Kāi Tahu me te Hopu Tītī ki Rakiura:

Abstract

This article examines te hopu tītī ki Rakiura — the customary harvesting of tītī or ‘muttonbirds’ (sooty shearwaters/puffinus griseus) from islands adjacent to Rakiura (Stewart Island), by members of Kāi Tahu — the iwi (tribe) that has traditional authority over the majority of Te Wāhi Pounamu (the South Island of New Zealand). The article illustrates the pre and post-contact importance of te hopu tītī to Kāi Tahu and argues that, because the harvest is now and has always been the sole domain of the iwi, this sets it apart from prevailing settler society narratives whereby indigenous people usually lose out. The article also shows how the harvest did and continues to contribute to Kāi Tahu tribal identity. The author is both Kāi Tahu and an active participant in the tītī harvest as well as a post-graduate history student. This enables him to offer both a unique reading of the archives relating to the harvest as well as access to oral histories and early photographs associated with it.

Acknowledgements

The author thanks the Division of Humanities of the University of Otago for financial assistance to write this article, which forms part of a larger project based in the University's History Department, supported by the Royal Society of New Zealand's Marsden Fund, on knowledge and the colonisation of Murihiku. Thanks also to Prof. Tom Brooking and Dr Tony Ballantyne for supervision and support, and the ‘Kia Mau Te Tītī Mo Ake Tōnu Atu’ Research Team from the Department of Zoology, especially Assoc. Prof. Henrik Moller for his continued assistance. Thank you to a transient ‘Pākehā in my Pā’ for help with editing, and finally, thanks to my whānau and my partner Emma for your continued support and patience. He mihi nunui ki a koutou.

Notes

¹ Fronted by New Zealand music icon Don McGlashan, ‘The Muttonbirds’ were formed in 1991. Their song Dominion Road, named after an Auckland street, was voted number 23 in New Zealand's all-time top 30 songs by members of the Australasian Performing Right Association.

²  Puffinus griseus.

³ Though its status is not settled within present-day tribal administration, I have used the southern Māori ‘k’, which replaces ‘ng’ in most standard (North Island-derived) Māori words. Therefore, unless I am quoting something to the contrary in this article, Ngāi Tahu becomes Kāi Tahu, mahinga kai becomes mahika kai, rūnanga becomes rūnaka and so on.

⁴ For further explanation of the term ‘iwi’, see fn. 16. The present-day iwi of Kāi Tahu consists of three primary streams of whakapapa (genealogy): those of Waitaha, Kāti Mamoe and Kāi Tahu. These three tribal appellations respectively represent the migration to and settlement of different groups into Te Wāhi Pounamu (the South Island of New Zealand). As a result of strategic marriages, these groups were, in terms of genealogy at least, fused as a composite whole by the time of European contact. See Tipene O’Regan, ‘The Ngāi Tahu Claim,’ in Hugh Kawharu (ed.), Waitangi: Māori and Pākehā perspectives of the Treaty of Waitangi (Auckland 1989), 235.

⁵ Kerry Howe, ‘Two worlds?’, New Zealand Journal of History, 37 (2003), 57.

⁶ Ibid., 52.

⁷ Ibid., 51.

⁸ Belich quotes a study that ‘paints (Kāi Tahu) history from 1850 to the 1920s in terms of almost unrelieved victim ideology, implying that their socio-economy was repeatedly crippled or destroyed’. James Belich, Making Peoples, (2nd edn, Auckland 2001), 254.

⁹ In 1890, Judge Alexander Mackay reported that 46 per cent of Kāi Tahu had insufficient land for their support while 44 per cent had none at all. See Harry C. Evison, ‘Taiaroa, Hori Kerei ? — 1905’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 7 Jul. 2005, <http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/> (13 Mar. 2006), New Zealand Biographies. Many iwi and hapū (sub-tribes; see fn. 16) in parts of the North Island that resisted British colonisation were rendered landless through armed conflict with land-hungry European settlers and the British Army, often supported by other iwi. However, pragmatism and the early European acculturation of Kāi Tahu meant that the iwi generally welcomed British settlement and the opportunities it brought, and therefore entered into land transactions with the Crown. However, because it had an enormous tribal area and was a small iwi made smaller through inter- and intra-tribal conflict in the early- to mid-19th century and European diseases such as measles, settler government was able to do as it pleased, which was to ignore its obligations to Kāi Tahu contained in the said transactions.

