Ngāi Tūhoe

Ngāi Tūhoe, often known simply as Tūhoe, is a Māori iwi of New Zealand. It takes its name from an ancestral figure, Tūhoe-pōtiki. Tūhoe is a Māori language word meaning 'steep' or 'high noon'. The Tūhoe people also bear the sobriquet Nga Tamariki o te Kohu. Tūhoe traditional land is at Te Urewera in eastern North Island, a steep, heavily-forested area which includes Lake Waikaremoana. Tūhoe traditionally relied on the forest for their needs. The iwi territory is vast and undeveloped. Tūhoe is considered one of the largest landowners in New Zealand. The territory has six main centres of population, including Ruatāhuna, Waikaremoana, Waimana Valley, Ruatoki, and Tāneatua. Maungapōhatu is the inner sanctum of Te Urewera, and is the most sacred of their ancestral mountains. The Tūhoe country had a reputation among the neighbouring tribes as a graveyard for invading forces.
Tūhoe people have a reputation for their continued strong adherence to Māori identity and for their unbroken use of the Māori language, which 62% of them speak as of 2018. The iwi population is estimated to number between 33,000 and 46,000. About 30% still live on their tribal lands; most of the rest live in towns on the fringes of Te Urewera and in the larger North Island cities. At least 5,000 live in Australia. Subtribes of the Tūhoe include Ngāti Koura, Ngāti Rongo, Ngāti Tāwhaki, Tamakaimoana, Ngāti Whare, Te Whānau Pani, Ngāti Hinekura and Patuheuheu.
The Tūhoe continue to maintain camps in Te Urewera and help run conservation programmes for endangered birds, such as the North Island brown kiwi and the North Island kōkako. Many Tūhoe return to their homelands every two years for the Te Hui Ahurei a Tūhoe, which features kapa haka, debates, sports competitions, and fashion shows. The event offers a valuable opportunity to maintain connections with friends and relatives.

History

Tūhoe derives its name from Tūhoe Pōtiki, a descendant of Toroa, who came to Aotearoa as captain of the Mātaatua canoe, and of Toi-te-huatahi and Pōtiki, who had arrived in the region at an earlier date. A traditional saying, Toi raua ko Potiki te whenua, na Tūhoe te mana me te rangatiratanga reflects this ancestry. Tūhoe is thus part of the Mātaatua tribal confederation, along with Ngāti Awa and Whakatōhea to the north and other iwi further afield.

19th century

Tūhoe had little direct contact with the early European settlers. The first major contact occurred when the iwi fought against the settler colonial government in the Battle of Ōrākau in 1864. Rewi Maniapoto, who had some tribal links to Tūhoe, visited Te Urewera in 1862 and persuaded them to take part in the rebellion against the government; he went against the wishes of some of the elders. Initially reluctant, the Tūhoe provided Rewi with ammunition to support the rebellion. During a ceasefire in the battle, under a flag of truce, Gilbert Mair, a translator, was shot in the shoulder by a Tūhoe warrior. Nearly all the Tūhoe at the battle were killed.
The following year, authorities accused the Tūhoe of sheltering Kereopa Te Rau, a Hauhau wanted for killing and beheading Carl Sylvius Völkner, a missionary of the Church Mission Society, in what was called the Völkner incident. Initially, the Tūhoe had cooperated in tracking down the Hauhau leader and had taken him prisoner. The Tūhoe tried to use him as a bargaining chip, but the government demanded Te Rau be handed over for trial. After the Tūhoe released him, Te Rau hid in Te Urewera. As punishment, in 1866, the government confiscated or about 7% of Tūhoe land on its northern coastal border. The confiscated Tūhoe land adjoined the land confiscated from Bay of Plenty rebels after the Battle of Gate Pā. The Crown took the Tūhoe's only substantial flat, fertile land, which also provided their only access to the coast for kai moana. The Tūhoe people retained only interior, more difficult-to-farm land, setting the scene for later famines.
In 1868, Tūhoe sheltered the Māori leader Te Kooti, a fugitive who had escaped from imprisonment on the Chatham Islands. Te Kooti arrived in the area with a large group of escaped convicts, fully armed with modern weapons he had stolen from the ship he had hijacked. It is doubtful that the Tūhoe could have resisted his demands for sanctuary. Some Tūhoe joined his armed Ringatū band, but other Tūhoe told government forces of Te Kooti's whereabouts. Some joined the armed forces to hunt him down. Government forces punished those Tūhoe who supported Te Kooti during the manhunt. Te Ara, the Online Encyclopedia of New Zealand, notes:
Te Kooti escaped to the King Country, and after the events surrounding the hunt for him, the Tūhoe isolated themselves, closing off access to their lands by refusing to sell, lease or survey them, and blocking the building of roads.
Twenty years later, Te Urewera leaders, Premier Richard Seddon, and Native Affairs Minister Timi Carroll negotiated the 1896 Urewera District Native Reserve Act. It provided for Tūhoe self-government through a General Committee and local committees, with the Māori Land Court excluded and titles determined instead by a commission comprising two Pākehā and five Tūhoe commissioners. However the Crown, through a mixture of ineptitude and bad faith, "totally failed to give effect to its promises in the UDNR Act; failed to act fairly, reasonably, and honourably ... and failed to protect the Treaty rights of all the peoples of Te Urewera".

