Lived Land: Tiritiri Matangi before the sanctuary

Only a scenic 80-minute ferry ride from the heart of the Auckland CBD is Tiritiri Matangi Island. Sitting in the Hauraki Gulf just off the Whangaparāoa Peninsula, the island today is best known as a native bird sanctuary: a haven of birdsong, guided walks, and carefully restored bush. For many Aucklanders, Tiritiri Matangi represents a conservation success story. 

Image: View from Tiritiri Matangi today. 

Yet, this is a relatively recent understanding of the island’s story. Long before the island became a sanctuary, it was a lived and used landscape. Tiritiri Matangi has been shaped by human movement, conflict, labour, and law. A bastion of sedimentary rock, the island was fished, occupied, claimed, cleared, and transformed. The histories embedded in its land predate conservation by centuries.

Māori occupation and use 

As one of the islands in the Hauraki Gulf, Tiritiri Matangi holds deep significance in Māori history. Going so far as back to 1400 A.D., Tiritiri Matangi was part of a wider coastal region stretching from Te Arai to Takapuna, occupied primarily by the Te Kawerau ā Maki (Kawerau) iwi. The island’s name itself is derived from the Kawerau pā (fortification) called the Tiritiri Matangi pā. Translated as “tossed by the wind”, it is a reference to the island’s exposed position in the Hauraki Gulf. Kawerau occupation of Tiritiri Matangi was not isolated but connected to settlements on the mainland, fishing grounds, and travel routes along the coast. Tiritiri Matangi’s location meant that it acted both as a strategic lookout over the region, as well as a bountiful seasonal resource for fishing and crops. 

Alongside the Kawerau were the Ngāti Paoa iwi. Their presence on and use of the island was initially seasonal, but later, they set up their own pā north of the Tiritiri Matangi pā named the Papakura pā. This settlement was primarily associated with their fishing expeditions, particularly for sharks. Both the Tiritiri Matangi pā and the Papakura pā indicate permanent residence of Māori on Tiritiri Matangi for some period. The pā mark the highest points of the island, overlooking landing zones on the beaches. Archaeological evidence carried out for the first time in 1981 by Wynne Rice-Spring, a University of Auckland graduate, uncovered 14 terrace and pit sites, and at least seven middens. The use of these sites included whare (houses), refuse heaps containing seafood bones and shells, cooking sheds, kumara storage, and even a burial ground. This revealed that Māori visits to Tiritiri Matangi were for more than mere occasional harvesting. Rather, they reflected careful planning, knowledge of the seasonal cycles, and sustainable use of the island’s land and resources. 

Image: Archaeological sites of Tiritiri Matangi, 1981 from Wynne Rice-Spring, Human History of Tiritiri Matangi Island.

Despite being described as “a peaceful people”, Kawerau were drawn into wider regional conflicts. Around the turn of the eighteenth century, Kawerau forces under the chief Maki destroyed the Papakura pā. 

However, this did not mean that the Kawerau had Tiritiri Matangi to themselves. The Musket Wars in the early nineteenth century led to Māori abandoning the island, as communities across the Hauraki Gulf withdrew temporarily in response to Ngāpuhi raids in 1821. Māori continued to visit Tiritiri Matangi regularly for the same purposes that had made the island a valuable place to live on in the first place. However, their decision to no longer live on the island on a permanent basis would undermine later claims to customary ownership of the island. Unlike fixed European notions of land ownership that stemmed from capital and labour, the Māori pattern of seasonal movement was both practical and customary. It reflected a way of life attuned to the rhythms of the sea and land.

Evidence of a lived landscape

From the 1840s onwards, European settlement in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland rapidly expanded. As Auckland grew as a colonial port city, the surrounding islands in the Hauraki Gulf became increasingly important for navigation and defence. Tiritiri Matangi, located at the entrance, conveniently overlooked main shipping routes and consequently acquired a strategic significance within this growing colonial network. 

The most visible European presence on the island was, and arguably still is, the Tiritiri Matangi Lighthouse. Built in 1865 in response to public demand for safer navigation into the Waitematā Harbour, the lighthouse was to help guide ships carrying goods into Auckland. Newspapers at the time celebrated its completion, describing the light as shining “beautifully clear and bright” and remarking that construction was carried out “without the slightest accident to workmen or material." The lighthouse required permanent staffing, regular supply deliveries, and ongoing maintenance, grounding European occupation on the island for the first time. The construction of two “spacious” keepers’ cottages alongside the lighthouse reinforced this shift, marking the island’s transformation, at this stage, into a site of continuous residence and colonial administration.

Image: Earliest known photograph of the Tiritiri Matangi Lighthouse, 1899. Auckland War Memorial Museum PH-ALB-98-P74-2.

