Whenua is a New Zealand Herald project to show and tell stories of our land and explain how our history affects the present day. In the 1970s, a historic Ngāpuhi pa, Pākinga, was seized over $221 of unpaid rates. In this piece, David Fisher reports on how its modern owners gave the land back to their neighbours.

On the flat lands west of Kaikohe, a Pākehā farming family has carved off four hectares of land encompassing a historic pā site and gifted it to Māori.

John and Lily Coleman did so not because they didn’t want it. Instead it was because, in all the ways that really mattered, it has gone to those with a greater claim to it than names on a land title.

A New Zealand Herald investigation into their act of generosity has unveiled a remarkable insight into the way in which land changed from Māori to European hands – even in recent decades.

It has also revealed a deep, touching relationship across a cultural divide at a time when the distance between Māori and Pākehā is perhaps starker then it has been for decades.

But then, there was always something special about the block of land called Punikitere 4A, home to Pākinga Pā. It was always at the centre of history.

Pākinga Pā was a constant in the lives of the Coleman whānau. When their four children were small, Lily Coleman (87) remembers, it was the focus of family adventures.

Those walking from the Coleman’s farmhouse to the hill where the pā can be found would steer a course past the milking shed, down the cattle race and – in the 1970s – into a mess of blackberry, gorse, mānuka and toetoe. Small creeks made the ground boggy in some places; in others it surrendered to swamp.

After working through seemingly endless scrub, the uphill stretch ended in flat, terraced walls.

Lily Coleman remembers, as a young mum, finding her own way around the terrace to search out one of the narrow channels cut into the vertical terrace and clambering upwards.

There, she would scoot along the top, above the children, then lie flat at the edge with outstretched hands.

“I’m hanging over the side, pulling one child after the other up. I think they enjoyed scrambling up.

“But it was very clever. See, you couldn’t just walk up there yourself. You had to really know how to get up there and that would be one of the safety measures [Ngāpuhi chief] Hongi Hika had in mind.

“I was always fascinated by the shape of it.”

As the years went by, the Coleman children would carve their own route through the scrub, creating their own adventures.

“It was like walking through a jungle going up to the pā,” Rick Coleman recalls. The pā itself seized his imagination. “It was such an adventure playground.”

The gradual incline approaching the pā was the doorway to a discovery of its secrets. There was the carefully constructed defensive route to the top, sheer terraces that turned the hill into a layer cake. In a few places, narrow walkways carved through the terraces control access to the top.

Once there, it is clear the earthworks that created the terrace also included flattening the hilltop and separating it by deep moats into three distinct areas.

To the north, one end of the hill has been built up into a viewing platform, giving expansive views in all directions. There were fire pits found across the pā but there’s a belief that the middle section would have been the cooking area, says Sue Coleman, one of those whose childhood was made magical by the pā. And the far section, that would be sleeping and daily living.

“We always knew it was significant as as a whānau,” she says. “We always knew it was a special place.”

Rick (61), her brother, closes his eyes and basks in fading golden sunlight. “I love coming up here like this time in the afternoon. You just get a good feeling up here, appreciate the view and you just think of how they used to live here.”

Decades later, Rick Coleman discovered he and his siblings weren’t the only ones whose childhoods were filled with the wonder of Pākinga Pā.

Much would happen before Arama Tahere (Ngāti Tautahi), who lived down the road, told him of early morning “very secretive” trips to the pā and its connection to his marae, Te Iringa, which lay to the south.

Tahere recalls he and other boys following his father and uncles up the slope and along the narrow passages cut into the terraces.

“We’d sit on the pā, they’d have karakia [ritual chants, prayers] and then they’ll disappear for a little bit and then they’ll come back and then we would have another karakia and then we’d leave.”

Those boys were puzzled, he reckons, and not really understanding why these furtive visits took place.

“As we’ve grown over the years, we’ve come to find why we went there, why we kept going there and… its importance to not only our whānau but to our hapū.”

Yes, it was trespassing but “my family weren’t very law-abiding citizens”, he says with a laugh. “These places are sacred places so we’re going there anyway. We had what was known as our tikanga so it was up to us to stay connected to that place.”

To the north of the pā is Ōkorihi marae, home to Ngāti Uoneone, where Mutunga Rameka (Ngāti Uoneone) has a different story.

“Most of us were never allowed up there. We were told the whole place was tapu and that’s probably because our parents didn’t have access to the place.

