How Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei turned a piece of land into a billion-dollar enterprise 'for our people'

Thursday, 29 April 2021

In 1951, after the Crown took the last of Ngāti Whātua's land, the village was destroyed to make way for a royal visit. Almost seven decades on, the iwi is still rebuilding.

Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei has come a long way since its land was reduced to a quarter of an acre of land with a sewer pipe running through it, and its people were pushed to the margins of the city.

The Auckland iwi now has assets worth more than a billion dollars, with solid investments in Tāmaki Makaurau, and a focus on doing better for its people.

Ngārimu Blair, deputy chairman of the Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei Trust, puts the iwi’s gross assets at around $1.3 billion.

Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei deputy chair Ngārimu Blair.

It invests solely in property and land, with over 160 hectares across Tāmaki Makaurau, and several housing developments.

* 'Force to be reckoned with' Auckland iwi remembers

* Flashback: Final stand of Ngati Whatua begins at Bastion Point in January 1977

Ngāti Whātua kaumātua during the beginning of earthworks at Atareta St for their new housing development, scheduled to finish later this year.

Its biggest commercial asset, Te Tōangaroa, is a 20-hectare area of land spanning Quay St, from The Strand to Britomart, and along Beach Rd, encompassing key landmarks such as Spark Arena and the Old Railway Station Building.

There’s premium housing development Oneoneroa – North Shore’s newest community in Belmont – Eastcliffe Retirement Village in Takaparawhau, and Kāinga Kaumātua housing in Ōrākei.

Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei also oversees the maintenance and management of over 175 properties on hapū land on Ōrākei, including the Kāinga Tuatahi, an award-winning housing development of 30 whare built on the papakāinga.

Whānau from Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei led a hīkoi from their marae to Auckland High Court, over historic land claims earlier this year.

But the journey to get here hasn’t been easy, Blair says.

The iwi’s success is built off the suffering endured by ancestors; stolen land, demoralised culture, colonisation, and most of them being pushed out of their village, many never to return.

It’s a story similar to all iwi, but one Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei has used as a foundation to become one of the most financially-sustainable tribes in New Zealand.

“We are absolutely seeing the fruits of the vision that our leadership, in 1840, [had] to establish a city, to establish a hopeful partnership with government,” Blair says.

“Despite the trials and tribulations, we can see that the fruits are beginning to appear. Through their suffering we are now in a much stronger position to not only ensure the survival of our tribe but have it thrive again.”

Blair says Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei investment is to strengthen their tribe as a group, and therefore individuals in the group.

Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei has always been in business, Blair says.

He says the tribe is on a campaign to restore as much of its former estate as possible, and to build its economic base again from the ashes.

“With very little land left to return to the traditional economy of seasonal villages and encampments of fishing, seafood processing, bird hunting and so on, that was probably the start of the movement to have land recover.

Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei whānau hikoi to High Court to challenge Crown land settlements. (First published February 2021)

“So each successive generation of Ngāti Whātua and other tribes have been trying to get land restored.”

1987 was a landmark year as Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei's claim over the 700-acre Ōrākei block was amongst the first heard at the Waitangi Tribunal. It was the iwi’s last piece of land in Tāmaki Makaurau.

The settlement returned 100 acres of land and $3m, which Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei used to embark on a strategy to buy back as much land as possible to develop into sufficient cash flow, and reinvest back into its own community.

“We wanted to rebuild our economic base, so we can once again do meaningful things in the lives of our people, and repair much of that damage that has been wrecked upon our communities since the 1860s.”

Blair says Pacific people have always had a business sense, but Pākehā settlers did not consider their historical resource use as an economy.

As they quickly adapted to the Europeans’ capitalist nature, Māori bent it to their culture and harnessed the power of the community.

Atareta St, Orakei, Auckland where work has started on Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei kaumātua Housing.

“The whole point of being in a community is that the group is there to support the individual, but likewise the individual must pull their weight to support the group.

“Now, much of that has been lost in the past few generations of destruction of our culture, often by the deliberate means by governments - the dominant culture - it's there bubbling away.'

“It is something each generation of Māori that come through are trying to reinstate, and have the best of both worlds which is what our ancestors, who invited Europeans here, wanted.”

In 1996, Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei purchased its first block of land – 10 acres in Ōrākei to rebuild its village.

To be told they had to purchase back the land, or a fraction of what was stolen and taken in breach of the Treaty of Waitangi, caused massive offence, Blair says.

But once iwi members got over their anger and disgust, Blair says they knew their story was merely one of many chapters to be written, and each Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei generation to come would retain and build on what was left to them.

“When these meagre treaty settlements are offered by the current Crown representatives, we got to see them in that longer time frame that we can get what we can now and grow it and move forward.

“If we didn’t, then we would still be, potentially, at the complete disposal and mercy of the Crown and their various social agencies.”

Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei is an iwi learning from its past, and looking to the future for its people.

Blair says it’s on a journey of selling some assets as the property market becomes more challenging, and is looking into food, land elsewhere, technology, and the health sector.

While it has a substantial bank balance, Blair says it’s still not enough.

The iwi wants to provide as many opportunities for its people as possible, and 10 years from now, it wants to have a role in helping whānau return to the village, and secure home-ownership and long-term rentals.

It’s also about investing in their people’s culture; each generation passes on the taonga in a healthier state to the next, he says.

“We have a huge amount of work ahead of us to ensure every Ngāti Whātua person is confident in their identity, customs and language, which we see is the foundation to living a happy and creative life.”

He says the key role of Ngāti Whātua business activity is to protect the asset and grow it sustainably.

“At times, we’re accused of being very conservative, but we have to have three to four-generation blocks of thinking, because we don’t want to go down in the history books as the generation that lost everything.

“We need to ensure that we have the nest egg, and it keeps growing.”

That is the only reason the iwi has a lucrative investment portfolio, to strengthen the tribe as a group and therefore individuals in the group, he says.

“The hope is our next generation will be brighter, happier, smarter, better-looking than us.

“And they will be because of the investment we are making now around their language, culture, songs, traditional prayers, and the smarts needed from Pākehā society to ensure they prosper more than we are now.

“That they will continue to be different and awesome. They’ll be Ngāti Whātua.”