Ngā Rā-a-Kupe / Te Papa Noho-a-Kupe
In November of 2022 Ngāti Hinewaka hapū of Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa welcomed myself and my peers onto Kohunui marae for the ‘Ngā Rā-a-Kupe’ wānanga. The wānanga brought together Māori designers and artists, practitioners and students to experience, understand, interpret and imagine future directions in which Ngāti Hinewaka can share their connection to Kupe and histories of occupation. ‘Ngā Rā-a-Kupe’ kaupapa is an expression of Ngāti Hinewaka mana motuhake, shaped through physical wānanga and held within hapū. It is an accumulation of mātauranga Māori, driven, shared and understood through our indigenous means of hui, kōrerorero, wānanga and hīkoi. The whare ‘Te Papa noho-ā-Kupe’ is designed as an embodiment of these stories, held within this shared whakapapa. This name derives from the waka hourua, ‘papa noho’ being the observation deck from which the vessel is navigated that sits below the sails. From this position our tupuna used a number of instruments to guide their voyage, Ātea a Rangi (the celestial star compass), the sun, the moon, the prevailing winds, swells, the flight paths of seabirds and the motions in te taiao. The whare aims to engage manuhiri to the space as a welcome to Mātakitaki-a-Kupe, retelling the stories of the land through its design details while being able to engage deeply and safely with indigenous knowledges, activated through karakia, wānanga and emerging kōrero. The purpose of ‘Te Papa noho-a-Kupe’ is to offer a space to facilitate wānanga on site and to provide context to visitors, the significance of Mātakitaki-a-Kupe and Ngā Rā-a-Kupe as wāhi tapu. Te Papa noho-a-Kupe stands as a placeholder name until this project is realised, at which point an official name will be given to the whare by Ngāti Hinewaka.