This story has been updated to add clarification.
Chinese rangatahi who have made Aotearoa their home are planning to travel to Te Tai Tokerau in February to strengthen their identity and connection to Aotearoa-New Zealand with a hope of deepening Māori and Chinese relationships.
The initiative is called Pāruru, in recognition of the tangata whenua (people of the land) ‘who have, through time, provided a ‘place of shelter’ or pāruru.’
The delegates, aged under 35, are “the kaitiaki—the guardians of our ancestors,” said Meng Foon, New Zealand Chinese Association President.
“The majority of the group is made up of New Zealand-born Chinese and for some, it will be their first time interacting with Māori in a rural setting,” he said.
They will attend Waitangi Day commemorations on February 6 to gain an “understanding of the founding documents of our nation.”
A shared history
The group will also visit the graves of a number of Chinese gold miners, whose remains were being returned to their homeland aboard the SS Ventnor when the ship sank in 1902 near Hokianga Harbour.
The men’s exhumed remains had been on their way to their home villages for burial but, according to Chinese tradition, with the bodies lost and no graves for families to tend to, their spirits risked wandering forever in the afterlife.
Local iwi Te Roroa and Te Rarawa found some of the remains washed up along the coast and buried them alongside their own dead in urupā, although the majority of the remains are still trapped in the sunken ship.
The SS Ventnor left Wellington in October 1902 carrying 499 bodies back to China to their families. These men were mostly gold miners who had worked in the Otago, Greymouth area.
The ship sank off the Hokianga Heads after striking a reef near Taranaki and trying to head north for repairs in Auckland.
Most of the crew made it ashore, but 13, including the captain, drowned.
We will mihi to those iwi that have looked after those remains. The aroha that those tūpuna showed to my ancestors, was to bury them alongside their loved ones in their urupā, on their whenua.
— Meng Foon-New Zealand Chinese Association President
Group to visit memorial
A memorial to the sinking was erected in 2021 at the Manea Footprints of Kupe Centre in Ōpononi and those heading to Waitangi will also visit the site.
Foon said it would be a very emotional part of their journey.
“This is a significant trip for these rangatahi to pay homage... some of the descendants of those kōiwi will be making the trip.”