For Land and People

He has lived all his life working the hills and valleys of the Ruapehu area, quietly serving the people in ways big and small.

Over three change-making decades of involvement with Ātihau-Whanganui Incorporation (AWHI), he has helped build a foundation for transformation and growth. Moana Ellis visits Turuhia (Jim) Edmonds on the land he loves.

Farming is in Jim Edmonds’ blood. When he stepped aside in December 2016 after 30 years of involvement with Ātihau-Whanganui Incorporation (AWHI), chair Mavis Mullins said his farming expertise and deep cultural understanding would not be lost. He is now a valued kaumātua advisor.

“It’s like Hotel California – you can check out, but you can never leave,” Mavis laughs.

Leave? Not likely. This koroua is in his element. An AWHI shareholder born and bred at the foot of Ruapehu, he may be approaching 72 years of age but shows no interest in slowing down. He has built his life around ethics of hard work and service, inheriting a deep connection with this land from his parents.

The wood burner is glowing in the kitchen of the family home in Raetihi. A gallery of framed photographs mosaics the walls, including great-great-great grandparents. Daughter, Missy – one of five children born to Jim and his late wife Patsy – is asleep on the sofa, and one of his mokopuna is in front of the TV, zoned into her phone. There are also 24 grandchildren and 19 great grandchildren – and another three on the way.

Born in Raetihi Hospital, Jim was raised on his mother’s land at Ruakākā in the Manganui-o-te-Ao valley. “Our whole house was only as big as this room. There was one bedroom and a kitchen-washroom. One half of the house had a floor, the other half was dirt. The fire was tin. The only thing us kids didn’t like was carrying water up from the creek to boil in the copper,” he remembers.

“There were 15 kids. I’m about halfway down the line. Mum kept saying ‘You’re there, halfway – you have to keep the waka level. You’ve got to try to stop it tipping over’. I thought, ‘What are you talking about, Mum? What do you mean?’ I only found out later on. I’m still trying to keep the waka level.”

“Mum used to say I was the food go-getterer. If you were hungry, you were lazy – that’s what Nan and them used to say. We lived off the land, we pretty well had to. I spent my teenage years in the ngahere. Everyone knew when I was going out to get kai because I’d have to go past auntie’s house, auntie’s house and auntie’s house. I had to have meat for all of them when I got home. It was all shared out, that’s what we did.”

Either on horse or afoot, he used the ancestral routes that transect the rohe, reflecting the region’s historic importance as a crossroads that shaped whakapapa and political connections across the belly of the land. It was two days’ ride from Manganui-o-te-Ao to Pipiriki, or he would head to Tieke.

The waterways were another drawcard. He paddled the rivers and streams, including down the Manganui-o-te-Ao to the Whanganui – and then back upstream, learning to use the current as propulsion. The great outdoors was home.

Above: Jim Edmonds at home in the shearing shed. Image supplied.

During the Christmas holidays, he was in the shearing sheds. “I rousied and pressed wool for years. The shearers might give you half a sheep to do and laugh like hell when you were still there half an hour later, he says. “The old man taught me how to shear. If you were any good you could make two pounds a day. It took me nine hours to do my first 100 sheep. The old man came along to pat my back and shake my hand. I was just about dead, but he said, ‘Don’t worry, now do your first 200 in a day’. Back then, as long as you did about 300 sheep a day it was good money.”

Jim left school at age 16 years to farm, eventually taking on his father’s shearing run and others, going on to become a Golden Shears recipient and becoming a trusted musterer, shearer and fencer on most of the stations that would later be resumed by AWHI. He also managed the Lilburn, Sue Joe & Sons, and Irwin farms. It wasn’t long before he joined both the Morikaunui Incorporation and AWHI boards – a commitment to the land and its people that became part of his life.

“The dream was to be able to do something for our people,” he said. “Extract the best value from the land for the benefit of our people – but improve the asset and leave it in a better condition than when we found it. Continuous development and improvement, that was what it was about.”

The commitment required to serve on both boards prompted a return from managing farms to shearing, fencing and logging contracting, and, later, tutoring for Land-Based Training. Before long, he found himself in a multitude of leadership roles, including serving as a Waimarino/Ruapehu District councillor, chairing the Raetihi Marae trust, leading marae-based education programmes, and advising Winstone Afforestation’s Tangata Whenua Working Group on cultural matters. He continues today to represent Aotea on the Executive Committee of FOMA (Federation of Māori Authorities) and to serve on the Morikaunui board.

All the while, behind the scenes, Jim has quietly taken care of his community. In 2018, nominated by iwi tribal authority Uenuku, he received the Waimarino-Waiouru Citizens Award. “He is still seen around town mowing the lawns of the Raetihi Māori cemetery, or – for the elderly or families who need help – dropping off firewood or food, fixing fences, being the handyman, or just visiting,” the nomination said.

At the gates of Tawanui Station 10 minutes south of Raetihi, the sun warms the bones, but up on the hills it’s another story. Jim insists I take his work gloves and conjures up an extra coat. “You’ll need them at the top,” he warns, powering the ATV through the rolling hill country. There are a couple of brief detours to check fences he built three or four decades ago – “Yeah, they still look all right” – and eventually we stand at the edge of Ōtiranui bluff. It is a spectacular vista across the Waimarino plains to the north, the Murimotu plains to the east, and westward to Rānana and Tauakirā.

“As far as you can see is Ātihau land,” Jim says. “That was the dream of the old fellas who started this off.”

In 1903, Māori landowners vested some 101,000 acres (42,000ha) in the Aotea Māori Land Council to protect it from sale. AWHI was formed in 1970 to take back the land. However, most was tied up in perpetually renewable leases with 21-year rent reviews.

“If we were to do anything for our people, we had to resume the land. Leases were nearing their 21-year expiry, but to resume the leased land we had to compensate lessees for improvements.” He explains.

Jim was part of the team that negotiated the massive buy-back initiative, a complex task made a little easier because over the years he had worked on most of the stations and knew the lessees.

Over more than 25 years, nearly 35,000 hectares of leased farmland has been returned to AWHI control – a turning point for the organisation’s development potential. Much was returned in a poor state, needing significant investment in fencing, pasture, soil fertility, buildings and water systems to become productive.

Jim supervised the day-to-day running of four of the stations – Ohorea, Tohunga, Ngā Puke and Ohotu – as upgraded farm management plans were implemented.

He knows the country like the back of his hand, remembering week-long musters on horseback, bringing in 5000 sheep, and long days fencing the ridges by hand. Now describing himself as semi-retired, he says it’s good to see focus on efficiency, productivity and quality. Building workforce skill is also key, but most important is continual improvement of land health and wellbeing.

“Man is buggering up the planet, there’s no two ways about it. Some of our seasons have become out-of season. Anything we can do about that, we’d better do it,” he says.

“We’re never going to sell this land. All we want is to leave the best we can for the next generation and the generation after that. We know we’re better than we were 10 or 20 years ago, and that’s what we set out to do.”

12TOITŪ TE MANA