effected did not attend the meetings. This, and Pirirakau’s hauhau connections, provided the commissioner with an excuse to confiscate their land.
• The result was that land traditionally belonging to certain Ngati Ranginui hapu was acquired by the Crown without payment or consent. The intention was to obtain land that would be suitable for settlement. It also meant that Pukewhanake, and other wahi tapu, were included in reserves awarded to chiefs for their ‘loyalty’ to the Crown.
• Pukewhanake was included in lot 178, Parish of Te Puna (70 acres), which was awarded to Enoka te Whanake by a Crown grant dated 5 January 1869. Although Pukewhanake was part of an area of land that was subsequently awarded to Maori, the fact that it was awarded to a chief for his loyalty, rather than because he had traditional ties to the land, meant that it was quickly alienated into Pakeha ownership.
• Enoka sold lot 178 on 13 May 1869 to Thomas Craig for £17:10:0. The section was later purchased by H.P. Clarke, and remained in the Clarke family for nearly 100 years. Once it had been sold into private pakeha ownership Maori had no say over the use and management of special sites on this land. Pukewhanake was turned into farmland, and the pa was ‘robbed’ of cultural artefacts, none of which appeared to have passed into Maori control.
• In 1965 serious damage was done to Pukewhanake, as a result of work carried out by the Ministry of Works to improve State Highway 2 where it crosses the Wairoa River. Fill material required to build up the level of the highway where it approached the new bridge was acquired from Pukewhanake. A total of 70,000 cubic yards of fill was quarried from Pukewhanake by a contractor for the Ministry of Works. For this Clarke received royalty payments of £4,200.
• As a result, Pukewhanake today has a clearly exposed cut northern face. Not only was the land itself desecrated, but skeletal remains were disinterred while the hillside was being removed. At that time, the Crown had little regard for the Maori people of the area or their maunga and this in turn led to the maunga’s near total destruction. More recently Maori have called for greater say in how sites such as Pukewhanake are managed to prevent any further destruction.
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