Kei te whakatū a Ngāti Oneone i tētahi tohu whakamahara ki tō rātau tipuna ki a Te Māro, i pūhia e Kāpene Kuki nō tōna taenga tuatahitanga mai ki Aotearoa.
Hei tā Nick Tupara o Ngāti Oneone, “We want those stories to be told, ones that you can't google, ones that the Western academics haven't included in their many volumes about Cook.”
He rangatira a Te Māro, koia i puta ki te whakatau i te kaumoana waewae tapu nei a Kāpene Kuki, ka pūhia rawatia a Te Māro ki te onetai, ā, mate atu ana. Ka whakatūria te tohu whakamahara nei i mua i ngā mahi whakamahara atu ki te taenga mai a Kāpene Kuki ka tū a tērā tau.
“Rightly or wrongly, the Cook commemoration creates an opportunity for us to be included, in the way that we are going to re-tell the history of our district,” te kōrero a Nick Tupara.
He kaupapa whānui tēnei kei te tautokohia e Te Kaunihera o Te Tairāwhiti rātau ko Pouhere Taonga, arā he tapuwae kōrero mai Puhi-Kai-Iti ki te maunga, e whakatairanga ana i ngā whakapapa kaumoana o Te Tairāwhiti.
Ko tā Tupara, “They start from Māui, and they come from all those tīpuna that came from Hawaiki all the way to us, and sliced in there 250 years ago this guy Cook came, but it sits in the context of what navigation and what connection to a larger world is for our people.”
Hei tā Tupara, he whakanui i te tipuna i a Te Māro me ōna ake mana, ka mutu, ōna ake whakapapa.
“He was a graduate of one of our whare wānanga, our whare wānanga called Puhi Kai Iti that came here from Hawaiki on our waka."
Ka tū te tohu whakamahara ki tētahi wāhi whenua e whakapapa ana ki a Te Maro i a ia i ōna wā.
“From this spot we're standing is where he performed the rituals he had learnt in that wānanga to assist our iwi and hapū to grow kai and sustain themselves,” te kī Tupara.
Hei te marama e taka mai ana timata ai ngā mahi.
