we hear, the sights that we see, the emotions that we feel and the life-blood passed down through our tupuna to us today.²⁵

Tangata whenua closely controlled access to and use of the ancestral taonga within their rohe. However, although they had possession and control, they never regarded themselves as the owners of ancestral taonga such as Tauranga Moana, their rivers and the mountains. Rather they were users and trustees - kaitiaki - of something ultimately possessed by their gods and ancestors, which they had a duty to pass on to their descendants. As Hugh Kawharu has put it, ‘it was land that possessed the people’.²⁶

The tangata whenua of Tauranga Moana belong to the landscapes in which their whaka- papa (ancestry) embeds them. Their ancestral landscapes are those places made sacred by the lives and deaths of their ancestors. These landscapes include natural features such as forests and rivers; physical formations such as mountains, valleys, harbours, and estuaries; and cultural features such as pā, kāinga, mahinga kai, and wāhi tapu.²⁷

The ancestral landscape defines the relationship between tangata whenua and the natural environment; it is, quite literally, the embodiment of their cultural heritage.²⁸ The state of their ancestral landscapes is therefore ‘inextricably linked to Maori spiritual, emotional, physical and social well-being and is expressed through the ethic and practise of kaitiakitanga’.²⁹

All key resources have their kaitiaki, their guardians. Acting as kaitiaki - exercising kaitiakitanga - ensured that the landscape’s resources were safeguarded. This responsibility was the corollary of the authority and control exercised by rangatira, or chiefs, over the environment and its resources in the name of their people. Besides kaitiakitanga, other key

25. Taiawa Kuka, brief of evidence on behalf of the Matakana Island claimants, undated (doc J21), p 3

26. Hugh Kawharu, ‘Land and Identity in Tamaki: A Ngati Whatua Perspective’, Hillary Lecture 2001, Auckland War Memorial Museum, Māori Court

27. Desmond Tatana Kahotea, ‘Tauranga Urban Growth Strategy: Cultural Resource Inventory - Features of Significance to the Maori Community (Tangata Whenua): A Report for the Tauranga District Council’, 1992 (doc A17), p 23

28. Several hapū adopted the concept of the ancestral landscape for this inquiry. See for example: doc U1, pp 124– 125; counsel for Wai 947 claimants, closing submissions, 27 November 2006 (doc U14), pp 109, 111–112, 114–115; doc u31, p 28; Counsel for Wai 370 claimants, closing submissions, undated (doc U33), pp 20, 34–35; counsel for Wai 42(a) claimants, closing submissions, undated (doc U37), pp 2, 28. The concept is also consistent with the key legislation considered in this chapter. The Historic Places Act 1993 requires judging a place's significance through assessing the 'extent to which the place forms part of a wider historical and cultural complex or historical and cultural landscape’ (Historic Places Act 1993, S23(2)(k)). The term ‘Ancestral Landscape’ was also part of the definition of historic heritage in the original Resource Management Act Amendment Bill No 23 2003, which made historic heritage a matter of national importance, but was deleted from the final version which became law. The wider landscape context must still be considered in assessing the significance of a site however, under s 2(1)(b)(iv). The concept is also incorporated as a key aspect of the Combined Tangata Whenua Forum’s report on cultural heritage for the SmartGrowth strategy. The Tauranga district plan treats the term as a synonym for ‘ancestral lands’. See Tauranga City Council, ‘Tauranga District Plan: Chapter 5: Heritage’, Tauranga City Council, http://content.tauranga.govt. nz/districtplan/CD/files/Chapter5.pdf (accessed 24 March 2009).

29. SmartGrowth 2003, p 11 (Desmond Tatana Kahotea, ‘A Study of Heritage in Tauranga Moana Since 1991’ (commissioned research report, Wellington: Crown Forestry Rental Trust, 2006) (doc T18), p 9)