In calling iwi to a hui in January, the Kiingitanga leader sent a powerful message to the new government. Aaron Smale looks at the legacy of Kiingi Tuheitia.
He was a truck driver from Huntly, but to meet him was to shake hands with history. I met Kiingi Tuheitia Pootatau Te Wherowhero VII very fleetingly at a poukai, a hui specific to the Kiingitanga, at a marae in Te Kuiti. The marae itself had been carved by Te Kooti and his followers, who had sought refuge there. It was all saturated in a history that has and continues to shape our country, whether we’re aware of it or not. Tuheitia’s death sees the closing of another chapter of that history and the opening of a new one.
After the crown’s 1863 invasion of Waikato, the Kiingitanga, in the person of Tawhiao, the second Māori king, withdrew into the territory of Ngāti Maniapoto in what would become known as the King Country. But the Kiingitanga wasn’t just a person or an inherited title. It stood for something far bigger.
The genesis of the movement started with rangatira Wiremu Tamihana, who was disgusted at Māori being excluded from the newly formed Parliament. When he travelled to Auckland around 1855 to present a petition to Governor Thomas Gore Browne for Māori to be included, he was made to wait outside for two days while Pākehā filed past him. He later told a missionary: “We are treated like dogs – I will not go again. I then went to Māngere and I said to Pootatau – go back to Waikato and let us consider some tikanga for ourselves.”
Māori activist Moana Jackson once said to me, “Never mind tikanga; the crown can’t even follow its own laws.” It certainly hasn’t ever been able to honour the Treaty of Waitangi that it claims to derive its authority from. It was that failure that led to the Kiingitanga. It is that ongoing failure that continues to haunt our political discourse.
In his new book, The Invasion of Waikato, historian Vincent O’Malley said rangatira did not establish the Kiingitanga to rival Queen Victoria.
“They were seeking to bind Māori together around a common symbol of authority. Through the treaty, the crown had promised to preserve and protect Māori rangatiratanga, and those behind the Māori King movement were simply seeking to give this concept new expression. Many rangatira resented the all-Pākehā, anti-Māori Parliament from which they had been excluded. They or their parents had entered a compact with Queen Victoria and her descendants in 1840, but proponents of a Māori king did not see their goal as incompatible with that agreement.”
The problem was, the Pākehā settler government not only saw it as incompatible, it cast it as a provocation. It became the main pretence for the invasion of Waikato and the confiscation of more than a million acres. But the invasion did more than that – it was the turning point in the crown setting out to destroy Māori rangatiratanga and asserting crown sovereignty in more than theory.
It wasn’t inevitable that the Kiingitanga would sit on the shoulders of a Tainui ranga-tira – others had demurred when it was offered – and the mantle has been a heavy one. Waikato-Tainui bore the initial brunt of the crown’s bad faith and greed. But in Tainui hands, it has also become a rallying point for Māori.
Stand up and be counted
Tuheitia stood in a direct lineage to that history and he was acutely aware of it. Though many have described his humility and desire for unity, he also proved on more than one occasion that he wouldn’t compromise on what that history stood for. To the consternation of members of Parliament, he could stand up and be counted when the crown was again ignoring and insulting Māori.
Waikato-Tainui and the Kiingitanga retreated into themselves after the trauma of the raupatu (confiscations), a trauma that lived on. The tradition of poukai – King Tawhiao’s regular visits to marae throughout the Tainui rohe to support those scattered by war – continued over following generations. But it was under Tuheitia’s mother, Te Arikinui Dame Te Atairangikaahu, that the Kiingitanga came out of its shell onto the national stage again. The flame had been maintained by Princess Te Puea, who had led Tainui through some of its most difficult years during the early part of the 20th century.
It was under the Māori Queen’s watchful eye that Waikato-Tainui reached a treaty settlement with the crown that was a fraction of the economic loss it suffered, let alone the cultural and psychological damage, but it gave the iwi a foundation to rebuild on. It also made Tainui the first iwi to step into a settlement and chart a different future at a time when the relationship between Māori and crown was particularly fractious, thanks to the proposed fiscal envelope – the plan to impose a financial cap on future treaty settlements.
Tuheitia’s reign occurred in the wake of that milestone, but he saw clearly the wider purpose of financial growth and success. Dollar wealth was a means to an end of a deeper, more layered kind of wealth. His pragmatic concern for those who are disadvantaged was evident in his introduction to the iwi’s annual report in 2022, where he stated: “The end of another financial year brings about the series of reports that offer a snapshot of our life as an iwi. These reports are largely based around finances. While important and critical for transparency, this is not our entire story. There are always stories in between the lines and graphs. Success of tamariki, rangatahi, pakeke and kaumaatua – these stories, the stories of the heart, are important and need to be captured in the narrative of our iwi.
“We continue to grow assets and see reports of a growing balance sheet – does this translate and equate to strong marae? Strong in tikanga, reo and facilities? How does the growth of iwi assets lead to a stronger Kiingitanga? Stronger for the people as we journey towards the full restoration of our mana motuhake.
“As the head of the Kiingitanga, my thoughts and concern are for our people on the edges, on the fringes; those that the ‘system’ forgot. How do we bring them to the centre of our being and the middle of our unity?
