Christchurch’s ‘extraordinary’ red zone offers a chance to put wrongs right

Saturday, 20 June 2026

The little-known story of the wrongs done in Christchurch’s red zone starts in 1868.

Twenty years earlier, Ngāi Tahu had sold 5.5 million hectares of the South Island to the colonial government for £2000. Ngāi Tahu tribal members had been promised mahinga kai (food gathering) reserves and won a court case granting them ownership of six South Island reserves. It was granted to about 115 named individuals affiliated with Ngāi Tūāhuriri - the North Canterbury iwi.

One of these was for 10 acres (about 4ha) of waterfront land on the Avon-Heathcote Estuary.

It was called Te Ihutai and was “abundant” with birds, fish and shellfish - “everything we needed”, says Makarini Rupene, whose father and grandfather were accessing the estuary’s resources from the reserve into the 1950s, almost 90 years after it was legally created.

And then it was seized by authorities for a sewage plant.

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The waste water treatment ponds. This area was part of the estuary before the Bromley plant was built.

In 1956, the Christchurch City Council used the Public Works Act to acquire Te Ihutai for the Bromley sewage works. It paid £NZ85 to the descendants of the original owners.

That was a “minimal” sum, according to a 1992 Ngāi Tahu resource document. The money still lies unused in a trust account.

The sewage works started pumping waste water into the estuary in 1962.

The estuary is rich with bird, fish and shellfish.

This ”desecrated” the place, said Nuk Korako (Ngāi Tahu, Kati Mamoe, Waitaha and Rapawai), the first chairperson of the recently formed Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor Regeneration Committee.

“We want people to know that historically there was a wrong done here,” said Korako. “But we need to move on.”

Now, he says the red zone can be used to “create something truly extraordinary”.

He wants a “place of ecological restoration, cultural renewal, learning, healing, and inspiration that stands as a shining example to us as a country, and to the world, of how indigenous wisdom and contemporary partnership can shape a better future for all people”.

Ngāi Tahu wants to come back to Ihutai, says Korako. “But we want to do it together, not just come in and say, ‘Hey, this is our land, we want our land back’. Yeah, we’re not saying that.”

“We have an opportunity … to right the wrong. Let’s work together on it.”

Asked if the descendants want money, Korako says “nope”.

Godwits soar over the Ihutai-Avon Heathcote Estuary. It was abundant with everything Māori needed.

Asked if the descendants want ownership of the red zone, even four hectares, Korako says, “This is not a [land] grab”.

Historically in Māori culture, “you never own anything … you just work it, so that it's a better place than when you found it,” he says.

“We don't have that ownership thing, that tenure thing.” Land titles were forced on Ngāi Tahu and the Ihutai people by colonisation, he says.

Ihutai descendants Makarini Rupene, left, and Nuk Korako are not allowed into Ihutai.

But “it has to be acknowledged that we are the kaitiaki,” says Rupene, (Ngāi Tahu, Kāti Mamoe Waitaha).

Mana whenua must be the kaitiaki because “we are the ones that held on to the relationships and are trying to keep our environmental, our mahinga kai values protected,” says Rupene.

Te Ihutai, also known as Māori Reserve 900, gave users access to both of Christchurch’s main rivers.

Saltwater Creek Bridge, not far from the redress land given to the Ihutai descendants, NZTA took land for roading.

“In the 1850s through to the 1870s, Māori were harvesting on Te Pātaka o Rākaihautū Banks Peninsula, or up the coastline, and we were bringing it back through [the estuary], and then using our waka” to bring it right into the pa and markets of Christchurch, Rupene said.

The Rupene are “one of the major families of Ngāi Tahu”, says Korako. Their mahinga kai expertise and mana dates back eight generations and probably more.

“Unfortunately, our harvesting [from Ihutai] stopped with my father,” says Rupene. “I was never allowed to go and harvest out there.”

The sun rises over the Ihutai/Avon-Heathcote Estuary in Christchurch, where Ngāi Tahu descendants say the city’s red zone offers a rare opportunity to restore a landscape shaped by generations of environmental and cultural loss.

“That's been a disconnect for myself and a disconnect for my children, because we haven't been able to continue in Ihutai,” he says.

The 1998 Ngāi Tahu settlement included lesser-known compensation for “ancillary claims” brought by individuals rather than the collective tribe.

One such claim was brought by the Ihutai descendants and they were offered about 4ha on Saltwater Creek just north of the Ashley River in North Canterbury.

Moe than 5000 homes were demolished in the river-side red zone.

The Ihutai descendants - there are about 3000 of them - did not want that land but it was vested into the newly created Ihutai Ahu Whenua Trust after the settlement. The trustees did not “accept” the compensation in the same sense that their ancestors did not accept the £85, Korako said.

He is a former member of Parliament and former Environment Canterbury councillor.

Dave Little, left, red zone manager for the Christchurch City Council, speaking at the inaugural Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor Regeneration Committee meeting.

In 2002, the NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi announced it needed about 5500m² of the Saltwater Creek land for roading.

This was a “further … insult”, Korako says.

The Ihutai trust, which Korako now chairs, got $36,500 and some costs in 2005. That money also lies unused in a trust account.

And then the 2010-11 earthquakes happened. More than 5000 homes in the Ōtākaro-Avon River portion of the red zone were demolished and plans were drawn up to regenerate 602ha of riverside land.

Under the council’s direction, the river will be widened, wetlands created, and native plants and trees planted en masse. In time, it is hoped, native birds, fish, insects and lizards will return in numbers.

It will become a bountiful delta again, Te Maire Tau, the Ngāi Tahu historian and Ihutai descendant, once said.

The red zone might become something like Ihutai once was.

Ihutai is less than 2km from parts of the riverside red zone.

Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor Regeneration Committee has delegated powers from the city council and three city council representatives: the mayor, the deputy mayor and an area councillor.

It also has two Te Ngāi Tūāhuriri rūnanga reps - Te Maire Tau and Tania Wati - and one Ihutai Ahu Whenua Trust rep - Nuk Korako, who is the chairperson.

The terms of reference for the committee reads: “A partnership approach to the development of the Ōtākaro Avon River Corridor acknowledges Ngāi Tūāhuriri as mana whenua of the [corridor] and enables Ngāi Tūāhuriri to exercise its rangatiratanga”, or chiefly autonomy.

The Ihutai descendants have been waiting 70 years for redress.

“What we have in the regeneration zone is an opportunity to honour the past and to build for the future in partnership,” said Korako.