Learn about our past and present
Ahi kaa (whaanau who keep the home fire burning) know Ihumaatao as a waahi tapu (a sacred place) and a waahi tuupuna (a place of ancestral significance).
Our national heritage agency Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga recognises Ihumaatao as an outstanding cultural heritage landscape. Others see valuable green space or appreciate settler farming innovations.
Ihumaatao is also home to one of the oldest, continuously occupied papakaainga (villages) in Aotearoa.
History + Culture.
The entire Ihumaatao peninsula is a rare cultural heritage landscape embedded with identity, meaning, and significance. A critical history of Ihumaatao binds together lands and peoples. The name Ihumaatao, or, Te Ihu o Mataoho, recalls the tupua (deity) Mataoho, who is responsible for the volcanic formations throughout Taamaki Makaurau. Around 800 years ago, Ihumaatao was the place where tohunga Hape (a revered ancestor) arrived on the back of a giant whai (stingray) named kaiwhare. Soon after, Ihumaatao became a landing place for the Tainui waka (canoe).
It is in Ihumaatao that we feel most connected to our whakapapa (genealogy) and tuupuna (ancestors). For more than 800 years, ahi kaa have exercised our role as kaitiaki (guardians) for the land.
Tiriti Justice.
For more than 20 generations Ihumaatao served as a place of great significance to ahi kaa, who established strong socio-economic and cultural ties to the land before the arrival of European explorers. Skilled gardeners, elite soils and bountiful waterways made Ihumaatao a highly productive place. Thriving trade with the settlers, arriving in numbers from the 1840s, made Ihumaatao a food bowl for the developing city of Auckland.
But in 1863, as part of its plan to invade the Waikato to satisfy the settler hunger for productive land, the Crown confiscated 1100 acres at Ihumaatao under the New Zealand Settlements Act. Whaanau were exiled to the south, their homes destroyed, and their possessions taken.
From the 1950s successive injustices added to a deep sense of loss and intergenerational trauma. From the quarrying of ancestral mountains and the pollution of the harbour fishing grounds to the industrial encroachment and devastating chemical dye spill in Ooruarangi Awa.
In 2012, despite opposition, the land at Ihumaatao was re-zoned for development and in 2013 the Government passed the Housing Accords and Special Housing Area Act. Just over 32 hectares of confiscated land was designated a Special Housing Area. A 9-year+ long campaign to stop the development followed, led by ahi kaa. Using political and legal means, as well as community power, the SOUL Protect Ihumaatao campaign aimed to protect the whenua for future generations.
In December 2020 the Crown bought the land and a process is underway to determine its future.