1916 police raid

Historian James Belich describes Te Urewera as one of the last zones of Māori autonomy, and the scene of the last case of armed Māori resistance: the 1916 New Zealand Police raid to arrest the Tūhoe prophet, Rua Kēnana Hepetipa.
On 2 April 1916 a 70-strong, and heavily armed, police party arrived at Maungapōhatu to arrest him for sedition. Because Rua's village was so remote, the police had to take a lot of equipment and camped on the way. They moved like a small army with wagons and pack-horses, and included The New Zealand Herald photographer Arthur Breckon. So as not to alert Maungapōhatu residents of their intention to spring an attack, they did not wear their police uniforms until just before the raid. They were convinced that when they reached the village there would be an ambush.
There was no violent resistance from Rua personally, but his supporters fought a half-hour gun battle with the police in which two Māori, including Rua's son Toko, were killed and two wounded. Four constables were also wounded. Rua was arrested and transported to Rotorua, his hair and beard removed. From Rotorua, with six other Māori prisoners including Whatu, Rua was transferred to Auckland and sent directly to Mount Eden prison. Rua was held, at first, on a nine months sentence imposed for the 1915 charges and now increased by his default of fines. After a trial on sedition which lasted 47 days, New Zealand's longest until 1977, he was found not guilty; but sentenced to one year's imprisonment for resisting the police.

20th century

Significant European penetration did not occur in Te Urewera until the 20th century. A road was built by the government from Rotorua to Ruatāhuna in 1901 to end the isolation of Tūhoe by opening up the first motor road.
The Tūhoe did eventually realise, especially in the Great Depression, that to develop their local economy they needed good roads to the outside world. They donated some land for road rights of way. As early as 1906, Tūhoe had given land for roads and offered free labour to assist in the construction, but building arterial roads in Te Urewera was a low government priority. In the early 1900s traces of gold were found in Te Urewera, and Rua Te Kanana tried to sell illegal mining rights to raise money. At the same time Rua wished to sell very large areas of land to the government to raise funds for his new Jerusalem, but despite having a petition signed by every Tūhoe adult, the government insisted that he stick to the law.
In the 1920s Gordon Coates, Minister of Public Works, went to the area to check its suitability for a railway and to discuss roads. The land was very steep, with the Poverty Bay Herald describing the gradient as "one in nothing". Coates knew that by this time, Tūhoe refused to make any contribution to the road at all. The mountainous terrain was daunting for farming. Tūhoe could not accumulate any capital to develop land they had cleared from 1907. Instead they sold all their sheep and cattle to pay for legal costs. These debts were not paid until 1931.
In the early 1930s the government helped develop Tūhoe land at both Ruatoki and Ruatāhuna. It understood that, like many New Zealanders in the Great Depression, Tūhoe was experiencing hard times. In 1934 a teacher wrote that "they have no money apart from what is given by government as Family Allowances and Old Age Pensions". A 1936 report noted that land development at Maungapōhatu Mountain "would be a social success if undertaken". The report pointed out that the venture would probably fail if Tūhoe were required to pay back both the interest and the capital. In 1937, after several other studies, the government decided that it was uneconomic to invest in roads or settlements. By this time, the isolated Maungapōhatu settlement had collapsed anyway.

Late 20th and early 21st century

The Tūhoe population was always small and living conditions were poor. School records from the 1920s and 1930s show very high death rates, especially of children. 75% of those who died were people under 25. The main causes of death were infectious diseases, such as influenza, gastroenteritis, typhoid fever and whooping cough. Between 1924 and 1936, the Depression period, 57 people died in a community of 30 families.
From the late 1990s, some Tūhoe started identifying as the Tūhoe nation, and emphasising widespread Tūhoe rejection of what they call Pākehā rule. It has been argued that because no Tūhoe or Tūhoe representative ever signed the Treaty of Waitangi, they never gave up their sovereignty.
Tūhoe and other local iwi brought the Te Urewera claim to the Waitangi Tribunal in 2002, with submissions accepted up until 2005.