The silence of the small hours gave way to karakia on a back street in central Wellington this morning, as a special ceremony took place to herald the return of an ancient taonga.
The silence of the small hours gave way to karakia on a back street in central Wellington this morning, as a special ceremony took place to herald the return of an ancient taonga.
Leaders from six lower North Island iwi gathered at the base of an office building, when the sound of the pūtātara carried through the still pre-dawn air.
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The ancient taonga is the hull of a centuries-old waka, unearthed in the banks of Te Awaikairangi, the Hutt River, a decade ago. This morning, it was returned to its ancestral owners.
Made of tōtara, the waka is 3.5m-long and weighs half a tonne. Since it was unearthed, it has been tested and preserved. Carbon dating has shown it as being from the 18th century.
Wellington iwi Te Atiawa chair Kura Moeahu stood in awe at the waka, imagining the world of those who would have paddled it.
Te Awakairangi today is a shallow river hemmed between two towering floodbanks, a motorway on one side, the urban expanse of the Hutt on the other.
"Your mind starts to think, what was the landscape like? What was the environment like?" Moeahu asked.
"Given that settlers hadn't arrived yet, you could only imagine the density of the forest, the sounds of the wildlife would have just been so deafening. It would have been totally different.
"There were no metal tools, they would have used a lot of stone implements. It's hard to imagine when your life is just so surrounded by noise, urbanisation and distractions. Amazing."
Hull of a centuries-old waka, unearthed in the banks of Te Awaikairangi, the Hutt River, is returned to its ancestral owners. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
The waka was only discovered by chance, unearthed from a depth of four metres during construction of a sewer pumping station in the suburb of Woburn.
The question in the years since has been, whose is it? Te Atiawa is the mana whenua of Te Awakairangi, but the Hutt has an extensive Māori history.
Three hundred years ago, there was widespread exploration, settlement, fighting and marriage. The waka could have been used by tūpuna from several iwi: Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Toa, Rangitāne, Muaūpoko, Ngāti Kahungunu, or Ngāti Wai o Ngāti Tama.
On Thursday, representatives from all six stood shoulder-to-shoulder to welcome the waka, coming together at 4am.
With karakia and pūtātara, they gathered around the waka - encased in a wooden box on wheels, hidden in a dreary dust-ridden basem*nt. They sung waiata and wheeled it out to be strapped onto the back of a truck.
In a convoy they drove up the motorway back to Te Awakairangi, arriving at a nondescript warehouse right on dawn. Te Atiawa were there waiting, and it was wheeled in to a pōwhiri. A drill came out, the lid came off, and there it was in remarkable knick.
Humbling is how Terry Hapi, from Rangitane o Manawatū, described it.
"It was quite a special moment having different iwi involved ... to provide karakia, korero, and give a bit of an explanation around our whakapapa, our connection to this waka and to this area," he said.
A 300 year old Waka has been moved to Lower Hutt, where multiple Iwi will study and learn from it Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
It may have been a little worn around the edges, but the concave shape of a hull was clear; the marks of etching from an adze stood out clearly, the stripes where the wood was whittled away centuries ago.
"Look at the size of the rākau that's there, of the waka that's there," said Dean Wilson, from Muaūpoko.
"All these questions you know, was it the rapa, was it the tauihu, was it the waenganui, there's all those little kōrero and thoughts that will be spinning around in people's heads."
He couldn't wait for tamariki to see it: "Bring that into your imagination, let it run wild."
What happens next with the waka is yet to be determined, but the sentiment from all the iwi was the same.
They planned to get their tohunga and carvers along to have a look. How did the ancestors do it? What tools would they have used? What mātauranga can be gleaned from this hunk of tōtara sitting in industrial Lower Hutt?
Tamai Nicholson from Muaūpoko, a carver himself, said there was the potential for things to be regained.
"Very important for our young children and the generation to come, but also for us as carvers to actually have a look at the markings of the old people, of what they were doing in their time.
"There are a lot of areas here that was quite interesting and of note to see how they actually carved the canoe."
