Wainuiomata students call for colonial street names to be changed to te reo Māori

Tuesday, 8 December 2020

Tajzhay Pouwhare, 18, and other students at Wanuiomata High School started a petition to rename Lower Hutt streets in te reo Māori.

A Lower Hutt street named after a British colonel who was jailed in England for kidnapping a woman could soon be renamed after a Māori leader, if a group of local rangatahi are successful in a campaign to update street names.

Wainuiomata High School students Tajzhay Pouwhare, 18, Chelani Gray-Clarke, 17, Jaden Jacobs, 17, and Robert Clarke, 17, have submitted a petition, signed by more than 500 people, to the Hutt City Council requesting that at least half of the streets in the city have te reo Māori names by 2025.

They are also calling for Wakefield, Elizabeth, Victoria and High streets and Hastings Grove to be renamed after Māori chiefs who fought for their land.

The Year 13 students presented the petition to Lower Hutt mayor Campbell Barry when he attended a hui at the school on October 30. Barry then took the petition to a council meeting on Tuesday where it was received.

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Pouwhare said she and her peers started the campaign, called Huarahi Māori o Te Awakairangi, as part of an assessment for their Māori activism class, in which they were tasked with developing a social action that would influence public policy.

An analysis conducted by the group found fewer than 22 per cent of the current names of streets in Te Awa Kairangi/Lower Hutt were Māori.

Tajzhay Pouwhare hopes the Hutt City council will better consult with mana whenua over street names in the future.

The students were particularly concerned with the fact that Lower Hutt’s Wakefield St got its moniker from William Hayward Wakefield, a British colonel who, along with his brother, was imprisoned for abducting a wealthy heiress before he settled in Wellington.

Pouwhare said it was wrong for a person who had committed such a crime to be honoured by having a road named after them.

Wakefield St, near Lower Hutt’s Ava train station, is named after a colonist who kidnapped a woman. A group of local youth is campaigning for the street to be renamed.

Many other English street names also had no connection to the land and “are not part of who we are”.

Campbell Barry, mayor of Lower Hutt, said the students’ petition was a challenge to the council to better celebrate the city’s Māori heritage.

“We need to change that, and we need to represent the mana whenua of this place properly,” Pouwhare told Stuff.

She hoped the council would consult with Wellington iwi Taranaki Whānui before naming streets and that the process would be more than just a box-ticking exercise in the future.

Nicole Hawkins, who teaches Māori acivitism and English at Wainuiomata High School, said she was immensely proud of her students' mahi.

“Even for me as a Māori woman, these guys are much more the tuakana and I’m the teina. They teach me about things Māori. I’m just beginning to learn.”

She was pleased that the school's leadership had backed the kaupapa.

Taranaki Whānui chairman Kura Moeahu, Māori activists Pania Newton, Tina Ngata, and Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington academics Dr Emalani Case and Dr Vincent Olsen-Reeder have also thrown their support behind the campaign.

Barry said the petition challenged local politicians to better celebrate and recognise the area's Māori heritage.

He recommended the council receive the petition.

Having been received, the petition will be passed to council officers who will use it to inform their review of the Street Naming Policy. A report, which will include a response to the petition, will be presented to the Infrastructure and Regulatory Committee next year.