THE PRE-EMINENT UNIT

Inside a hapū the whānau have always been, and still remain, the pre-eminent unit.

Inside an iwi, the hapū have always been, and still remain, the pre-eminent unit.

With grateful acknowledgement to Tepania Kingi of Ngāti Whātua who first articulated it on paper, I have adapted his words to show how that works in Ngāti Kahu under the following tikanga:

• Whānau aggregate to form hapū which in turn aggregate to form iwi.


• The authority that resides at each level of this social order is conveyed to the next via a leadership representative.


• Hence, whānau leaders engaging with other whānau leaders is a hapū level engagement; hapū leaders engaging with other hapū leaders is an iwi level engagement; iwi leaders engaging with other iwi leaders is a waka level engagement. Up here in Te Hiku, unlike Tainui and Te Arawa, we have a lot of different waka. So we don’t do the waka level thing often, and if we do, it’s only under our own iwi waka.


• For engagement to be effective, it must be level to level i.e. iwi to iwi; hapū to hapū; whānau to whānau. The only exception to this is when engagement occurs as part of the aggregation process i.e. own whānau to own hapū to own iwi and vice versa.


• For the structure to maintain its integrity, the ‘chain of authority’ must be followed i.e. whānau to hapū; hapū to iwi – iwi to hapū; hapū to whānau. • At all levels of engagement there must be authority to engage. At the waka level, iwi leaders engage with other iwi leaders by virtue of the authority vested in them by their hapū leaders. At the iwi level, hapū leaders engage with other hapū leaders by virtue of the authority vested in them by their whānau leaders.


• The authority that each representative brings to their level of engagement is non-transferable. Hence no hapū leader could purport to represent another hapū leader, likewise with the whānau leaders, likewise with the iwi leaders. This often creates a conundrum for external parties seeking to engage with the largest collective possible, preferably of iwi. Generally, external parties tend to presume that engagement is with a collective whole rather than a collective of independent participants. While this may appear to be a subtle difference, it can become a significant hindrance to engagement if it is not made clear that the collective incorporates a number of independent authorities rather than maintaining a ‘single’ overarching authority.


• Any information shared with the collective must also be shared with the individual members of the collective – particularly those not participating in the collective.


• Anything produced by the collective can only be described as ‘collective’ if it has 100% support of all of the individual participants. And, even then, it can only represent the collective participants i.e. the iwi, hapū or whānau leaders, not the actual iwi, hapū or whānau which, by virtue of tikanga, retain the authority to represent only themselves and no others.

Next week I’ll continue this theme by looking at what happens within the whānau, hapū and iwi when leaders presume to speak for others without a clear mandate.