Re-connecting people and place

A whānau trust is reaching out to shareholders for information to help them re-connect with whenua, whakapapa and whānau. Moana Ellis discovers why they are putting out the call.

Rawinia Panenui was the daughter of Moana Kemara and Hauraranga Panenui. She passed away in 2000, leaving many shares in Parininihi ki Waitotara (PKW) – a legacy that makes her descendants significant shareholders of the inter-generational Taranaki Māori business.

But Rawinia passed on little knowledge of whakapapa, tūpuna, hapū, iwi or marae, leaving her only surviving child –daughter Hinepua Georgina Kingi – and her mokopuna struggling to understand their connection to their land and people.

In 2005, those mokopuna formed the Hine Rose Whānau Trust, named after their mother (who took Rose as her married name). Based in Tauranga and Australia, they started attending PKW shareholder hui and spending time in Taranaki, all the while trying to piece together their identity and history.

For Cherryl Thompson, eldest daughter of Hine Rose, the sense of loss is raw. “I feel totally disconnected from my whenua,” Cherryl says. “We go back and try to make reconnections. We just want to have a sense of belonging and to know our Taranakitanga.

Above: Cherryl and her sister Robyn talk about an old family photograph.

Above image: Featuring their grandmother, Rawinia Panenui, standing third from left.

“We don’t have any place to go back to other than marae, maunga, awa. We go to urupā and walk around – that’s about all we can do at this point.”

Cherryl says her grandmother did not share much with her mother.

“Mum knew we were Ngāti Ruanui, but she only knew where she grew up and she was always looked after by the family of her father, George Kingi.”

With the loss of her mother five years ago, Cherryl is now the family matriarch and feels a sense of responsibility to her seven children and wider whānau.

“I don’t want to hand this on without having moved forward somehow. I have to find out more about who I am and where I’m from for that sense of belonging – for myself and for my children.

“It’s having that knowing. We have our whakapapa, but we want to feel it. We attend every shareholder meeting and Taranaki Tū Mai, but because we weren’t brought up there, we’re just like visitors.

“I need to pave the way for my children to feel part of Taranaki so we can go back there feeling we’re at home, and not on a visit to somebody else’s place.”

The whānau will wānanga at Taiporohenui Marae at the end of September with Te Poihi Campbell and hope people will come to share their stories and knowledge. Talking with those who know the Kemara and Panenui whānau is their best hope of filling the gaps, Cherryl believes.

“We’re keen to learn more about our family, our whakapapa, our history and we'd like to learn it from our whanaunga– spend some time talking with our whānau if they have the time. We'd like to know more stories about our mum and our grandparents, and all the places that are significant to us. I only know those things from a book. You want to feel it from your heart.”

Mitchell Ritai, PKW General Manager Shareholder Engagement, says the disconnection suffered by the Hine Rose Whānau Trust is an experience shared by many shareholders. The Māori Trustee’s 1963 amalgamation of land blocks set aside in the early 1880s for Taranaki Māori was one of a long sequence of acts that alienated whānau from their ancestral lands. Rather than being an owner in a block of land, a person became a shareholder over the entire estate.

“That disconnected people from their ancestral lands because they became a shareholder in an incorporation rather than remaining directly linked to a particular block of land,” Mitchell says. “We see this quite often. Today some of our shareholders only have a connection to Taranaki through PKW – they don’t know their whakapapa connection, their iwi, hapū or marae.

“The challenge in connecting shareholders to the original land is significant. Stitching back the pieces together to find the original shareholders and their connection to the original block is not an easy task.”

However, PKW was able to introduce Hine Rose’s whānau to whanaunga when they came to the 2019 Annual General Meeting.

“As soon as they met Te Poihi, they started making connections. He was able to tell them where they belong on one side of their whakapapa. That important moment underlined the enormous significance to our shareholders of re-connecting back.”

For the whānau of Hine Rose Whānau Trust, there is still more to discover. “We hope that if anyone has any information, they will reach out to the whānau so that their mokopuna will grow up knowing that they are from Taranaki and how.”

Establishing a whānau trust should be a consideration for all whānau shareholders, Mitchell suggests. Holding shares collectively as a whānau stops shareholding fragmentation and makes administration easier - removing the need for lengthy succession processes (as trustees can simply be changed) and providing one central bank account and set of contact details.

The challenge facing Hine Rose Whānau Trust also highlights the issue of missing shareholders. PKW has contact details for only about 55% of its 10,500 shareholders and bank account details for 35%.

“That means 65% of our shareholders aren’t receiving dividends they are entitled to and don’t have the opportunity to realise shareholder benefits such as education and community grants, or work opportunities,” says Mitchell.

But a solution may be on the horizon thanks to PKW’s involvement in the National Science Challenge. Under the programme’s Science for Technological Innovation research, PKW is working with Victoria and Auckland universities to develop tools that might help find missing shareholders and re-connect whānau.

“For PKW, an important part of this project is finding ways to strengthen connection to people and place. Re-connecting back to whenua and marae helps to rebuild a sense of belonging and sense of self. That can be an empowering experience, and PKW hopes our involvement will help whānau in that area.

“We expect that shareholder experiences and our input into the design of these high-tech tools will mean they will also be relevant and applicable for other incorporations, iwi, Māori organisations and possibly even mainstream organisations.”

Anyone wishing to connect with Cherryl and the Hine Rose Whānau Trust can send their contact details to reception@pkw.co.nz.