AlterNative

Abstract

Recently, my husband, my mother-in-law and I were sharing lunch at her home (the family homestead) in Ngāwhā, which is located in the Bay of Islands in the Northern Tai Tokerau area of Aotearoa/New Zealand. The conversation had become centred on the proposed extensions to the family urupā (burial ground),which has basically reached its carrying capacity. A decision has been made unilaterally by an older family member, as is his usual custom, to make available to the wider community more of the adjacent whānau land. The site itself is now designated as a national historic site, being as it is the locale for one of the most significant battles of the Northern Wars of the 1840s: the battle of Ohaeawai in which the British Imperial troops suffered a resounding defeat. It is now the site of St. Michael’s Church and graveyard.