“And once that happens, then very quickly through generations you lose any connection to the place solely because it’s tapu and you just don’t talk about it.

“It’s one of those things that’s just put in the corner and it’s just left there.”

To a degree, there wasn’t even direct knowledge of the pā and its history. Some in his whānau believed Pākinga to be the nearby urupā (burial grounds).

“It’s sad because now that I know a little bit more about the pā, it could definitely play a different role in who I am now.”

Pākinga Pā: Centuries of history

So this is a history of Pākinga Pā and those who lived there. It is not the definitive history because there are different stories told about this place, depending on who does the telling.

Some of this is drawn from a research report investigated and written by Sue Coleman (52) in 1993 when she attended Auckland University. In an odd coincidence, she took a class led by a professor who had taken part in an archaeological dig close to the pā in the 1960s.

Her report credits interviews with at least two of those the Herald has found to be related to the original owners. Other details are captured in Ngāpuhi oral tradition, as relayed to the Waitangi Tribunal.

The Ngāpuhi account records that when the great chief Mahia went into battle, he was so tall and strong of arm that he took no weapons other than his mighty fists.

Mahia came to the lands west of Kaikohe and there he built a pā.

A hill was shaped to serve as a fortress, slopes shaved away to create terraces. In two places at the top of the hill, deep moats created three areas. Ringing each were palisades.

From on high, all the land around surrendered its secrets. To the west, the rising sun lights the sand dunes at the distant mouth of the Hokianga Harbour. Looking east, those at Pākinga Pā could see the next settlement atop what is now called Monument Hill, miles away, above modern-day Kaikohe. In the ripples of land around, a war party might disappear into a fold in the landscape – but not for long.

In time, it became a place known for producing skilled fighters. It was named Pākinga Pā and its excellence in military training set it apart in the north. The “paki” in its name was said by some to come from the clapping of fighting sticks as warriors trained.

Mahia, born in the 1500s, could trace his descent to Ngāpuhi’s founding ancestor, Rahiri, the son of Tauramoko and Te Hauangiangi. This lineage is rich in its links to the great waka – Tauramoko was a descendant of Kupe, who captained Matawhaorua and Nukutawhiti, captain of Ngātokimatawhaorua. Te Hauangiangi was the daughter of Puhi, captain of Mataatua.

Pākinga Pā was first known as Ruangangana, meaning “The Pā of the Brave” or “readiness to fight”, Karena Rameka (Ngāti Ueoneone, Matarahurahu and Ngāti Whakaeke) told the Waitangi Tribunal in 2015 in evidence for the Northland claim.

But it was Mahia’s prowess in battle that saw the name change, with Rameka describing how the chief’s reputation became such that others looked to him for recourse.

With this, he said, Pākinga Pā’s translation was: “As the waves crash against the rocks, so the waves of request crashing onto Mahia for action to redress a wrong… Mahia is the rock on which appeals are made, and the constant appeals to him gave Pākinga its name.”

From Mahia came Ngahue, from Ngahue came Te Wairua and then Te Auha and then Te Hotete. All held Pākinga Pā at the centre of their world.

It was a line of warriors whose campaigns and relationships shaped the north. Rameka: “All these fighters were spawned from Pākinga Pā. Veritable tigers, unequal their savagery and ferocity in battle.”

Wiremu Reihana (Ngāti Tautahi ki te Iringa, Ngāti Kura and Ngāti Hinemutu) told the tribunal “Pākinga was where our warmongers were trained in the art of combat, politics and even tōhungaism”.

Rangatira from across the north “went there to learn about the art of war for the betterment of Ngāpuhi”.

“Essentially Pākinga was the control centre of Ngāpuhi. They trained in mau rākau, leadership, battle tactics and how to manage warriors.”

The pā was central to the story of Hongi Hika, born in the 1770s – possibly at the pā. He was a chief for the ages and a warrior for the times.

By Reihana’s account to the tribunal, Hika went to Pākinga Pā at a “very young age”, studied and was schooled in warfare and mysticism. It was from there he ventured as a young warrior and then war leader.

There was one setback when, around 1813, Hika set out to raid Whiria Pā at Pakanae, near Ōpononi, for an offence perpetrated years earlier. Deflected from there, according to evidence submitted to the Waitangi Tribunal, he attacked Hunoke Pā, killing the chief Tuohu.