“How can our iwi entities be more agile, flexible, and faster? More focused on tikanga and doing what is right for the wellbeing of the people? How do we connect all of our people into the success of the balance sheet that we see?”
Those questions are not just a challenge to Tainui but to the country at large – how do we measure success? Who are our policies and decisions designed to benefit? What does the full restoration of mana motuhake look like and is the country ready for it?
Process under threat
At some level, he saw the political rhetoric from the new coalition government as a threat to the fragile progress that had been made since his mother signed the deed of settlement. He also saw it as a wider threat to the progress the nation as a whole had made. And he spoke up and confronted the government by calling a hui at Turangawaewae marae in Ngāruawāhia in January.
By calling for Māori to gather, he used his position to create a space to discuss how to respond, but then he stepped back to let the voices of others occupy that space, particularly younger voices. He was handing the future to them. It was also a recognition that Māori will always have a diversity of views and the authority of rangatiratanga can never be centralised, not even in the Kiingitanga.
But the hui will go down as a historic riposte to the crown. As Anglican Archbishop Don Tamihere said: “Someone has made a political calculation that they can renegotiate our existence.” Indeed, Māori have had more than enough of their existence and future being defined by others. They are no longer willing to tolerate being used as a manufactured political controversy.
Rahui Papa, from Tainui, told the hui: “Our focus is on charting a pathway to mana motuhake, with or without the government. We are about being awesome every day of the year.”
It was not the first time Tuheitia had clapped back at the government. While his mother maintained an inscrutable silence, he was not afraid to speak his mind publicly when the occasion called for it, although he didn’t do so often.
He seemed particularly incensed by then-National leader John Key’s claim that somehow the Waikato River didn’t belong to Tainui. That may have been the legal advice Key received from crown lawyers but it didn’t cut it with Tuheitia. Not only had he inherited the kaitiakitanga of the river, he had lived in and on it. He was brought up in the history and the mauri of the river. And he was not going to be lectured about the Waikato River by the latest occupant of the Beehive’s ninth floor.
If there was a problem it was that Māori confidence and strength are often perceived as a threat not just by politicians but by Pākehā at large, just as it had been in the 19th century. Tuheitia’s speaking up was an indication that he would not let that perception silence him and he encouraged others not to be silenced either.
Nor was he averse to calling out his own. At the January hui, he went off script and made some observations that would have made a few of his whanaunga squirm in their seats. He pointed out that the structure that had negotiated the treaty settlement hadn’t changed significantly in 30 years, despite the iwi facing different challenges.
“I’ve been trying to change our structure and bring more rangatahi through. But we’ve got more suits in there than in Wellington,” he said. The term “suits” wasn’t meant as a compliment. Truck drivers know how the world works in ways accountants and lawyers don’t.
The hui Tuheitia called, coming in a climate of political rhetoric from Wellington that can only be described as racist – and as his health faltered and eventually failed him – may end up being his greatest legacy. And that legacy is a broad one, too broad to canvass completely here.
There’s a saying in Tainui that there’s a taniwha on every bend in the river, referring to the chiefs at every turn. Tuheitia’s hui might well unleash a whole new generation of Māori aspiration and leadership and, if needed, defiance. If the crown is threatened by the current generation of Māori leadership, they’re in for a fright when they meet the next one.
Whoever inherits the mantle of the Kiingitanga, and emerging Māori leaders in general, will face challenges that their forebears could not have imagined but also opportunities that beckon. The Māori population is predominantly young – roughly 40% are under the age of 18 – and growing. Māori economic strength and cultural and political confidence are growing but so are disparities that have riven New Zealand society. Tuheitia saw that clearly and challenged his own people to find ways to bring those who were on the edges back into the fold. That challenge is daunting, but if it can be pulled off, it will revolutionise the future of this country.
There is a photo of Tuheitia sitting on a carved throne shortly after the title of Māori King was bestowed on him. It was not something he expected. He is wrapped in a korowai and sitting next to his mother’s coffin, bereft. From under the korowai his left hand is hanging on to the handle of his mother’s coffin, holding onto her for the last time.
The incoming head of the Kiingitanga will be grieving while being asked to carry on that link to history. They will have to define what that movement means in an era that is changing as rapidly as it was in the 1850s and 60s, but for quite different reasons.
Many iwi rallied to support the Kiingitanga during the wars of the 19th century – including one of my Ngāti Porou tipuna – seeing the crown’s invasion not just as a theft but as an abuse and grab for power. The current government has rekindled among Māori the same sense that the crown is overstepping its mark. It has crossed an aukati line. Other iwi heeded Tuheitia’s call and the conversation he generated will take on a life of its own that will continue. The government has tickled the taniwha and it might just get bitten.
But Tuheitia called for a pragmatic and a subversive kind of resistance, political in different ways. “We don’t want to just kōrero, we have to plan a way forward. Our plan needs to find solutions to things like housing and employment.
“The best protest we can do is being Māori. Be who we are, live by our values, speak our reo, care for our mokopuna. Just be Māori, all day, every day.”
Aaron Smale (Ngāti Porou) is a journalist specialising in te ao Māori issues.
