaha in the waka Uruao, under the leadership of Rakaihautū, to Kāti Mamoe and Kāi Tahu — the latter the ‘‘people of Tahu’’, describing those descended from the ancestor Tahu Pōtiki.
‘‘They would place their stories, traditions — even relating to the arrival of waka to this land. That’s how they would record those momentous events, but also it enabled them to transfer those stories over the generations in a consistent way,’’ Ellison says.
‘‘The landscape lent itself to that because there are many majestic, significant land features, rivers, lakes — you name it — that were ideal for placing these stories on — their names and the kōrero that went with that.’’
It means a mountain range in the south carries the name Takitimu, for the waka said to have ended its journey there, and the Otago coast is ‘‘te tai o Ārai Te Uru’’, for the waka that finally beached at Matakaea, Shag Point, having already spilled some of its cargo at Moeraki, to form the boulders there.
Tama-nui-te-rā beams down, casting strong sharp shadows on the whenua below, passing commentaries on the otherwise unchanging body of Papatūānuku.
Between the two, stands Edward Ellison, his own shadow falling across the paepae in front of Tamatea, the wharenui at Ōtākou Marae — close by the old fortified pa of Pukekura, sheltered by the mana of the mauka Te Atua O Taiehu.
Beneath Rangi-nui, he stares out towards Ōtākou, the harbour river that flows from Takaroa towards the town of Ōtepoti Dunedin, the waterway that finally gave it’s name to a province.
It’s a familiar and familiarly beautiful view north from the lintel of Tamatea for Ellison, who grew up here and still farms ancestral land on Muaupoko, Otago Peninsula.
Landmarks here, with their ancient names, remember the stories of his ancestors, describe the land as it was found and used.
As long as those names are remembered in pepeha, in karakia and waiata, in kōrero, they live on, a record of lives lived and lessons learned, standing as signposts to the future.
‘‘The landscape has been the tapestry through which our people have recorded their history and maintained their kōrero down the ages,’’ Ellison (ONZM), upoko and kaumatua of long-standing at Ōtākou, says.
Edward Ellison
Edward Ellison
It was a process that extended through the land as successive migrations explored every corner of the motu, from the arrival of Waitaha in the waka Uruao, under the leadership of Rakaihautū, to Kāti Mamoe and Kāi Tahu — the latter the ‘‘people of Tahu’’, describing those descended from the ancestor Tahu Pōtiki.
‘‘They would place their stories, traditions — even relating to the arrival of waka to this land. That’s how they would record those momentous events, but also it enabled them to transfer those stories over the generations in a consistent way,’’ Ellison says.
‘‘The landscape lent itself to that because there are many majestic, significant land features, rivers, lakes — you name it — that were ideal for placing these stories on — their names and the kōrero that went with that.’’
It means a mountain range in the south carries the name Takitimu, for the waka said to have ended its journey there, and the Otago coast is ‘‘te tai o Ārai Te Uru’’, for the waka that finally beached at Matakaea, Shag Point, having already spilled some of its cargo at Moeraki, to form the boulders there.
Toitū te whenua producer and camera operator Luke Chapman on location filming for the video series. PHOTO: ANI NGAWHIKA
Māori did not have a written language, Ellison says, so the place names and the stories that went with them have been instrumental in retaining knowledge over time, stories relating back to the islands, Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, from where the first people travelled.
‘‘But even beyond that, their stories go right back,’’ Ellison says.
‘‘Because they were the first people of the land they had the luxury, you might say, of describing how this land came to being. So, these stories go right back to the beginning of time, to creation, from the time of darkness, the emergence of light, the expanse of water and arrival of what we call atua, who were the children of Tane and Raki, who had all sorts of responsibilities around creating these lands as we know them now.’’
The names speak of the mana of a place, the mauri, the life force that dwells there; they capture the tapu nature of the stories, as manifestations of antiquity.
And, of course, whakapapa, Ellison says. The names record that too.
‘‘Because a very important way of also recording your whakapapa is to place your stories, your people, your ancestors into the landscape. A great tool for recording history when you haven’t got a written language.’’
It means that by the time the first European voyagers sailed in from the horizon, Te Waipounamu was intimately known and named. However, the process of colonisation, among its many impacts, began a process of erasure.
About 70% of Māori names have been replaced in Te Waipounamu as a result of colonisation, Ellison says.
‘‘So, one of our major tasks as an iwi is resurrecting those names.’’
There is an extensive exercise to authenticate names as part of that process, and at the same time correct names that have been misspelt.
‘‘That has been quite an important task because [a misspelling] changes the meaning of a name and takes away from what was part of that heritage.’’
The work of restoring this mātauranga has coalesced into the Kā Huru Manu project, which has set out to map the traditional place names and associated stories within the Ngāi Tahu rohe (tribal area). Its online atlas lists more than 1000 traditional place names, referencing people, historical events, geographical features, flora and fauna.
It was initiated in response to the tenure review process in the high country — which involved land that was part of the contentious ‘‘hole in the middle’’, land west of the South Island east coast’s foothills that Ngai Tahu says was never sold.
