Their dominance in the area was challenged, however, when the final Maori migration into the Tauranga district took place. This heke consisted of people of the Mataatua waka, which had landed at Whakatane. They included Ngai Te Rangi, who journeyed along the Bay of Plenty coast until they reached Tauranga, and Ngati Pukenga, who assisted Ngai Te Rangi in displacing Ngati Ranginui and Waitaha from parts of Tauranga Moana.⁴ By the end of the eighteenth century, Ngai Te Rangi had gained the ascendancy along the coast and on the offshore islands of Tauranga Moana, while Ngati Ranginui and Waitaha interests predominated in the inland areas east of the Waipapa River. This division between coastal and inland districts should not be overstated, however, since all Tauranga Maori had rights and interests both on the coast and inland.

The area around Tauranga Moana, extending back to the Kaimai Range, was able to support a relatively dense Maori population. Within this area were a large number of hapu, each one occupying and using the resources of a range of different environments. Professor Evelyn Stokes summarised the environments and resources of the district as follows:

The long coastline provided a variety of habitats in estuaries, mudflats and mangrove swamps, open sandy beaches and rocky shore, for kai moana, seafood, especially shellfish – pipi, tuatua, paua, kuku and other varieties – as well as kina (sea urchins) and koura (crayfish). Fish could be caught in the rivers, sheltered harbour, open ocean and offshore island waters. There were many eeling places in the rivers that flowed into the harbour. Along the coastal lowlands kumara grew well in the mild climate and there was plenty of fern root (aruhe). The forests of the ranges were a valuable source of food in the form of berries and abundant bird life, as well as providing timber for buildings and canoes.⁵

Tauranga Maori made use of these rich resources by migrating between the coast in winter and inland areas in the summer, a pattern that continued well into the twentieth century. A number of witnesses told the Tribunal how, despite the loss and fragmentation of their lands, their families continued this traditional pattern of seasonal resource use when they were growing up.⁶ Arapera Nuku submitted evidence of her mother’s generation of Ngati Hangarau attempting to maintain their traditional patterns of seasonal movement between the inland bush, where pigs, kereru, and tuna were caught, and the coast, where fish were dried and pipi gathered. Morehu Rahipere presented similar evidence of Ngai Tamarawaho’s seasonal movements, inland to gather berries and catch kereru and then to the coast to fish and tend to crops.⁷

We also heard a great deal of evidence from all claimant groups about the continuing importance to them of harbour and coastal resources. They told how, until pollution began to

4. A detailed account of these events from a Ngai Te Rangi perspective was presented to this Tribunal by Hauata Palmer: see doc 120.

5. Document a2, p 3

6. See, for example, doc h8, pp 3–4; doc j28, pp3–4; doc j34, pp 4–6

7. Document f17, pp 2–3; doc d13, paras 5–6