Obituary: Tribe's rebuilder returns to the land

Hariata Gordon with Pita Turei, also of Ngati Paoa, on Rakino Island in the Hauraki Gulf. Photo / Supplied

When Hariata Gordon was taken home, it was not to Auckland's west, where she lived for her last two decades, or Waiheke, most closely associated with her name.

She was taken to Paoa, an uncarved meeting house at Waiti Marae near Tahuna in Waikato.

It was there that her family and the tribe of Ngati Paoa she did so much to revive sat with her to hear tributes from the tribes she had worked with or clashed with, the Methodist Church she had contributed much to, and the government agencies she swayed so often with her meticulous research, razor-sharp reasoning or well-timed injunctions.

Her achievement over the past three decades has been to reassert the mana of the house of Paoa over the territories its ancestors once walked, from Mahurangi, down the North Shore, across the Tamaki isthmus and the gulf islands to the western side of the Firth of Thames.

Along the way she rebuilt the tribe so its members, confident in its identity and place on the landscape, now refer to it as the nation of Paoa.

Hariata Laura Gordon was born at Te Puninga near Morrinsville on July 29, 1935, to Meri Tarapuhi Kuinaki and Wiremu Wira Tamihana.

The struggles of her father as a leader at marae in the area put his daughter off identifying with Maori activities.

But after her father's death in 1974, the need to handle successions to his land interests drew her into the world of the Maori Land Court.

Her genealogical research on behalf of the family pointed not only to the Hauraki and Clevedon districts, but also to Waiheke, even though the only Maori land left on the island was a couple of urupa (burial grounds).

It also exposed her to a network of elders and relatives who were descended from the union centuries ago of Paoa of Tainui and Tukutuku, great-grand-daughter of Marutuahu, ancestor of the Hauraki tribes.

In 1983, the Board of Maori Affairs gave prominent Maori farmer George Evans a perpetual lease on a 809ha farm it owned at Onetangi.

Hariata Gordon said the land should have been offered to Ngati Paoa, and organised an occupation in early 1984, as well as lodging a claim with the Waitangi Tribunal.

The tribunal ruled that the aggressive Crown land-buying that meant a tribe could become landless was a breach of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the Labour government cancelled the lease and returned the farm to Ngati Paoa.

Gordon's constant vigilance of developers and councils was driven by the memory of taking her elderly aunt out to Clevedon.

"She broke down and cried when she saw that the place where my grandmother had been buried was now under the road running south out of the village.

"I vowed and declared then never to let that sort of thing happen again," Gordon said in 1995.

Hariata Gordon is survived by her daughters Christine and Tania, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and by Ngati Paoa.