It was during this assault that a Te Roroa war party – linked to Whiria Pā – took Pākinga Pā “and those women and children that were not killed were taken away”. Hika learned of the loss on his return and set out to exact revenge against Te Tihi at Mataraua Pā, north Hokianga.

“It is said that Hongi shot Te Tihi with his horse pistol and then ate the eyes.” In doing so, Hika defrayed the transgressions accrued against his own people.

Hika’s life after that exercise in utu (repayment) was one of major military campaigns. It was also a life which embraced the world and the opportunities it offered. In England, he rubbed shoulders with royalty and academics, was instrumental in the development of te reo as a written language and learned of the military might and scale of the British Empire.

With this lesson, Hika returned with 500 muskets bought in Australia. In a handful of years, he ranged far outside the north, leading great armies and leaving thousands dead in his wake.

Hika died of a musket wound in 1828. Almost two centuries on, his legend remains deeply entwined with that of Pākinga Pā.

Saving a ‘beautiful pā’

John and Lily Coleman met in Ōhura in the King Country where he was a contract milker and she was learning to be a teacher at Ōhura District High School.

They came to Kaikohe in 1966 after marrying, seeking out a farm of their own. Land in the north was cheaper. They arrived with 65 cows and a horse.

In the 57 years that followed, John and Lily Coleman raised four children and gave much of their lives to the town they adopted as home.

He served as an elected local government officer, on school committees, the district Federated Farmers board, refereed rugby, coached sport and much more. She sat on school committees, community groups, coached athletics and swimming and supported children with learning disabilities. Together they provided sponsorship for key community events like the annual A&P show.

The farm they bought in 1966 was 44 hectares. Five blocks of land were added since then for a total of 160ha but it wasn’t until 2002 – 13 years after they converted from dairy farming to beef – that Punikitere 4A was added.

Until then, that block of land had defied the Europeans who owned it. John Coleman (87): “It was all covered in scrub and gorse and the previous owners never touched it because it’s very steep at the back.”

One afternoon not long after buying the block, John Coleman recalls taking a break after milking, picking up the morning paper then spluttering his tea when realising the front page story about the occupation of a historic pā site was about Pākinga Pā.

He hadn’t realised anyone had been there. “That’s our place,” he remembers thinking. “They’re trying to claim it.”

When one of the protesters wrote apologising for the intrusion and asking how to help preserve the pā, he replied with a gentle telling-off – he knew older generations of her whānau and suggested the approach taken was an injury to their mana.

But he added: “We can assure you that we are not here to desecrate the pā site. It will be fenced off from stock. Pākinga Pā will remain as it is while in our stewardship.”

Rick Coleman recalls early efforts to preserve the pā as like swimming against the tide. Funds were sought from a heritage agency to help with fencing and preservation. The bureaucratic paperwork was a nightmare. When some money was eventually sent, it was such a pittance that Rick Coleman remembers his dad sending it back.

The local council was approached over rates relief as they were avoiding running stock there. “They said it wasn’t registered as a historic site,” says Rick Coleman. Efforts were made to contact authorities but after initial positive noises, interest from the council fell away.

It was about this time Rick Coleman reached one of those junctions in life seen most clearly in hindsight. It set in train events that led to where we are now, 20 years on, with Pākinga Pā being transferred out of Coleman ownership.

As a boy, Rick Coleman grew up in a community where most boys his age were sons of Māori families. He played rugby with those boys, went home with them after school and met whānau. Among those whānau were those who remembered the old stories – and when they spoke, he listened.

In many ways, he never really left Kaikohe aside from finishing his education at boarding school in Auckland and a period farming on the other side of the town. He lives now close to the pā, not far from the house in which he grew up.

As an adult, Rick Coleman’s connections with his neighbours deepened and grew. One kaumātua relied on him for a regular trip to town on Fridays. After he finished milking, he’d turn up for a breakfast of freshly-caught eel before running his host into Kaikohe.

And the stories would flow. They were not always the same stories and he came to learn how control of the pā, and connection to it, had ebbed and flowed across the centuries. As he listened, the pieces of history fell together like an awkwardly-fitting jigsaw puzzle.

Much of what he’s learned isn’t his to share, he says, but on those occasions when he has relayed Pākinga’s storied past to Pākehā mates they had responded with disbelief. It doesn’t accord with how they view Māori. “But they come from a different world,” he says.

There was a stark realisation of this not long after his parents had bought the pā block.

