Voyaging Wananga

23rd - 24th August 2019
Waitangi Learning Centre, Waitangi Museum

Meet Our Brilliant Speakers

Our wananga will have speakers who are leaders in their field. Please find out about our first inspiring speakers below. We will publish more as more are confirmed.

Dr Manuka Henare

Associate Professor, University of Auckland

Rereata 'Ral' Makiha

Maramataka/Māori Lunar Calendar

Jack Thatcher

Navigation and Voyaging it’s in our DNA

Te Warahi Hetaraka

Koukou and Tupaea the legacy

James Eruera

The Art of Waka Carving

Arahu Marsters

Kupe and the Great Migration

We are no longer accepting registrations

Thank you for your registrations – this event has reached full occupancy!

Our Four Main Themes

  1. Voyaging, discovery and settlement

  2. Linguistics and adaption as migration occurred

  3. Evolution of language, customs and traditions

  4. Archeology, the cultural landscapes and the meeting of two peoples

Waitangi Learning Centre, Waitangi Museum, Bay of Islands

The venue holds 100 participants and we are expecting up to 20 papers to be presented. You are encouraged to register early on a first come basis. We expect to publish each paper into a book that can be used as a reference for education and future studies. The event will be recorded and archived for research and education purposes. Our venue has limitations so registration will be by invitation. 

Guided Tour of Early Polynesian Settlement Sites

A post-conference guided tour is planned as a trip around the Bay of Islands visiting early Polynesian settlement sites at Mangahawea Bay, Ohututea and taking in Island and Mainland locations visited by Tupaia, Cook and Banks as mentioned in their journals. This will be on Sunday morning 25th August and the boat can take 200 passengers. 100 seats will be reserved for conference participants as part of your registration fee. Seats will also be made available to the public to join us at a cost of $100 per person. Please indicate your interest and choices by completing your registration.

Mangahawea Bay Partnership project enabled by Arakite Charitable Trust

MANGAHAWEA is a project to explore Polynesian voyaging, and the discovery and settlement by East Polynesians who adapted and changed their culture to become Maori. 

In 2017 a partnership project between Department of Conservation, tangata whenua Ngati Kuta, Patukeha, Heritage New Zealand and University of Otago revisited an unpublished 1981 excavation at an early settlement site in Mangahawea Bay on Moturua Island in the Bay of Islands. This project was run under the tikanga of Matutaera Te Nana Clendon. During the project much korero occurred between the parties and a confluence of interest was found in both Maori and European perspectives on Pacific voyaging, and specifically on how, when and why Polynesians settled New Zealand – the last major land mass of the world to be settled by humanity sometime around 1250 AD.

The upcoming commemoration of Tupaia who showed Cook the way and who reconnected Aotearoa with Pacific people, and of Cook whose arrival reconnected Maori to the rest of the world when visiting the Bay of Islands in 1769. The Mangahawea Bay Project offers us the opportunity to explore a much wider view of voyaging and arrival to Aotearoa. When looking at the Pacific and European voyaging in the Pacific over a 1000-year time frame and human settlement that started with Polynesian settlement and ended with the arrival of the HMS Endeavour and James Cook.

The Mangahawea Bay Partnership project is a partnership between Ngati Kuta and Patukeha, Department of Conservation, University of Otago and Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. Mangahawea Bay, on Moturua Island, Bay of Islands. It is surrounded by place names from the Pacific and the archaeological record suggests the site is very early. 

The project is a large ongoing programme with a focus on recognising and understanding early settlement of Aotearoa through archaeology and traditional knowledge. When combined, archaeology and traditional knowledge provide a powerful tool to explore the past including Austronesian, Polynesian, Maori and European voyaging, settlement and adaption. The basis of this project is around community involvement, opportunities to tell their stories and recognition of these stories. Learning more about ourselves, our kinship ties and traditions that binds us as citizens of the world, Pacifica and Aotearoa New Zealand.

E koreau e ngaro. He kakano I ruia mai Rangiatea
I will never be lost. I am a seed sown from Rangiatea

Rangiātea is the origin of Māori migration. It represents the wider world, a place to put theory into practice and observe others who do the same. Rangiātea marks the start and the end of the journey of potential – He Kākano – as well as arrival at the point of opportunity to realise it – Ruia.

Rangiātea as the name for a collection of case studies provides location and context. It represents an opportunity to examine the way in which ideas, concepts, and tools can be applied and how the tools developed in Ruia to tend He Kākano manifest in the real world.

Have questions?

We are no longer accepting registrations for this event – we have reached full occupancy!

If you have any questions about your registration, please email voyagingwananga@gmail.com.