Harbour have been apportioned among our own different people; and so with regard to the fishing-grounds outside the heads: those are only small spots. I am speaking of the fishing-grounds where hapuku and tarakihi are caught. Those grounds have been handed down to us by our ancestors. This Maori custom of ours is well established, and none of the inland tribes would dare to go and fish on those places without obtaining the consent of the owners. I am not making this complaint out of any selfish desire to keep all the fishing- grounds for myself; I am only striving to regain the authority which I inherited from my ancestors. I ask that the Queens sovereignty shall not extend to those fishing-grounds of ours, but remain out in the deep water away beyond Tuhua. These are all the subjects upon which we wish to hear your opinion … In our opinion they affect the Natives very deeply. I dare say some Natives have private matters to bring before you, but these matters which have been spoken about affect the whole of the people … the whole of the Maori people.⁴⁷

As we have seen, Māori regarded the world as primarily the domain of atua, who controlled and constrained how people could use the environment. These powers were the source of all human authority. However, as Hori Ngatai’s speech makes clear, people who possessed rangatiratanga over a resource had full authority to exclude other people from using it. As Ngatai explained, over and above their general status as users and kaitiaki of the moana, each hapū exclusively controlled parts of the harbour that everyone acknowledged were reserved for them. And Ngatai asserts that the entire harbour, as well as especially prized fishing grounds outside it, had been ‘subdivided’ and rights to them ‘handed down to us by our ancestors’. Hapū sometimes referred to these grounds as their kāpata or pātaka - their food cupboards or storehouses - where resources were especially prodigious.

Hapū held the rights of rangatiratanga collectively. Through these collective rights over an area, individual members of the hapū obtained rights to use resources within it. Hori Paki Ross recalled that Waipu Bay was such a place for Ngāi Tūkairangi; there, they caught enormous quantities of snapper, pātiki, parore, kingfish, trevally and hāpuka.⁴⁸ Ngāi Te Ahi and Ngāti Ruahine had a similar relationship with Te Tāhuna o Waimapu.⁴⁹ According to Keni Piahana, the Waimapu Estuary is still:

the basis of identity, confidence and security of Ngai Te Ahi. The shape and form of the land, the river and streams, the wetlands and other aspects of the landscape or vista considered by them as heritage maintain other social and cultural associations.⁵⁰

The division of the harbour into portions reserved for specific groups minimised conflict for resources and depletion of food stocks, since the possessors then had vested interests

47. Hori Ngatai to John Ballance, 21 February 1885, AJHR, 1885, G-1, p 61 (Roimata Minhinnick, ‘The Ownership of Tauranga Moana’ (commissioned research report, Wellington: Waitangi Tribunal, [undated]) (doc A77), p 29)

48. Hori Paki Ross, brief of evidence, undated (doc Q14), p 8

49. Document R30, p 6; doc G26, p 6

50. Document G26, p 6