Whakapapa connections

Turangareere Trust owns Motukawa 2B 15A near Taihape, with the Māori Trustee supporting in her role as responsible trustee.

Over the last few years, a 25,000-litre water storage tank with a solar-powered water system was installed, 10 new stock water troughs placed, another 2km worth of drainage put in to expand the grazing area, a woolshed roof replaced, and riparian fencing completed.

The work was paid for by the Trust with rental income banked, and lessee Kerry Whale did some of the work himself at no cost, as well as leveraging his local networks to get other work done for a good price.

A group of owners were able to visit the whenua and see the work for themselves before Easter 2024.

“We did the work ’cause it needed to be done,” says lessee Kerry Whale. “It was pretty cool, showing the whānau, they don’t often get up there to see their land.”

Kerry has been leasing the block for sheep and beef grazing, as well as a smaller adjacent general land block also owned by the Trust, since 2016.

Kerry has a unique perspective – he’s a whenua Māori owner himself, and his whānau and the owners of Motukawa 2B 15A share a tupuna, Akatarewa.

“Yeah, I think sharing that lineage, that whakapapa, does change the way I farm. You’ve got that intrinsic motivation to get up and do the work right. And maybe that’s a different approach from what some others might take, in terms of cost and things like that.”

The primary block that Kerry runs, also north of Taihape, is whānau land, and was administered by the Māori Trustee until 2022.

The land was handed down to him and his siblings through his grandmother, the only remaining member of the whānau after the 1918 influenza decimated the community.

Part of the motivation to transition back to self-governance, says Kerry, was to get the whānau more involved.

“We had 40 people at our last meeting. Some of them had never been on that land. And that’s spiritual, standing on the land that your tūpuna stood on,” he says. “We were all sitting in the sun, we had kai, we had our cup of tea, and we were sharing stories about our tūpuna.”

The fragmentation of blocks resulting from Māori land administration legacies has contributed to descendants not having a sense of responsibility, a sense of kaitiakitanga for the land, he says.

Kerry counts himself lucky to have two sons involved and interested in carrying on the legacy, but the next generation face increasing challenges – financial, social and environmental challenges.

Climate change is already changing things, says Kerry. The timing of frosts, dry spells, rainfall – all of it’s becoming more unpredictable and is already exacerbating issues like facial eczema in livestock.

“How resilient can you really be? It’s more about flexibility, building flexibility into your systems,” says Kerry. “The work we’ve done at Motukawa gives us a degree of flexibility.”

Another challenge is the intergenerational loss of farming skills among young Māori. Kerry has returned to teaching at Taihape Area School this year so he can do something about that – he’s teaching a small group of Year 11 students basi agricultural skills, more than half of whom are Māori.