Waituhi

Waituhi is a small settlement in the northeast of New Zealand's North Island. It is located in the Tūranganui-a-Kiwa (Gisborne) region, 21 km northwest of the city of Gisborne, on the western bank of the Waipaoa River. It is notable as the historic site of Popoia pā, and as the location (and setting) for several novels and short stories of Witi Ihimaera. Members of the Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki iwi (Māori tribe) are the tangata whenua (“the people of the land”). In 2009 a project to develop a community drinking water supply was started.^[1]

History

Ruapani

Ruapani was regarded as the paramount chief of all the Tūranganui-a-Kiwa tribes around 1525. His influence also extended widely around the region. It is said that the aristocratic lines of descent from Paoa and Kiwa of the Horouta waka converged upon him and his rule was undisputed. Ruapani lived at a pā, Popoia, near Waituhi.

He had three wives. His first wife was Wairau. His second wife was Uenukukōihu and his third wife was Rongomaipāpā, who was a daughter of Kahungunu and Rongomaiwahine. When Ruapani died, Tūhourangi took Rongomaipāpā as his wife and founded the present Tūhourangi tribe in Rotorua, which is part of the Te Arawa confederation of tribes.^[2] The importance of Ruapani is clearly shown in the whakapapa (genealogy) lines of all the tribes in the Tūranganui-a-Kiwa district. With the emergence of these tribes, like Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki, Rongowhakaata and Ngāi Tāmanuhiri — Ruapani’s influence began to wane and he retreated inland to the home of his relations in the Lake Waikaremoana area, where he lived out his days. The Ngāti Ruapani still consider themselves as the descendants of Ruapani.

Rongopai

Rongopai is a great painted wharenui (meeting house) built at Waituhi for Te Kooti in 1887. Eria Tutara-Kauika Raukura (1834/5 – 1938), the leading tohunga of the Ringatu church, founded by Te Kooti, became a guardian of Rongopai in 1913, and he was still active there as a guardian and tohunga in the mid-1920s.^[3]

Another marae at Waituhi is Pakohai.

Witi Ihimaera

Waituhi is the setting of several of Witi Ihimaera's novels, e.g. Tangi (1973), The Matriarch (1986), Bulibasha, king of the Gypsies (1994) and Band of Angels (2005).^[4]

As Millar states,^[5] much of Ihimaera’s fiction is based on fact, but his work is never simply autobiographical. Waituhi, for example, the village setting for many of his narratives, is an imaginative recreation of the actual place. The fictional Waituhi’s ‘physical cohesion [providing] an "objective correlative" to the ethos that binds the tangata whenua together’.

Opera

Waituhi – The Life of the Village was an opera with music from Ross Harris; libretto by Witi Ihimaera. This four-act opera is based on the novel Whanau and is the story of the writer’s life in an East Coast (New Zealand) village. It is scored for 23 soloists, chorus, and full orchestra. The opera was first performed at the State Opera House in Wellington in 1984.^[6]

Different meanings of 'Waituhi' in Māori

Waituha has some different meanings in Māori:

• A waituhi was a pool of water or bird trough with fixed snares over it.^[7]
• or: freshet, first signs of water in a stream.
• Waituhi can also mean: to perform certain rites over a woman at or after childbirth; or
• to perform rites over a child at the cutting of the navel-string.
• Waituhi can also mean: red.^[8]

Footnotes

Literature

• Murton, Brian J. (1979) - Waituhi: A Place in Maori New Zealand. in: New Zealand Geographer. Vol. 35 Issue 1, p. 24 -33.