Te Roroa Erotic

Te Roroa are a Māori iwi of the Northland west coast, and the simplest way to place them is by the trees. Their country runs between the Kaipara and Hokianga harbors, taking in the Kaihū valley, Maunganui Bluff, Waimamaku and the Waipoua Forest, where Tāne Mahuta, the largest known living kauri, stands. Te Roroa are the kaitiaki, the guardians, of that forest, and the role is practical rather than ceremonial: the iwi works alongside the Department of Conservation on track upgrades, footwear cleaning stations and monitoring as kauri dieback disease spreads through Northland.

By descent they sit within the Ngāti Whātua confederation and trace back to the Māhuhu-ki-te-rangi canoe, but geography put them on the frontier with Ngāpuhi, and generations of intermarriage and fighting mean many families carry both lines. That border produced one of the turning points in New Zealand warfare. At Moremonui, on the coast south of Maunganui Bluff, in 1807 or 1808, Te Roroa under Taoho and their Ngāti Whātua kin ambushed a Ngāpuhi force carrying some of the first muskets used in Māori battle. The guns were slow to reload and the ambushers won. The dead were left on the beach, and the fight is remembered as Te Kai a te Karoro, the seagulls' feast. Ngāpuhi took their revenge on Ngāti Whātua in 1825, with far more muskets.

The iwi's modern history turns on land. In 1876 the Crown bought the Waipoua and Maunganui blocks, and reserves that Te Roroa understood to be kept out of the sale, including the sacred sites Manuwhetai and Whangaiariki at the bluff, ended up in private farms. Early in the twentieth century carved burial chests were taken from caves at Waimamaku and sent to a museum. Both grievances went before the Waitangi Tribunal, whose 1992 report recommended that the Crown acquire the private land and hand it back. The political reaction was sharp: Parliament changed the law the following year so the Tribunal could no longer make recommendations over private land. Te Roroa signed a settlement with the Crown in 2005 and it passed into law in 2008.

Te Roroa is a small iwi, and many members now live outside the home territory, in Whangārei, Auckland and beyond. The marae still anchor things, among them Matatina at Waipoua and Te Houhanga in Dargaville. People speak English day to day, with te reo Māori in its Northland form heard on the marae and increasingly taught to children. Most families are Christian, and tikanga, especially the rules around tapu places and the dead, runs alongside church without much friction.