Ihumātao is believed to be the first place in the Auckland area where Māori people arrived when they voyaged here from Hawaiki. It has long been inhabited by Māori people of the Tāmaki Makaurau area. However, land throughout Aotearoa was seized following the arrival of British colonizers. Despite Te Tiriti o Waitangi, a treaty signed in 1840 by both Māori iwi leaders and the British, which promised te tino rangatiratanga or chieftainship for Māori over their lands, the British continued to take land illegally and often by force. While Te-Wai-o-Hua, the iwi of Ihumātao, has suffered much land loss in this way, they have refused to leave and some whānau (ʻohana) of the iwi continue to live there today. There was a big protest in 2019 because the NZ government had sold some of this stolen land to a building company, and this building company wanted to construct huge apartment buildings on the land. Have you all heard of the Mauna Kea protests? This protest was similar -- people who supported Te-Wai-o-Hua, including both mana whenua (the people of the land, the Māori people) and tauiwi (settlers), occupied Ihumātao and refused to leave. It was really inspiring to learn all this history on the land, and to see how much determination and strength they had, despite how much had been taken from them.
