Home on the Pa

Leading member of the Nga Puhi iwi Hone Mihaka is an oral historian guiding tourists about the land of his ancestors and the Ruapekapeka pa, 14km south east of Kawakawa and one of the largest and most complex in the country. Mihaka can recite the names and fates of generations of his ancestors stretching far back into the mythical past, one of these men, Hone Heke. Mihaka takes Times journalist Dan Snow around the hillfort over two days, and in a powhiri at his home, calls Snow a “strange heron” brought from Britain by the wind gods. “In New Zealand history matters,” Snow writes. “I met people of all political outlooks and their arguments were deeply rooted in their reading of the past. I met Maori who claimed that the New Zealand Government is an illegal entity. I met the descendants of settlers who said that their ancestors had been sold land legally by its indigenous inhabitants … The country’s history is impossible to miss.”