Māori Leadership and Places of Power in the Modern World

This chapter provides a glimpse into how the Māori people of Heretaunga and surrounding regions navigated the last century and a quarter, and how they are part of modern Aotearoa/New Zealand. The objective is not to provide a complete history of this period which saw so much change. The first goal is to show how leadership has changed and adapted to numerous challenges. Key themes or periods in the modern era that have had considerable impact on Māori people and their leaders in Heretaunga include the development of a new movement in the early twentieth century known as the Young Māori Party, the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World War, urbanization, the boom and bust of post-war economic opportunities, and the rise of what is often called the “Māori Renaissance” which accelerated in the late 1980s and 1990s. One crucial development during the latter period was the establishment of self-governance through the formation of an iwi government for Ngāti Kahungunu people. The second goal of the chapter is to emphasize that the places of power in Heretaunga and neighboring regions have not lost their significance to the tangata whenua despite the passage of centuries. They largely function as they ever have. Archaeological sites in the region are more than remnants of the past of places of scientific interest, they reflect the ongoing importance of mana and the tangata whenua associated with them. They exist alongside more recent constructions of powerful places, such as present-day marae and modern displays of carved ancestral figures erected in public spaces.