Rick Coleman stood atop the pā with a group of friends from his Auckland boarding school. It was the sort of school where farmer’s sons from Kaikohe rub shoulders with those born to captains of industry and other leaders of the nation.

As they stood there on the pā, he asked his mates what might be done with such an extraordinary place. In reply, they talked about it as a great spot for houses – once the top was bulldozed clear.

For Rick Coleman, the thought of a bulldozer on the pā was so jarring, it shook something loose in his mind.

“Like hell that’s going to happen,” he recalls thinking. “I’m not destroying a beautiful pā like this.”

It took years before that rattle in his skull germinated into an idea – but that was the point at which Pākinga Pā began its journey back to the people who had lived there for centuries.

He asks: “Would you like something like that, that was your heritage, to be destroyed? If this was where you originated, would you like that destroyed?”

What haunted him was this: “If this land is sold and it’s someone who does not have the same aroha towards the land, it could be destroyed.”

And that had him mulling the whole problem over from the beginning. “How can you put a place for tender that has a pā on site? I thought, ‘this is not right? How can you sell a pā?’”

How the land was taken in 1970s New Zealand

The separation of Rameka and Tahere from Pākinga Pā reflects deliberate government strategies of the 1960s.

Those strategies took two forms – engineering the move of Māori from rural communities to the cities and removing land from those who remained.

After World War II, there was a drive to move manpower to the cities, where it was needed to fill factories and building sites with workers. Historian Tony Walzl, in a report for the Northland claim before the Waitangi Tribunal, told how the 1950s brought policy designed to encourage that urban drift.

There were trade-focused training schemes based in cities, welfare officers who drove employment in cities and a housing policy that would only fund building on Māori land where it was close to education or jobs.

Walzl’s report quoted a Northland official saying: “It has also been our practice for people on small uneconomic properties living in the country to try and persuade them to move to centres of employment.”

The focus wasn’t just finding labour, as revealed in the Hunn Report of 1961. Named for its author Jack Hunn, acting head of the Māori Affairs Department, the report separated Māori into three categories: those whose tribal connections were effectively severed; those who could live in either Māori or Pākehā society; and those “complacently living a backward life in primitive conditions”.

Hunn said his objective was one of integration. Critics said it often looked like assimilation. In a 2019 paper by University of Auckland emeritus professor David Williams, Hunn was quoted as saying he wanted Māori to live a life that was “not, in fact, a Pākehā but a modern way of life, common to advanced people”.

The wider context is described in a 2008 report titled, Eating Away at the Land, Eating Away at the People by historian Bruce Stirling.

The report, compiled for the Waitangi Tribunal, described a move from Wellington in the 1960s to “productively use ‘idle’ Māori land”. It came with a “growing drive to ‘integrate’ Māori into Pākehā society… to ‘Europeanise’ Māori land, just as urbanised Māori were to be ‘Europeanised’”.

It was in this environment that Tahere’s grandfather moved with his seven sons from rural Northland to South Auckland.

Once there, he crossed lines not evident in provincial New Zealand. “Being here [in the north], you’re free, you can choose and do as you please. And the city was different, they were bound by different laws,” says Tahere.

Crossing those lines saw Arama Tahere’s father and his six brothers taken into state care and then placed in boys’ homes. The Royal Commission into Abuse in Care has heard evidence of how those who suffered through those homes were instrumental in the development of New Zealand gangs.

Tahere’s whānau included founding members of the Ōtara-based Stormtroopers and the Tribesmen motorcycle club – creating a hapū and family to belong to away from home.

“These were the routes they took while being in South Auckland, being disconnected from their whenua [land],” says Tahere.

“This is them creating a whānau and a hapū in an area that they [felt] disconnected to and don’t belong to and what their environment that they were in forced them to become.”

In 1967, the Government brought into law the Māori Affairs Amendment Act and the Rating Act intended, one Government minister said, to “enable a good deal more Māori land to be brought into production”.

If government policy had drawn Tahere away from Pākinga Pā, it was these new laws which separated Rameka without his whānau even leaving the area.

The law allowed local authorities to seize Māori land on which rates were owed. For councils, which had their own development plans, it was an opportunity to redistribute the land, possibly rezone it, and increase the amount of money collected through rates.

Matiu Rata, the Northern Māori MP, pointed to the inequity of rates applied to land that defied a profit objective – land that was difficult to access, such as the land-locked Pākinga Pā, or swamp, like the land that surrounded it.

