Tongariro National Park New Zealand

The Maoriare is a Polynesian people who reached Aotearoa (New Zealand) before AD 1300 (and possibly as early as AD 600-800). They came as settlers in large double-hulled canoes -men, women, and children, with their plants and domestic animals. One of the most important was the Arawa canoe, which made its first landfall at Whangaparaoa on North Island's East Cape and then travelled to Maketu in the Bay of Plenty. The descendants of that canoe still hold authority over the land as far south as the Tongariro National Park. The people of the Park - Ngati Tuwharetoa - identify with Ngatoroirangi, the navigator of the Arawa canoe and legendary bringer of fire to Tongariro.

Continent: Oceania

Country: New Zealand

Category: Mixed Heritage

Criterion: (VI)(VI) (VIII)

Date of Inscription: 1993

Mixed Heritage Property

Mananui To Heuheu, paramount chief of Ngati Tuwharetoa, was one of the few Maori chiefs who refused to sign the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 and thereby cede sovereignty to the British Crown. His son Horonuku, who succeeded Mananui in 1846 when he was buried by an avalanche on the mountain and who became known as Te Heuheu Tukino in 1862, came under severe pressure from land-hungry European settlers. When faced with the dilemma of having to divide his land following a dispute with the Maniapoto iwi or lose it to the Land Court, he took the advice of his sonin- law Lawrence Grace to make it 'a taou place of the Crown, a sacred place under the mana of the Queen". With the approval of the Tuwharetoa chiefs the land was handed over to the Crown as a gift in September 1887.

The original deed of gift made an area of 2640 ha consisting of three small circles around the main peaks into the first national park in New Zealand, and the fourth in the world. This was too small for effective management and over the years that followed large-scale purchases of land were made by the Crown, so that when the Tongariro National Park Act was passed in 1894 its area had increased to some 25,000 ha. A survey report in 1904 recommended that the area should be more than doubled, and today the Park's boundaries enclose over 79,000 ha.

Tongariro National Park

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