in maintaining their resources.⁵¹ Thus, as Wendy Pond points out, within Māori society ‘[p]roperty rights were resource management rights'.⁵²

Offshore islands such as Moturiki, Motuotau, Kārewa, Mōtītī, and Tūhua were also important sources of kaimoana and seabirds. Kārewa, for example, is a small offshore island several kilometres from Tauranga Moana; it was uninhabitable because of a lack of freshwater, but its resources were nevertheless very carefully allocated. Five Ngāi Te Rangi hapū had rights to harvest the island's tītī (muttonbirds) and taonui (black petrels), and abundant kaimoana such as hāpuka, snapper, kahawai, crayfish, and cod. Kihi Ngatai records that a series of hui resolved that each hapū was allocated different times at which to visit the island, and that no other people could visit the island without the consent of all hapū.⁵³

Kaitiaki maintained healthy stocks of their resources by adopting resource management strategies and practices that were laid down according to tikanga and kawa, and designed to maintain order and balance between people and the natural world.⁵⁴ These included practices such as gifting the first catch to Tangaroa, never processing seafood on the shore, never taking more than was needed, rotating the shellfish beds to be harvested, and imposing rāhui - restrictions on when or where a resource could be harvested - that protected at- risk resources. Resources were typically harvested when and where they were in best condition and most abundant. Kina, for example, were taken in summer when the flowering of the pōhutukawa signalled they were plentiful and fat.⁵⁵ The overarching ethic of Tauranga Māori, as throughout Māoridom, was to never waste the gift of the resource and to husband it for the future.⁵⁶ As Heeni Murray of Matakana put it:

Kaimoana was never wasted. It was shared out, hung on the fences for pawhara or merely returned to the moana. There was always a plentiful supply of seafood to serve to manuhiri who were provided with all forms of fish, fresh, raw, smoked and varieties of shellfish, all served in large quantities. These are cultural traditions that have been part of our very essence as Maori since before the Treaty.⁵⁷

Even today, the ability to provide kaimoana directly reflects the mana of Tauranga Māori. Evelyn Stokes stressed this point to us:

51. Document A50, p 21

52. Wendy Pond, The Land With All Woods and Waters, Rangahaua Whānui Series (Wellington: Waitangi Tribunal, 1997), p 14

53. Statement by Kihi Ngatai, 11 December 1995 (doc A77, app 2)

54. Document R45, pp 7–9

55. Document A50, pp 129–130; doc R26, p 5

56. See for example Evelyn Stokes, ‘Contesting Resources: Māori, Pākehā, and a Tenurial Revolution, in Environmental Histories of New Zealand, edited by Eric Pawson and Tom Brooking (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2002), p 36.

57. Heeni Murray, brief of evidence, undated (doc J22), p 10