Nga Tūpuna o Te Whanganui-a-Tara

In 2000, Wellington City Libraries in association with Wellington Tenths Trust funded the first of what would become four volumes of tūpuna living in Te Whanganui-a-Tara, 1840 (and onwards) — Nga Tupuna o Te Whanganui-a-Tara (published in 2001).

Although Waitangi Tribunal reports from the ongoing claims process at the time gave a comprehensive insight into the history of the land, it was felt that missing from that history were the stories of the people who lived and established a presence on these lands.

So many mana whenua painstakingly guided and steered these books to fruition with their knowledge, skills and enthusiasm. For each volume below, you can click through and find our full acknowledgements. We would not have proceeded without their knowledge and help, or without the backing of the Wellington Tenths Trust.

Wellington City Libraries would like to acknowledge and pay tribute to two key people involved in this project who have since passed away — Neville Gilmore and Sandra Clarke — as well as our friend and colleague Lotofoa Fiu.

You can find information about volumes 1-4 of Nga Tupuna o Te Whanganui-a-Tara below, as well as a list of the tūpuna in each volume and links to find the books on our library shelves. A selection of biographies are also available online in English and te reo Māori with the kind permission of their whānau.

Wellington City Libraries wishes to thank and acknowledge the Wellington Tenths Trust for allowing full scanned versions of Volume 1 and Volume 2 (links below) to be available online on our Wellington Recollect site. We ask that, in addition to normal copyright considerations, users of this resource uphold the mana and dignity of the people depicted within it.

— Ann Reweti (Kaimahi, Ratonga Māori, Researcher, Wellington City Libraries).

Over the years Nga Tupuna o Te Whanganui-a-Tara was worked on, macron use was different than it is today. In the printed booklets, for the tupuna names we did not use macrons because these were not employed in our source material from the time. The online versions were done in the early 2000s for this project, and have generally used a macron (tohutō) or umlaut to represent vowel length.