Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2026 - Nga manu whititua kua wehe ki roto i nga iwi. Nga mate o te wa, haere mai, haere! Tatou kei te pito ora. Tihewa mauri ora! And welcome back to The Hui. In Te Rangi, Hokianga, something once unthinkable is quietly becoming part of daily conversation. The coastline is retreating, and whanau are now forced to think about what it means to protect sacred sites, their marae, and the resting places of their tupapaku ` questions that raise more pain than answers. Whatitiri Te Wake has this story - Hokianga Whakapau Karakia ` beneath the beauty, whanau are confronting a troubling truth. - The most pressing issue is here at our urupa. The next couple of years, or next five years, those koiwi are going to be exposed and ultimately end up in our harbour. - Surging tides, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events have all played a part in the eroding of these coastlines. - We have a massive slip just on the edge of our boundary where it's less than a metre away from our first rua koiwi. - Hinemoa Smart ` a teacher at the local kura and kaikaranga for her marae. - So, next to the marae, we have a block of land where is going to be the next urupa, and the thought of moving all our koiwi there, it's not practical because we have a lot of mass graves here. And a lot of them are unmarked. It's only certain people that know where they are exactly. It'll be heartbreaking to have to move all of the koiwi. It's like having my mum and having to move her` We always say, 'Moe mai koe i te moenga roa.' But it won't be a moenga roa if we're moving them. And that's what keeps playing on my mind, is how do we let them rest if we're going to move them? - Her dad, Harry, has lived on this whenua all his life. And avid fisherman, he has seen the damage climate change is doing, both to the land and the sea. - Like, it was way out where those mangrove trees are growing, the bank was way out there. - And just over time it's just gradually eroded? - Yeah. - How concerned are you? - Tangi concerned really, yeah. Like, weeping inside. Just pure aroha for the whanau. You can just imagine how they're feeling. My aroha is for them. - We're quite resourceful here. So we've tried to find alternative ways to preserve the bank. So we had a whole lot of tea tree along the banks that we've cut down and pushed down just to try and slow things down. But with the extreme weather events that we've been having lately, and the rainfall, it's near impossible. We've tried funding, but to no avail. - They've exhausted their options. The long-term plan of relocating the urupa is no longer theoretical; it's becoming an urgent reality. - We were talking to two councillors from Far North District Council. This was a few years back, and nothing came of it. Most of the korero that we got was that most of the funds are focused to the east side of Northland because it's where all the tourists go and the best place to make money to fund our region. And then I think about, what about us that live here and pay rates and are here all the time, and the harbour? Do you want to be eating koiwi? I don't want to. - The next village over, Mitimiti, is a paradise cut off from the rest of the world. The hapu here face similar threats from the sea. So, to future-proof their kainga, they may have to relocate. - It's a conversation, but not work in progress. We are not avoiding the fact that we have to consider and actually action and implement the moving of our marae one day. Whenua is privately owned` well Maori whenua is owned by whanau, and so it's a huge hapu conversation. There's lots of work we have to do with the Maori Land Court, with funders for ultimately caring and protecting our marae, and that means moving it one day. - At just 27, Kyla chairs the Matihetihe Marae Trust. She is leading her hapu to adapt to climate change while keeping their cultural and community ties intact. - We're right on the west coast, looking out to the Tasman sea. And with sea level rise, of course that has an impact, but actually, what we're facing is the water level rise on the whenua, and so a lot of the mahi that we've been doing has been flood mitigation, flood adaptation. We just recently installed a new culvert and cleaned up our awa out the back here, and the awa flows around the marae too, so that all helps to support our access to the marae. A huge concern for me is the roads, no doubt about it, because if the roads are shocking, people don't come home. What's the point of maintaining and upholding the culture and the tikanga of our marae if people can't get here? - Far North District Mayor Moko Tepania is also from Mitimiti, and he knows the stakes. - Well, this is really tough. We are trying to plan with our communities for what this is going to mean in 100 years' time, and we've got communities in the Far North who are experiencing this first hand, right now, with the risk of having our koiwi put out into the harbour because of the effects of climate change and severe weather events. So this is a really hard conversation to have, but I think we have to be brave in our conversations about what it means and the decisions that we are going to have to make. - The Far North District Council has adopted a climate resilience programme to accelerate protection work, but ultimately, communities have to decide their own future. - 17% of our whenua here in the Far North is whenua Maori. A significant number of our communities on the coast sit on whenua Maori. Our initial research showed that 27 of our marae and 1200 buildings on whenua Maori are going to be at risk of coastal inundation or flooding over the next 100 years. So we have to put our energy and effort into working with our communities who are going to be experiencing this far further severely than those who live in towns or those who are on general title. - We're at the top of the list of people to talk to, but we're at the bottom of the list for actually implementing and actioning anything. Roading infrastructure and other mahi that needs to happen, it takes a long time, months, years. Agencies are coming to us and wanting to present their maps and their strategies and their plans and collect our voice, but those agencies aren't talking to each other, and we're just repeating the same story, same story, over and over again. And our people are getting tired of it. And that's why we assert our own mana motuhake over our own whenua and moana, and if we need to, we'll fundraise for things. - Our community has given us the clear and consistent plan of what's going to be required for them over the next 100 years, and then we as a council can go, 'Cool, that's our responsibility. 'That's central government's responsibility, so we'll bring them into the conversation. 'That's the regional government's responsibility; we'll bring them in here.' But until we have the conversation with our communities, with our whanau on the ground, we actually don't know what that looks like yet. - But for whanau in Te Rangi, time is running out. - I don't want my mum to end up in the harbour. I want to do something. The church is the one place that still keeps everyone together. Our whanau are here; our blood is here. - IN TE REO MAORI: - IN TE REO MAORI: (OTENE LAUGHS) - ALL: Kia ora. (LAUGHS) - IN TE REO MAORI: Ae. - Mm. - Ne? Ki te tuaono? - Ae. (LAUGHS) - IN TE REO MAORI: - (CHUCKLES) - Ae. - IN TE REO MAORI: - Ae. (LAUGHTER) - (LAUGHS) - (LAUGHS) - Koira, koira. (LAUGHTER) (LAUGHS) - (LAUGHS) - IN TE REO MAORI: - IN TE REO MAORI: - IN TE REO MAORI: - (LAUGHS) - (LAUGHS) IN TE REO MAORI: (ALL LAUGH) - (LAUGHS) He tika tonu! - Ae. - (LAUGHS) - Oh, kia ora! (LAUGHS) - Whoo! - (EXCLAIMS) (ALL LAUGH) Ka nui te mihi. Captions by Able. Captions were made with the support of NZ On Air. www.able.co.nz Copyright Able 2026