The deliberate nature of the law changes was such that even those landowners who did pay their rates could still be subject to land seizure if they couldn’t somehow convince council the rates would be paid in the future. “This provision is undesirable, unnecessary, and totally unfair,” Rata said at the time.

While Māori politicians lobbied for regional development support to improve the land, the Crown’s position to Māori was, as Stirling described it, “use it or lose it”.

He found collection of rates complicated by collective ownership. Many Māori land owners did not know rates were due or that there was money owed. It was an issue exacerbated by poor recordkeeping of ownership at councils, the Valuation Department or the Māori Land Court.

And there were those who simply couldn’t afford to pay. In one case Stirling found, rezoning of land had more than quadrupled the rates bill. At a time when the average wage was $50 a week, the cost had gone from around four weeks of income to 18 weeks.

Pākinga Pā and $221 of unpaid rates

The NZ Herald discovered Pākinga Pā was lost through the exercise of these laws. A search of land records at Archives New Zealand unearthed a file that seemed not to have seen daylight for 50 years. Inside it were echoes of office administration gone by – tissue-thin paper punched at by typewriters, hand-written notes, copies of inter-office communications.

It showed the separation of the land from its people was authorised on April 29, 1971, in a hearing of the Māori Land Court at Whangārei before Judge William Nicholson. It described how the Bay of Islands County Council had lodged a claim in December the previous year, citing the Rating Act 1967 and the Māori Affairs Act 1967.

The Māori Affairs Act obliged the Māori Land Court to ensure there was “no meritorious objection” to the land being placed in trust and then sold. Of the 24 owners, the names of two people were listed as having been consulted. The entire list of the 24 owners appears nowhere in the file.

With no objection raised, Nicholson ordered the land sold with the money obtained used to “pay all outstanding recoverable rates” and – after costs were deducted – to return whatever was left to those who had lost it.

Details showed Pākinga Pā was lost over 14 years of unpaid rates worth $221.34. The history of a people was taken for less than five weeks of fulltime work.

Documents in the file show the Māori Trustee and the Bay of Islands County Council worked closely together to ensure the land was sold. A memo in the file shows the Bay of Islands County Council sought out the Māori Trustee to take control of the land.

The same memo says the trustee accepted it on July 14, 1971, knowing there were willing buyers. It had received a detailed memo from the council showing exactly which farmers wanted to buy it. Among the names was John Coleman. The memo said “because of the interest in the land, it is recommended we accept the trust”.

The sale process began in May 1971 with a valuation report that contains a reference to “the old pā which occupies the centre of the block and which can be seen from practically any direction, the South West excepted”.

Another report from the Valuation Department report dated August 23, 1971, described it as “a very unattractive property in an isolated position due to no formed access. Property is completely unimproved and is in scrub and gorse”. It was valued at $1300.

Advertisements were placed calling for tenders in September 1971 and by November 1971 there was a schedule from which the Māori Trustee could choose the winner. Among the offers was a bid from the Colemans for $1200 – John Coleman recalls the low bid and how they couldn’t afford to go higher.

Instead, a tender of $1522 was accepted, despite the records showing the Māori Trustee’s doubts as to whether the purchaser – a 20-year-old electrician from Auckland – would even have the cash to pay.

To help the new owner, the Māori Trustee accepted the $300 deposit and agreed the balance could come in monthly payments of $209.78 for six months. The young electrician then missed those payments.

In pursuit of unpaid rates, the Māori Trustee had taken the highest offer and sold the land to someone who couldn’t pay for it. It took most of 1973 for him to line up a loan and pay the balance.

A “Notice of Change of Ownership” shows the sale finalised on September 25, 1973.

In the section, “legal description”, it describes Punakitere 4A with a handwritten note: “Land now deemed to be European land.”

In 1974, there was concern over how much land was being taken from Māori hands. The Māori Affairs department found 21 properties in Northland had been seized over unpaid rates. Of those six were leased and 15 were sold.

Among those blocks of land was Pākinga Pā’s 99 acres (40ha) with 24 registered owners. A year later, Dame Whina Cooper led the famous hīkoi to Wellington with the rallying cry: “Not one more acre.”

‘If I only had time’

The idea scratching away in Rick Coleman’s mind was a return of the pā to those whose connection was deeper, and longer, than his family’s.

