Since the arrival of European colonisers, whakapapa has been defined, used, and researched in various ways. In my tribe, Ngāti Porou, whakapapa has been described as the ‘heart and core of all Māori institutions from Creation to what is now iwi’ ( Mahuika 1998, p. Ngai Tahu leader, Tipene O’Regan, once remarked that whakapapa ‘carries the ultimate expression’ of who he is, and that without it he would be simply an ‘ethnic statistic’ ( O’Regan 1987, p. The importance of whakapapa in the Māori world is paramount because it is considered crucial to assertions of Māori identity and tribal membership. Some see whakapapa as ‘the skeletal structure of Māori knowledge’, while others emphasise it as an organising framework for Māori history ( Tau 2001, p. Accordingly, there is a genealogy for every word, thought, object, mineral, place and person ( Roberts 2015). Whakapapa is the Māori word for genealogy, and can be interpreted literally as ‘the process of layering one thing upon another’ ( Ngata 2011, p.
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