Ngāti Hauā Mahi Trust

Keri Thompson, General Manager for the Ngāti Hauā Mahi Trust, tells us about the Trust’s origins, its vision and how their mahi looks after the land, the water and the people.

Transcript

KERI THOMPSON

Ngāti Hauā Mahi Trust was formed by kaumātua of our five marae. Our rangatahi were moving away, looking for jobs. So there was that urban shift, and our marae were going how do we keep them here? So they were created to support rangatahi to get into jobs. To do that, they knew they needed to work with community, not work in isolation.

Our vision is the core of what drives us. Tiaki manaakitia te tāngata, if we look after our people, tiaki manaakitia te taiao, they’ll look after our environment. How do you teach these people to actually reconnect and to be part of the whenua and to actually feel it? Because a lot of the stuff that we do is passion.

And it happened at the time the words were out there in terms of the rivers. Waikato River Authority, people were looking at how can we help be part of that work on the rivers, that was happening. That’s how it was seen to begin with.

Our decision was that we would work within our own rohe, so within Ngāti Hauā. So Ngāti Hauā Mahi Trust – any works are the ones that are culturally significant to us. And there are a lot of awa round here. We work on the Mangaonua and in the Mangaone, the Mangaharakeke, Karapiro.

There are deeds of funding that happen with Waikato River Authority, which means 3 years’ worth of funding in terms of putting plants in the ground and doing the work. Plant maintenance, site preparation, making sure that the landowners do the fencing – 5 metre setback – all that sort of stuff happens.

When we first started, we had to buy plants from a nursery from somewhere else and then bring them with not knowing where they’d come from. So we’d buy these plants and we’d put the plants in the ground, but there was no whakapapa between us and those plants and where they’d come from. But we were doing the environment well. So we were looking after the environment, but how do we look after our people holistically? We decided that we had the capabilities of growing a nursery. So we had small goals of doing, like, 50,000 plants. We had a small team. We got funded by Waikato River Authority, Waikato Regional Council and said we can do this. That’s how we got started. We had a vision, we had a dream to be good kaitiaki for our iwi and take those that were with us on that journey.

We know that, if you grow a plant, it’s going to contribute environmentally. But to have it here, alongside of growing young people, is a whole different level. When you are in there, there is the wairua that comes with you because it’s so peaceful. Putting your hands in the dirt and growing those plants creates a space where there’s a lot of healing going on. So there’s a healing with the growing of the plants, but there’s whenua here at Mangateparu is land that has been returned through the settlement. So growing plants and growing kai heals not just only people but heals space.

There’s the whakapapa part that they’re creating this future out there, restoring our mauri for the water that they’re going to be living beside or the whenua that they’re going to be living on. But they’re healing every person that comes through here in terms of just being in our presence, so we’re really lucky to have the nursery.

Acknowledgements

Keri Thompson
Ngāti Hauā Iwi Trust
Ngāti Hauā Mahi Trust
Footage of Mangateparu site with Ngāti Hāuā Mahi Trust, kaimahi at work with wooden benches and plants, Ngāti Hauā Iwi Trust
Diagram showing Ngāti Hāuā Iwi Trust areas of interest, Ngāti Hauā Iwi Trust
Drone footage of Karapiro Dam, Bruce Casey
Footage of Te Wairere Falls, Bortocal. Released under Creative Commons licence CC BY 3.0
Footage of karakia by Waikato kaumātua at Lake Waikere, Waikato Regional Council
Footage of karakia near tī kōuka (cabbage) tree, Ākina Foundation
Still of kaimahi planting out, Ngāti Hauā Mahi Trust