Rick Coleman never speaks of “owning” the pā. He uses the word “occupier” in a similar sense to his father John’s talk of stewardship; what they have now will eventually be passed to other hands.

He put to his parents the thought of returning the land. “I’m thankful Mum and Dad have agreed for it to be done.” Sue Coleman speaks of how in keeping it is with her parents’ connection to, and work for, the community in which they had lived much of their lives.

With his parents’ approval, Rick Coleman met with Toko Tahere, a Ngāti Tautahi kaumātua with whom he had formed a bond. Having visited Ngāti Tautahi, Rick Coleman met with Ngāti Ueoneone to the north. Then it was time to cast the net more widely.

When a public meeting was called to discuss the pā, people came from everywhere. Even then, Rameka said it was understood “that they were giving the land back”.

Toko Tahere was invited to open the meeting with a karakia. Instead, he looked at the jostling crowd and questioned if many of those attending could whakapapa to the pā – and why the meeting wasn’t on a marae.

It was an approach that drew a line under competing for a right to the pā, says Rameka. Instead, it focused thinking on “getting the land back and sorting everything else out afterwards”.

Other hui followed at which the idea of putting the land into trust solidified. There were also a few “good neighbour” concessions – getting an alternate access to the pā, fencing to keep stock out but also allowing a route through for cattle if needed (although not across the pā).

Access was an issue until Ngapaki Tipi Nikora (Ngāti Ueoneone) and whānau, who neighbour the pā, offered a slice of their land as a driveway. The whole plan wouldn’t have worked without the Nikora whānau’s generosity.

“A Māori gifting land,” Rick Coleman laughs. “They usually have it taken away from them.”

But that was the degree of goodwill that had grown around the idea. By that point, there was momentum, constructive advice about how to structure the transfer and the eventual trust that would be created to hold the land. There was also about $750,000 through the newly-created Provincial Growth Fund to build the driveway and clear scrub from the pā.

The trust established to manage the project has representatives from Ngāti Tautahi and Ngāti Uoneone, and – for as long as they own the adjoining land – one from the Coleman family.

Rick Coleman was unsure about his family’s involvement in the trust but agreed at the insistence of Toko Tahere, who died before the project came to completion.

“My thoughts were ‘I’ll take it on from the point of view of the whenua around the pā’,” he says. “To me, I have no right to vote on Māori matters.”

The return was recognised in a ceremony on Waitangi Day 2023, even though the small print had yet to be rubber-stamped by the Māori Land Court. Such was the clamour among those swept up in the emotion of the moment, John and Lily Coleman became lost among the dignitaries and the hubbub.

At the ceremony, Kiri Allan, then the Justice Minister, was among those who spoke and Sue Coleman recalls her words as those which truly touched her parents and their children. When speaking, her words were directed at the Colemans, and specifically at John and Lily. Sue Coleman struggles to remember exactly what was said but – unlike much of the over-organised political doings at the event – it felt human and seemed to genuinely recognise her parents and their role.

When it came to the exchange of waiata, John Coleman sang from a reworked version of the John Rowles 1968 classic If I Only Had Time. In lyrics shaped for the occasion, he sang to Lily: “Life has been too short, with so many things we could do and make true, if we only had time.”

And he sang to those gathered, a steward of the land passing the responsibility to others: “There are mountains to climb in recognising Pākinga Pā’s time.”

In considering the return of the land, Rameka talks of the difficulty untangling the emotions involved in the loss of the land. He says there is “always” anger around land lost and acknowledges the difficulty in an assumption of gratitude over being given something you considered was always yours.

The gratitude is there, built on decades of relationship-building. It exists not because of the act of transferring the land but the pathway walked to reach the point where that was possible.

Rameka speaks to the relationship between Ngāti Tautahi and the Colemans. “And that’s probably what has helped to get us to where we are now.”

There is also gratitude those owners who held the land between the Māori Trustee and the Colemans from 1973 to 2022 failed in their struggle to break in the land.

With that foundation established, Rameka turns to the Colemans. He is, he says, “very grateful that this whānau have decided to give the land back to the hapū”.

For more than 50 years, the Colemans have been neighbours to Ngāti Tautahi. John and Lily Coleman are known as people who put more into the community than they take out.

“I can honestly say over the years we’ve never rustled any mutton from them,” says Arama Tahere, “and we’ve always maintained an awesome relationship with them. It’s probably one of the only farms that never got any beef or sheep stolen from it. And that’s an honest kōrero.”