European use did not erase earlier Māori relationships with Tiritiri Matangi, but it did introduce new forms of permanence and administrative control. These changes laid the groundwork for the legal and political contestation that would soon follow.

Lived land, contested land

Despite the long history of Māori use, Tiritiri Matangi became the subject of a controversial Native Land Court case in 1867. Māori relationships with land did not translate easily into the individualised, title-based ideals of land ownership imposed by colonial law. Nowhere was this tension more evident than in the court proceedings concerning Tiritiri Matangi in the Mahurangi Block sale. 

Image: Mahurangi Block sold by Ngāti Paoa to the Crown, 1853; notably Tiritiri Matangi island missing from the map. Turton's Deed 192. 

In 1841, Ngāti Paoa, in the absence of Kawerau, sold the section of land known as the Mahurangi Block to the Crown for £120. Significantly, the sale deed did not expressly include Tiritiri Matangi Island, and the island was not pictured in any early maps of the Mahurangi Block itself. In the following decades, numerous Māori iwi visited Tiritiri Matangi, and these iwi made a claim for the island in the Native Land Court in 1867 for Certificate of Title against the Crown. Some iwi claimed that “there were no Europeans on the island until the light was erected there”, while other iwi claimed that Ngāti Paoa “often sold lands belonging to other tribes in their absence to get food." Despite recognition that the Mahurangi deed was flawed, the Crown continued to assert its ownership of Tiritiri Matangi based on this original, illegitimate deed.

In his 1867 judgement, Judge Francis D. Fenton acknowledged the complexity of Māori and Crown claims to Tiritiri Matangi. Despite having already adjourned the case once, then twice more to allow the Crown more time to procure supporting evidence for their claims, Fenton was unconvinced by the Crown’s main assertion of ownership on the basis of the 1841 Mahurangi deed. He noted the “position of the learned counsel for the Crown has been, if possible, one of greater embarrassment than that of the court itself”, reflecting the Crown’s inability to produce original documents even after having adjourned the case twice. Māori, on the other hand, had provided extensive testimony about their use of the island, citing “ancient occupancy” of Tiritiri Matangi as grounds of rightful ownership. Yet, Fenton concluded that Māori “[did] not appear to ever [have] held permanent possession of the island, nor have exercised any dominion over it beyond acts of a transitory nature, indicating only temporary occupation and no intention of permanent domicile."

Fenton ultimately placed greater weight on the Crown’s visible presence on Tiritiri Matangi by means of the lighthouse, concluding that “to eject a person [the Crown] from his possession, it is not sufficient to show the weakness of his title, but a better must be displayed… this has not been done." In his view, the lighthouse symbolised Crown occupation, and Māori would have had to prove more established occupation to have any legal standing in their claims to title. The construction of a lighthouse constituted occupation and ownership; centuries of Māori customary use did not. 

Image: Judge Francis D. Fenton, 1898. Auckland Libraries Heritage Collections NZG-18980507-0575-02.

This court ruling marked a turning point. Tiritiri Matangi moved from lived land to administered land, at least in name and title. Where Māori customary law had once guided relationships with Tiritiri Matangi’s land and resources, colonial law now governed its use. It is at this point that Tiritiri Matangi would be formally redefined under Crown control.

Author: Emily Zhu, Auckland History Initiative Summer Research Scholar

Emily is currently a fourth-year conjoint student at the University of Auckland, studying a Bachelor of Arts majoring in History, and a Bachelor of Laws with Honours. Having always loved social history and the natural world, Emily was drawn to research how human activity and conservation efforts have shaped Tiritiri Matangi Island, one of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland’s most iconic islands.  

Emily adopts a long history approach to examine the social and environmental history of Tiritiri Matangi. Across her articles, she traces the island’s transformation from a site of seasonal Māori use and Crown-managed pastoral farm to a carefully constructed ‘open sanctuary’ of flora and fauna. Her latter articles situate this transformation within the broader shift in attitudes towards conservation, the legislative challenges faced, and how this was to be managed in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Throughout this research, Emily uncovers the ecological regeneration of Tiritiri Matangi, while recognising the island’s significance as a site of environmental education and community engagement today.  

Emily would love to thank all the people and institutions that made her research possible. She thanks Dr Jess Parr and Professor Linda Bryder for their generous and expert supervision throughout the project. She also thanks the team at the Auckland Council Libraries, particularly Sue Berman from the Oral Histories Heritage Collections, for their assistance with the resources used. She is also grateful to the teams at Auckland War Memorial Museum and the National Library of New Zealand for their guidance. Finally, she thanks Orna Weinroth and Toni Ashton from the Supporters of Tiritiri Matangi for their inspiration throughout this project. 

Read the rest of Emily's research on the Auckland History Initiative website.