A marae with a difference

The statue of Tommy Solomon represents the Moriori lineage.

When the leaders of most of New Zealand's Maori tribes arrived for the opening of the Chatham Islands' Kopinga Marae in January, some were bewildered. As they walked over the brow of a hill to approach the marae through a carpark, there was no public space where they could gather to hear welcoming speeches, as there is at mainland New Zealand marae.

Instead of the traditional carved external porch with seats to enjoy the sun after the speeches, an enclosed porch leads through grand wooden doors into a small museum area containing important Moriori relics. To cap it all, the meeting-house is not rectangular in traditional style but five-sided and built around a central pole.

It is unlike any other marae, built to emphasise the uniqueness of the Moriori people. "It was a blank canvas," says Leo Watson, the Pakeha lawyer from Paekakariki, who manages the Hokotehi Moriori Trust set up to operate the marae.

When Te Atiawa people occupied the Chathams and enslaved the Moriori in 1835, most of the customs and traditions of 500 years of Moriori culture were lost.

"Other iwi have suffered a lot through the loss of their language and culture," Watson says. "Moriori are unique in having to get back to the original carvings and research and then, through consultation with their own members, build up a modern manifestation of what their traditional protocols were and how they could be used in this day and age. This marae reflects that connection to the old with a new way of doing things."

Mainland-style marae were never a feature of Moriori tradition because the ancient Moriori moved around collecting food. Agriculture, the basis of mainland villages, was impossible in the Chathams.

Kopinga (grove of the kopi tree), a $4 million centre built with income earned from the fishing quota, looks out from a high point near the centre of the island across Lake Huro and the lagoon to Te Awapatiki.

It is full of symbolism. Its five sides are inspired by unusual five-sided basalt columns along the shore at Ohira on the Port Hutt Rd, and by the shape of an albatross, a bird that dominates these oceanic islands.

Human faces engraved into kopi trees in the Hapupu Reserve on the northeast of the island, and seals or birds carved into limestone caves on the edge of the lagoon, have inspired panels around the walls created by modern carvers led by Massey University lecturer Mana Cracknell.

The central pole bears the names of all 1663 Moriori who were alive in 1835, compiled by 33 elders at another meeting at Te Awapatiki in 1862 and sent to Governor Sir George Grey with a plea to expel the Atiawa invaders. A wooden floor around the pole provides a speaking platform.

"The welcome is inside. That is as much a practical factor as anything else - the weather here and the height of this place dictated that," Watson says.

Kopinga dramatises a revival of Moriori pride in their heritage after a long period when, as marae chairman Alfred Preece says, "It was something you hid away. There was shame attached to it and there was also disadvantage. That has changed in the past 20 years."