¹⁰ Signed by representatives of the British Crown and more than 500 Māori chiefs over a seven-month period in 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi consists of three articles. The second of these guaranteed to Māori ‘the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates Forests Fisheries and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess so long as it is their wish and desire to retain the same in their possession …’ See States Services Commission, ‘Made in New Zealand: The Treaty of Waitangi’, launched 19 Apr. 2004, <http://www.treatyofwaitangi.govt.nz/treaty/> (13 Mar. 2006), Treaty of Waitangi.

¹¹ Particularly ‘colonialism’ defined as ‘a set of activites on the periphery that are revealed as practice’. See: Cole Harris, ‘How Did Colonialism Dispossess? Comments from an edge of empire’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(1), 2004, 165–82, at 166(b).

¹² Peter Gibbons, ‘The far side of the search for identity: reconsidering New Zealand history’, New Zealand Journal of History, 37 (2003), 41.

¹³ Ibid., 40–1.

¹⁴ Ibid., 45.

¹⁵ Ibid., 44.

¹⁶  Hapū, which primarily means to be pregnant, is also the name given to the intermediate social units of Māori society, which are generally referred to as ‘sub-tribes’. Hapū are genealogical confederations of whānau, a word which refers to both an immediate family and the act of giving birth. Translated as ‘tribe’, iwi means bone, thus underscoring the fact that all members of an iwi are related, that is, they are of the same ‘blood and bone’.

¹⁷ Atholl Anderson, Welcome of Strangers (Dunedin 1998), 72.

¹⁸Bill Dacker, Mahika Kai: people of the place (Wellington 1990), 6.

¹⁹ In fact North Island population densities of around one person per sq. km contrast sharply with the South Island, where Anderson estimates there was one person for every 46 to 65 sq. km. Anderson, ‘Towards an explanation of protohistoric social organisation amongst the southern Ngai Tahu’, New Zealand Journal of Archaeology, 2 (1980), 12.

²⁰ Anderson, ‘Evidence of Dr. Atholl Anderson on Mahinga Kai’, 1991, Indexed set of the Ngai Tahu Claim to the Waitangi Tribunal, Wai 27, Hocken Library, Dunedin (hereinafter HL) AG-653 H1, 71–2.

²¹ It has been suggested that this led to hapū groups strategically marrying their offspring, thus creating a web of multi-settlement hapū that spanned the entire southern region. See David Haines, ‘Te Kai a Te Rakatira’, BA(Hons) thesis, University of Otago (Dunedin 2003), 20.

²² Anderson, ‘Towards an Explanation’, 13–16.

²³ Jim Williams, ‘E Pākihi Hakinga a Kai: an examination of pre-contact resource management in Southern Te Wāipounamu’, PhD Thesis, University of Otago (Dunedin 2004), 147.

²⁴ Although some scholars argue that te hopu tītī ki Rakiura began just prior to or even after European contact, burnt rocks excavated from Poutama Island — one of the most southern Tītī Islands — were carbon-dated at between 1470 and 1666 AD. See D. Hawke, J. Newman, H. Moller, J. Wixon, ‘A possible early muttonbirder's fire on Poutama, a Rakiura titi island', New Zealand Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 33 (2003), 497–507.

²⁵ Rev. James Watkins, TS of Journal, Mar. 1844, MS-0440/045, HL, 82.

²⁶ Anderson notes that the term muttonbirding seems to have arisen on Norfolk Island, where the wedge-tailed shearwater (Puffinus pacificus) was described as a muttonbird in 1790. Anderson, ‘Origins of procellariidae hunting in the Southwest Pacific’, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 6 (1996), 403.

²⁷ A prominent conical rock in Foveaux Strait called Te Niho o Kiwa or Hau-tere by Kāi Tahu is now most commonly known as Solander Rock. It was named after Daniel Solander, an ex-pupil of Carl Linnaeus and botanist onboard Cook's Endeavour.

²⁸ John Boultbee, Journal of a Ramble: the journal of John Boultbee, ed. June Starke (Auckland 1986), 60.

²⁹ Ibid., 61.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Ibid, 65.

³² Ibid.

³³ Ibid., 66.

³⁴ Ibid.

³⁵ Ibid.

³⁶ Boutlbee, 66.

³⁷ Ibid., 66–7. The ‘kelp-bags’ that Boultbee described are constructed out of rimurapa (bull kelp/Durvillea antarctica). Some whānau still preserve their tītī in them, including mine. See Philip Simpson, Dancing Leaves: the story of New Zealand’s cabbage tree, tī kouka (Christchurch 2000), 142.

³⁸ Ibid., 77.

³⁹ Tony Ballantyne, ‘The politics of the enfeebled body’, copy in author's possession, 3.

⁴⁰ Basil Howard, Rakiura (reprint, Wellington 1974), 112–13.

