LEWIS WILLIAMS, PHD

fluent in te reo largely because as she puts it, ‘her ears caught it at home’; at school she was
forbidden to speak it.
Her whanau lived on land which belonged to all seven of Taiaho`s children: ‚Now when I look
back and think about it I don‟t know who owned what. But it all seemed to belong to those seven people.
And we were just there looking after it I suppose”. Ngaroimata means ‘tear drop’; she understands
that she was named after an ancestor, but never learned of her true name until applying for her
birth certificate as an adult. The eldest of ten children, she was always called Kui (pronounced
qui) by the local elders as a term of endearment.
Her family lived almost completely off the land. Her dad had gone away in the First World War
and had come home sick; he never fully recovered. They lived off wild pork and seafood and
grew vegetables. Ngaroimata remembers having huge paddocks of potatoes and kumara and
working the gardens. She recalls:
“Yes we did [have to work], but I loved that part of it – collecting the cockles....... Coming down
here [near the Whareroa marae?] and sleeping out in the open on..........these springy little
bushes and we‟d throw a blanket on that and sleep on that......We survived on what we could
grow and catch”.
It was in these summer days that Ngaroimata remembers a lot of time being spent gathering
shellfish and fishing. She remembers the land and sea as being bountiful:
“And we never used to worry to buy things cause it was there. It was our cupboard.......We‟d
gather up sacks of them from here then we‟d take them back to Matapihi......we lived up on the
hill. And our parents would [go down to the water] and dig holes and bury all these things
[shellfish] to keep them alive. So all we did was go down when we needed some. We‟d go down
and dig a bit out”.
In 1947 Ngaroimata married and moved away to Mangakino, to the South. She was away for
many years eventually choosing to return to Matapihi sometime in the 1980s. As the Kuia of
Ngāi Te Rangi, today Ngaroimata is very much involved in various matters that concern the
iwi. Along with Kihi Ngatai, she is a member of the Mauao Trust, representing Ngāi Te Rangi,
As the Kuia of Ngāi Te Rangi, , her input and guidance is constantly sought by members of
Ngāi Te Rangi, iwi on a wide range of issues. Ngaroimata is also the Kuia of one of the two
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