cultural values such as whanaungatanga (family links) and manaakitanga (hospitality) also shaped the exercise of rangatiratanga or authority. Cumulatively, these concepts have established the tikanga, or principles, that define appropriate behaviour within the environment, and determine how the environment's resources should be used and managed.

Antoine Coffin of Ngāti Kāhu told us that ‘being kaitiaki is a complex, dynamic and evolving philosophy and process centred around the relationships we have with the physical and metaphysical environment. It is practical and locally defined.’³⁰ Acting as kaitiaki required tangata whenua to guard and protect the mauri (life essence) of natural and physical resources for the benefit of present and future people.³¹ Te Awanuiarangi Black, giving evidence for Ngāti Pūkenga, told us of the importance to Māori of the land and its mauri:

Māori tribes are products not only of genealogy but also environment, and more specifically locality. Nothing to a tribe is more important than its own locality, as it is the locality and the genealogy that makes an iwi an iwi. The land and its mauri give us life as tribal people. We are interconnected and interdependent. When mauri is affected things degenerate. This is where we find ourselves now. Our mauri has been affected; the mauri of our natural environment has been affected. We have been affected.³²

The abundance of natural resources in Tauranga Moana reflected not only the health of the land's mauri, but the mana of its people. Mana was displayed by maintaining strong whanaungatanga connections, and by demonstrating manaakitanga to manuhiri. As part of the duties of kaitiaki, and to maintain their whanaungatanga links, tangata whenua permitted inland groups from Te Arawa and Waikato to access the resources of shoreline and sea along specified corridors, allowing them to stay at pre-determined campsites. As Hati Kuruangi of Ngāi Te Ahi explained:

they came and collected, they had their right of way, if they wandered out of their area they were told to go back smartly. So our people happily shared the kai, so long as it didn’t disturb the relationships, and interfere with the rules of the sea.³³

According to Anthony Fisher, Keni Piahana, Te Awanuiarangi Black, and Rahere Ohia, this willingness to share in the harvest from the moana ‘demonstrates the underlying attitude towards the resource as a gift from Tangaroa’.³⁴ Hosting manuhiri in style and plenty also sustained the mana of the tangata whenua. The Ngāi Te Rangi chief Taiaho Hori Ngatai, for example, referred to Tauranga Moana when telling his guests ‘Kaore koe e mate kai ana, anei taku mara kai’ - ‘You shall not go hungry, for here is my garden’.³⁵

30. Antoine Coffin, brief of evidence, 26 June 2006 (doc R23), p 4

31. Document A50, p 114

32. Te Awanuiarangi Black, brief of evidence, 28 June 2006 (doc R45), p 9

33. Hati Kuruangi (doc A50, pp 107–108)

34. Document A50, p 108; doc R3, p 4

35. Document A50, p 35