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Hawaiki Nui Tuarua Waka Ama Club 25th Anniversary

Venue:

Māoriland Hub - Otaki

Date:

Sat 29th Sep - Sun 30th Sep 2018

Distance:

25th Anniversary

Host:

Hawaikinui Tuarua Waka Ama

Contact Details

Name: Barbara Rudd
Phone: 022 4789759

Description

The club will celebrate 25 years of being in existence during the weekend of Saturday 29th September through to Sunday 30th September 2018. The weekend of celebration includes an exhibition at Maorilands and a social function for past and present members.  

Although the club was primarily based in Ōtaki and continues to do so, it also draws its membership from a small number of paddlers further north in Levin and a larger membership to the south at Ivey Bay in Mana/Porirua.  The club has paddlers who compete in the Intermediate categories right through to Senior Master and Golden Master categories.

Hawaikinui Tuarua Waka Ama ki Ōtaki, as it was known up until recent years, was formed in September 1992 by Perry Hakaraia with the aim of fostering the sporting and recreational use of the outrigger canoe in the Ōtaki area and further afield.

At that time the sport appeared to have its roots in Pacific Island culture and there were those that questioned its relevance to Māori.  In 1958 an ama was discovered in the Te Horo area and a waka section was uncovered. While these are the only waka ama to be found in the North Island their discovery proved that waka ama is not new to Māori. In establishing the club, Perry saw this an opportunity to introduce the sport to Māori and reconnect a long-lost bond with their Pacific cousins.

My vision for waka ama at that time was to encourage more Māori Polynesian to participate in paddling our traditional wakaama, to experience the non-contact and how the Moana has an effect on your mind and spirituality. It recalibrates your connection to Rangi and Papa, also balancing Waihine / TOA , riri and rangimarie within your wairua. Our Māori and Polynesian had become landline locked in papatuanuku, where there is a negative mauri.”


In 1993 the club drew up its constitution and the club became an incorporated society. In that same year an all-girls midget crew, competing under the banner of Mareikura, made it through to the final in the 1993 Waka Ama Nationals at Lake Pupuke. The club didn’t have a waka at that stage and the girls trained instead on nail boxes beside a local swimming pool.

The club takes its name from the double-hull waka, Hawaiki Nui, built by Greg Matahi Whakataka- Brightwell, which sailed from Tahiti to New Zealand in 1986 to prove such a journey could have been completed as Polynesian tradition suggests.

The club has had a close association with Greg Whakataka- Brightwell and Mareikura Waka Ama Club, the first waka ama club in New Zealand.  In the 1990’s, Mareikura held a waka ama workshop in Ōtaki and Hongoeka. Two hundred locals turned up over the weekend workshops with culminated in the men paddling a waka from Hongoeka to Ōtaki.   This was the first time a waka ama had been seen on these seas in this century. Prior to Hawaikinui Tuarua forming, Ōtaki members paddled under the Mareikura banner.

The club has enjoyed it’s share of recognition and successes through the years, on both national and international levels. It has been influential in  the development and growth of waka ama and continues to operate from it’s two bases, one in Ivey Bay, Porirua and Ōtaki. The duel locations allow members to benefit from both flat-water paddling at Ōtaki and ocean paddling  around the Porirua and Paremata waterways.

The club is proud of it’s history and it’s beginning,  we hope you get to visit and learn about our clubs’ history and the people who have been involved through the years.  

Waka ama - he waka eke noa.

 


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