and persons from distant hapu could have use rights in a particular resource, like a mussel- bearing rock in a harbour. Access was based simply upon respect for immemorial user and historical relationships with the users…

… the essence of Maori existence was founded not upon political boundaries, which serve to divide, but upon whakapapa or genealogical ties, which serve to unite or bind. The principle was not that of exclusivity but that of associations.²⁷

These comments should be kept in mind when we set out the locations of the Tauranga hapu. In outlining these territories, we simply wish to indicate the areas within which hapu resided and exercised rights. We do not mean to suggest either that any hapu exercised exclusive rights within a defined area or that these hapu did not also exercise some rights outside of the territories set out. The areas of overlap between hapu should cause readers neither surprise nor consternation. In some areas, overlaps and shared interests are particularly apparent: many hapu seem to have shared interests at Otumoetai, for example, while in the inland bush areas there were also some shared resource-use rights.

The territories described below are not necessarily those of 1840. As the Rekohu Tribunal put it, land rights could not be acquired by force after 1840 because the Treaty of Waitangi ‘envisaged an end to violence following the establishment of British law’, but it does not follow that such rights should be determined on the basis of the position as at that date.²⁸ Maori were free to continue developing customary rights to land by peaceful means, and clearly did so. One example of this was Ngati Pukenga’s return to Tauranga in the 1850s to intervene in a land dispute on the side of Ngati He. Ngati He subsequently gifted lands at Ngapeke to Ngati Pukenga.²⁹ There were doubtless other adjustments to Maori customary land tenure at Tauranga after 1840 and before Crown intervention from 1865 radically transformed the ownership of land. Accordingly, the hapu territories which we describe here are those which seem to have been in existence at around 1865.

Not only the lands but also the identities of hapu have shifted over time. Many hapu names which appear in the historical record are not commonly used in Tauranga today, either because hapu have changed their names or because one hapu has been absorbed into another. There are also sub-groups within hapu which, over time, may evolve into hapu in their own right. Such processes have been going on within Maori society since time immemorial. In our outline of hapu territories, we focus primarily on present-day hapu who are claimants before us in this inquiry, although we also mention some neighbouring iwi and hapu that have not participated in this inquiry.

27. Waitangi Tribunal, Ngati Awa Raupatu Report, pp 132–133

28. Waitangi Tribunal, Rekohu, p 132

29. Document j2, pp 12–13; doc m2, p26. Shane Ashby notes that Ngati Pukenga’s claim at Ngapeke was also an ancestral one; see doc m2.