⁴¹ Rhys Richards, The Foveaux Whaling Yarns of Yankee Jack (Dunedin 1995), 35. Richards estimates that there was probably more like 77 Pākehā living in the Foveaux Strait area at the time. Ibid., 70.

⁴² Ibid., 33.

⁴³ Anderson, ‘Shortland, Edward 1812?-1893’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 31 Jul. 2003, <http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/> (1 Oct. 2003), New Zealand Biographies.

⁴⁴ Edward Shortland, The Southern Districts of New Zealand: a journal with passing notices of the customs of the Aborigines (London 1851), 224–6.

⁴⁵ Sheila Natusch, ‘Wohlers, Eliza 1812?–1891; Wohlers, Johann Friedrich Heinrich 1811–1885’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 7 Apr. 2006, <http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/> (29 Aug. 2006), New Zealand Biographies.

⁴⁶ Ross Somerville, ‘Frederick Tuckett, 1807?–1876’, Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, updated 7 Apr. 2006, <http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/> (29 Aug. 2006), New Zealand Biographies.

⁴⁷ Centuries-old seabird harvesting in Britain has much in common with present-day tītī harvesting, to the extent that I wonder whether Pākehā from either St Kilda or the Isle of Lewis married into Kāi Tahu and influenced our harvest. See John Beatty, SULA: the seabird hunters of Lewis (London 1992) and Tom Steel, The Life and Death of St. Kilda (Glasgow 1975).

⁴⁸ Rev. Wohlers to Fredrick Tuckett, 13 Jun., 1852, HL, MS-0041.

⁴⁹ Johann Friedrich Heinrich Wohlers, Memories of the Life of J.F.H. Wohlers: missionary at Ruapuke, New Zealand: an autobiography, tr. John Houghton (Dunedin 1895), 120.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 192.

⁵¹ Dacker, Te Mamae me Te Aroha — The Pain and the Love: a history of Kāi Tahu Whānui in Otago, 1844–1994 (Dunedin 1994), 30.

⁵² Waitangi Tribunal, The Ngāi Tahu Report 1991 (2nd edn, Wellington 1998), 803.

⁵³ Ibid.

⁵⁴ Twenty-one so-called ‘Beneficial’ Tītī Islands are listed in the 9th Schedule to the Deed but for reasons that remain unclear, the Crown also ‘took’ 15 Tītī Islands, referred to as ‘Crown Islands’. Like Beneficial Islands, Crown Islands were exclusively harvested by Kāi Tahu that had genealogical rights to Beneficial Islands, however, they operated less under customary rules than Beneficial Islands did and continue to do so. Legal ownership of the Crown Islands was vested in Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu (the Kai Tahu governing body) as part of the Ngāi Tahu Claims Settlement Act 1998. Now re-named the Rakiura Tītī Islands, they are managed as if they are Nature Reserves with the proviso that tītī can be sustainably harvested from them. See: sections 333–7 (especially section 336) of the Settlement Act, and Titi (Muttonbird) Notice 2005.

⁵⁵ That is, they could not be remade ‘in the image of the British Isles’ and were thus no use to settlers. After William Cronon, ‘A Passion for Small Things’, Foreword to Herbert Guthrie-Smith, Tutira: the story of a New Zealand sheep station, (Washington 1999), xiii.

⁵⁶ Dacker argues that ‘the Tītī Islands were isolated and of little value to the European, unlike the land of Te Wai Pounamu’. Te Mamae me Te Aroha, 30. Evison more bluntly contends that ‘few Europeans cared for muttonbirds’. Harry C. Evison, The Ngai Tahu Deeds: a window on New Zealand history (Christchurch 2006), 259. Even if Europeans saw some value in the Tītī Islands, it may have been overshadowed by the goldrush in southern New Zealand at the time. For information on the goldrush, see Erik Olssen, A History of Otago (Dunedin 1984), 56–66.

⁵⁷ Anderson calculated that £5,000 would buy 7,000 pigs or 125 whaleboats. Alternatively, one season's catch equalled 125 birds for every Kāi Tahu man, woman and child. See Anderson, ‘Protohistoric social organisation’, 14.

⁵⁸ My pōua (grandfather) agrees with this point and comments that, ‘The old people had had dealings with government agencies, enough to know that “hey these guys are not straight — they speak with forked tongues”’. Tiny Metzger, transcript of interview, Apr. 2003.

⁵⁹ Evison submits that the Rakiura Deed appears ‘to be the most comprehensive and meticulous of all the Ngāi Tahu deeds’. Evison, Ngai Tahu Deeds, 258.