Then there’s Rick Coleman, who “grew up here amongst our people”, says Arama Tahere.

“If it wasn’t for the relationships that Richard Coleman had formed with different whānau, we probably wouldn’t be having this kōrero.”

“He’s always felt he’s been a part of this and he grew up here so he’s never felt like he’s been an outsider. He’s always felt like he’s been included.”

Not just another hill

For so many years, the pā site was integral to Ngāpuhi life. Those who once lived in Pākinga Pā have descendants among many iwi in Tai Tokerau.

To stand at the lookout of the pā, where likely Hongi Hika once stood, is to cast an eye across land that holds marae to either side.

To the south, down the road from the Colemans, is Te Iringa marae of Ngāti Tautahi. To the northwest, Ōkorihi Marae, of Ngāti Uoneone. There were other marae who also draw connections to Pākinga Pā, but these are the closest and – as trustees – are the guardians of its future.

That responsibility now rests with Mutunga Rameka and Arama Tahere. They’ve known each other from childhood. With two primary schools and one secondary school, that’s not uncommon in Kaikohe.

Sue Coleman, who trained to become a teacher, taught both men at Northland College. She will be the Coleman family representative on the trust, taking over from Rick. He’s happier on the farm – or taking te reo lessons at the marae – than he is sweating over administration.

Once the pā is open, Rameka can see a future in which children and young people, embracing local history in the curriculum, visit from across Tai Tokerau. It’s quite likely Sue Coleman will be telling this story as a teacher at nearby Northland College, where she has already developed a teaching resource around Rahiri, the pā and the kite he flew to determine boundaries.

It’s likely, too, Sue Coleman will taken those lessons out of the classroom and lead children back to the pā where she crafted her own memorable childhood adventures.

For those growing up in the area, Arama Tahere says it is likely many do not know of Pākinga Pā or the stories that travel with it.

“They’ve driven past it a million times, they’ve seen it. It just looks like another hill around here to them.

“But its history and its significance, its huge meaning… You have a look anywhere in New Zealand history – a lot of it starts and stems from there.”

To bring those young people to the pā, to sit and teach the history, pass on the stories of those who created that history, “is what’s going help us move forward”.

Rameka has seven children of his own and considers the “huge difference” to their lives knowing their tūpuna built and lived in and around the pā. One son, with a passion for mau rākau (traditional Māori martial art), is embracing a kaupapa once taught at Pākinga.

“So for us it is deep. It goes deeper than what words can express.”

There has always been a relationship between Ngāti Tautahi and Ngāti Uoneone. It was a bond strengthened after the loss of Ngāti Uoneone’s marae in a fire two decades past and the welcome from Ngāti Tautahi to hold tangihanga (funerals) at Te Iringa Marae until it was rebuilt.

And now, as custodians of a remarkable history, the bond is deeper still. Their respective relationship with the pā is very different, as are the stories of their links to the pā.

“We came to an understanding our story will never be the same and we’re okay with that,” says Rameka. “We will continue to tell our versions to our hapū.”

Arama Tahere: “Everyone’s entitled to their own mana.”

There are elements so large they cannot be lost in history. Mahia, for example, remains a towering figure by any telling.

For both Rameka and Arama Tahere, the future of the pā is tied to what it offers generations to come. The weight of its history, the extraordinary figures emerging from the past, provide a different narrative to that which burdens the youth of today.

“If our children understand where we come from and who they come from, we should be able to wipe out all the negative things. No more depression, no more suicide,” Rameka says.

The narrative in which those young people are growing up in is different, says Arama Tahere. “There’s not a lot of money running around in Kaikohe, not a lot of opportunity.” There are statistics that bedevil Kaikohe – unemployment, crime, substance abuse.

With Pākinga Pā and all that it means, he says “we don’t have to be the stereotypical Māori kid”.

“Now we get the opportunity to share that to our next generation and say that if our tūpuna Mahia was this man, why can’t we be that? Why can’t you be that same way?”

For those young people who struggle to see a way out, Rameka envisions sitting and talking about mighty Mahia, who loomed large over his enemies.

For those told they will amount to little, Rameka says the story of Mahia will tell them: “I come from greatness.”

And then he will tell them: “You literally do come from giants.”

Whenua is a New Zealand Herald data-led project, supported by the Public Interest Journalism Fund, in association with Māori land legal expert Adrienne Paul (Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tuhoe) from the University of Canterbury law school.