2000: Mt Hikurangi

May 24, 2019

By AHNZ

Mt Hikurangi is famously “recognised” in Maori myth and Māori tourism as the first place in the world to see the light of every new day. Reality says otherwise but that did not stop Hikurangi’s celebrated use in New Zealand’s year 2000 “Millennium” celebrations. There are still nine massive carvings erected for the occasion (taxpayer funded, I don’t doubt) which are being put to use as a tourist attraction in 2019…

“Maunga Hikurangi Experience – Journey to First Light offers what Ngāti Porou says is the most authentic Māori culture experience in New Zealand.”

“This includes a gift they give to visitors being from a local art store and food offered is from a local cafe.”- A new dawn breaks for Mount Hikurangi as iwi offers dawn tours; Stuff

Ahem. If you’re paying $266 per person is that really a “gift?”

Pakihiroa Station

Nobody seems to know how Mt Hikurangi became property. From the early 1900s half the mountain was part of Pakihiroa Station, owned by the Williams family based on a transaction with Maori¹. The other half seems to have belonged to The State by default and apathy. Ngati Porou took over the station in 1990 and gained outright ownership from The State in 2000 in time for the Millennium. Since then things have been going down hill, literally.

In 1990, Williams had “finished an extensive erosion control programme on Pakihiroa, the steepest parts of which, including Mount Hikurangi, were still covered in native bush.”² Since taking over, the Māori caretakers have been letting things slip..

Atkins, of Ngāti Porou descent, has been documenting the decline of the remote East Coast forest for the past 30 years, both as a keen hunter and in DoC surveys.

“It is bloody depressing work. When I first started, there was a glorious understorey, it was one of the last tracts of the country not invaded by red deer. It began to vanish before my eyes.”- DoC teaming up with Ngāti Porou to save ‘dying’ Raukumara Forest Park, NZ Herald (2018)

DOC “”…is working with Te Whanau a Apanui, Ngati Porou and other iwi to ensure we develop a plan for Raukumara which is based on a co-designed approach,” Mrs Sage said.”- Forest nearing point of COLLAPSE, Gisborne Herald (2019)

We have a very clear correlation here between State control and environmental decline, between handing land to “traditional” and “aggrieved” Māori and total disaster. Erosion, deforestation, invasive mammals, depopulation of bird life. Williams’ work undone!

Meanwhile, the Green Party works to ‘ensure we develop a plan’ that is ‘based on a co-designed’ blah blah blah…rather than take action! As if this crisis were not man-made and had just presented itself today rather than known of for decades…

“Deer did not appear to be very destructive in the district as yet..However, ‘they were becoming very numerous in the protected forests of the Kaweka, Kaimanawa, Huiarau, and Raukumara Ranges, and as these forests controlled the discharge of numerous rivers, their strict conservation was of importance to every New Zealander.’:- Conserving Forests: War on Deer Urged; Poverty Bay Herald (1933); Papers Past

Ikurangi to Hikurangi

The final thing to say about Mt Hikurangi is that it’s not the only one in the world. “Mt Hikurangi is the sacred peak of the Ngāti Porou people. It is a name found throughout Polynesia.” (ref. Te Ara) When colonists come to a new country they like to name things after their old home. That’s why Europeans coined ‘New York’ and ‘New Zealand’ and also where Hikurangi came from.

In Tahiti they have Mount Hiurai (Hi’ura’i/Hikurangi) at the summit of Mehetia (Me’eti’a) island. (Also, apparently, there is a local river named “Waiapu” likewise situated near the mountain.) [image left]

There is also Ikurangi (Hikurangi) Mountain, Cook Islands (Rarotonga) [image left]