But Kā Huru Manu is far from the first initiative by mana whenua to preserve their knowledge and traditions in the face of colonisation.
‘‘Once our people realised they weren’t able to access a lot of their mahika kai places, or traditional settlements, they went through an exercise themselves,’’ Ellison says of an earlier effort.
‘‘For example, Hōri Kerei Taiaroa, who was from here, he went around and interviewed his kaumatua in 1879.’’
So while Kā Huru Manu is just the latest vehicle for carrying the kaupapa forward, it has been proving its value.
As part of the tenure review process, Ngāi Tahu recommended the Crown protect an area of culturally significant land on The Neck, the narrow isthmus of land separating lakes Hāwea and Wānaka.
For mana whenua, this was Manuhaea, a well-known kāinga nohoanga (settlement) and kāinga mahinga kai (food-gathering place) on the eastern side of The Neck.
As the Kā Huru Manu website records, Manuhaea was known for a small lagoon where tuna (eels) were gathered, alongside weka, kākāpō, kiwi, kea, kākā, kererū and tūī. Gardens there grew potato, turnips and kāuru.
And as Ngāi Tahu historian Takerei Norton wrote in 2003: ‘‘Manuhaea means much more than mahinga kai.
‘‘It is the centre point of all the mahinga kai trails, a place used to defend the mana whenua and a spiritual centre.''
The Native Land Court recognised the significance of the area and granted a fishery easement abutting the lagoon in 1868. However, the lagoon was submerged when Lake Hāwea was raised for hydro-electric power generation.
When the tenure review process began, Ngāi Tahu had to again provide evidence of the significance of Manuhaea, in order to secure its protection. It is now a Conservation Area.
Ellison has been involved in Kā Huru Manu, an initiative that is helping to re-establish the transmission of such traditional knowledge, the kete mātauranga, used over generations to find and access mahika kai.
‘‘Each generation would be learning at the foot of the elders,’’ Ellison says. ‘‘There would be the fantastic stories they would learn of course, that would be easy for kids to pick up. Then there would be the kōrero of the place, kōrero of the food, where it was gathered, the seasons, when you needed to be there, who had the rights — whakapapa, you had to know your whakapapa to go to those places.’’
Some of the work of Kā Huru Manu has been to correct the misspellings that have crept in over the years.
‘‘Part of the issue was, the first person to write a name then puts a stamp on that name and if they didn't get it right, it was perpetuated,’’ Ellison says.
The incorrect spellings could further confuse the issue by obscuring the meaning of the original name.
Among the causes of the confusion, Ellison says, is that early Europeans were often schooled in a Ngāpuhi dialect of te reo Māori, from the north of the North Island.
They then struggled with the Kāi Tahu dialect, leading to mistakes in this part of the world.
There’s a job there to fix that up over time, Ellison says.
‘‘That's been a big exercise because we're affected by that as well. Our own people had to absorb those versions and live with them and so we've been turning back the pages, so to speak, through Kā Huru Manu.’’
It’s work that everyone can help with, if only by trying to pronounce names correctly.
Ellison says that’s certainly something they encourage.
‘‘I think an aid to assist people, obviously, is to understand the meaning, what that place name means, that would give some sense of its gravity, I think.’’
Then, in terms of the practical business of approaching a name in te reo Māori, Ellison says that if it is unfamiliar maybe break a word down into segments rather than trying to verbalise a long name in one hit.
Lake Wakatipu. PHOTO: TRACEY ROXBURGH
‘‘Whaka-tipu-wai-Māori,’’ he says, as an example, breaking it into its constituent parts. ‘‘That is the traditional name for Wakatipu, it’s real name.’’
The work of pronouncing names has become more easy, he says, with more te reo now in mainstream media and online tools available to help.
In his own time at the peninsula marae he has witnessed the improvement in pronouncing its name.
‘‘Here, Ōtākou, when I was a kid and even up until recent times it was very badly pronounced. In fact, you couldn’t recognise the name.’’
If you said the name correctly in public, away from the marae, people would have no idea where you were talking about.
‘‘But that’s changing, there’s progress.’’
Toitū te whenua producers Ani Ngawhika and Luke Chapman on location. PHOTO: ANI NGAWHIKA
Today, the Otago Daily Times, with support from the Public Interest Journalism Fund, is joining the effort to improve knowledge of Māori place names, and their pronunciation, with a new series, Toitū te Whenua.
Each month there will be a new video on the ODT website and an accompanying story, focusing on a place name in the paper’s circulation area.
The first video is live on the website today, introducing the series. Next month we’ll be at Pikirakatahi, also known as Mt Earnslaw, before following a path from the mountains to the sea, sharing some of the mātauranga held by kaumatua such as Edward Ellison to travel back in time to help bring the stories forward into the future.
We’ll follow the Clutha Mata-au to Kā Moana Haehae, the mahika kai at the confluence with the Manuherekia, and trace the work of the taniwha Matamata in shaping the whenua around Ōtepoti, guided by the whakataukī, ‘‘Whatungarongaro te tangata, toitū te whenua’’. As man disappears from sight, the land remains.
— Tom McKinlay
Built with Shorthand