⁶⁰ Waitangi Tribunal, 812–13. Also, see Titi (Muttonbird) Islands Regulations 1978.

⁶¹ Belich, Making Peoples, 255–6.

⁶² Eruera Stirling and Anne Salmond, Eruera: the teachings of a Māori elder (4th edn, Auckland 1994), 105. ‘Kit’ is shorthand for kete, the general Māori word for basket, which are usually woven out of harakeke (see fn. 67) or on this case kiekie (Freycinetia banksii). Whariki are large mats woven from either of the same.

⁶³ The term ‘life apart’ underscores the fact that the Tītī Islands have only an indigenous past, thus visiting them is the furthest one can get from ‘mainstream’ (i.e. Pākehā dominated) society. Dacker, He Raraka A Ka Awa, updated, annotated and sourced manuscript for the book, Te Mamae Me Te Aroha, originally published in 1994, (HL, Misc-MS-1716), 287.

⁶⁴ Ann Parsonson notes that two major issues Kāi Tahu fought the Crown over in the 1970s were the return of Takahanga Pā at Kaikoura and the activities of the Wildlife Service officers on the Tītī Islands. She also notes that the first day of Waitangi Tribunal hearings in North Canterbury were attended by pōua and tāua (grandmothers/female elders) from as far south as Bluff. Ann Parsonson, ‘Ngāi Tahu — the whale that awoke: from claim to settlement (1960–1998)’, in John Cookson and Graeme Dunstall (eds), Southern Capital: Christchurch — towards a city biography, 1850–2000 (Christchurch 2000), 255, 259–60.

⁶⁵ Department of Zoology, University of Otago, ‘Transcripts from the Western Star concerning Tītī ecology and harvests’ (compiled Jul. 1998), 55.

⁶⁶ John Hall-Jones, Stewart Island Explored (Invercargill 1994), 62–3.

⁶⁷ Department of Zoology, ‘Transcripts’ 63.

⁶⁸ For information on Australian muttonbirding, see Irynej Skira, ‘Tasmanian Aborigines and muttonbirding: a historical examination’, PhD Thesis, University of Tasmania (Hobart 1993).

⁶⁹ Department of Zoology, ‘Transcripts’ 63.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 45.

⁷¹ Ibid.

⁷² The ‘passage’ is tītī that are traded with boat-owners for transport to and from the islands. Tiny Metzger, transcript of interview, April 2003.

⁷³ J.P.C. Watt, Stewart Island’s Kaipipi Shipyard and the Ross Sea Whalers (Waipukurau 1989), 86. Pōhā-tītī are often referred to as ‘kits’, derived from kete — a flax basket — a constituent part of each pōhā.

⁷⁴ Dacker, Mamae, 107.

⁷⁵ Sheila Natusch, An Island Called Home: Rakiura, New Zealand (Invercargill 1992), 91.

⁷⁶ Michael King, New Zealanders at War (Auckland 1981), 213 and 225.

⁷⁷ Belich, Making Peoples, 255–56.

⁷⁸ Tiny Metzger, transcript of interview, Apr. 2003.

⁷⁹ Hana O’Regan, Ko Tahu, Ko Au: Kāi Tahu tribal identity (Christchurch 2001), 61–2.

⁸⁰ Ibid, 139.

⁸¹ Ibid, 164.

⁸² Paul Diamond, ‘Building a boat for the whole tribe,’ Mana 53: 6 (Aug.–Sept. 2003), 114.

⁸³ Williams, ‘E Pakihi Hakinga a Kai’, 199.

⁸⁴ Hana O’Regan, Ko Tahu, Ko Au, 152.

⁸⁵ A dichotomy codified in the Treaty of Waitangi (Fisheries Claims) Act 1992 and recently consolidated in the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004.

⁸⁶ Challenges for te hopu tītī include, but are not limited to, tribal members re-activating rights to the harvest that have been dormant for several generations. Whereas most of these people learn and abide by the customs and rules associated with the harvest as practised by their relations, some do not, and they cause considerable cultural and even ecological damage. For a recent example, see Anke Richter, ‘To catch a muttonbird’, mare 53 (Dec. 2005/Jan. 2006), 88–92.

⁸⁷ There are currently about 35,000 registered Kāi Tahu, however, only 42% live within the tribal area compared with 45% that live outside of it, and 7.5% overseas. Tahu Potiki, ‘Ngāi Tahu Summit 2005’, Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, 2005, <http://www.ngaitahu.iwi.nz/Ngai%20Tahu%20Whanui/Ngai%20Tahu%20Summit/Tahu%20Potiki> (9 Jun. 2006), Ngāi Tahu Website.