Marae have a place in contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand that is vital to Maori culture, as well as for all peoples of this land. Maori cultural precepts intrinsically abound with notions of the importance of marae for the transmission of that culture. Marae are places of refuge and learning where the active expression of Maori culture is most obvious. Tendrils of tradition incorporated with contemporary nuances reach out to enfold those whom these places and spaces nurture and embrace. While these ideals may not always find articulation in reality, their presence at the least provides a foundation centuries old on which to build pathways in the present and into the future. Awataha Marae is an urban marae based on Auckland?s North Shore. The history of Awataha is situated within the latest of three Renaissance Periods in which there was an upsurge in Maori culture. These Renaissance Periods were about resistance to the impositions of another culture, reclamation of part of what had been lost through colonisation, and rejuvenation of people and culture. Renaissance Period Three, in which Awataha arose, also has connections to the efforts of indigenous peoples worldwide in their endeavours to forge self determining processes for themselves, including those of conducting research that was for their benefit and purposes, rather than for those of others. Following the development of marae from pre-contact to the present day also illuminates the context within which Awataha was formed. From its beginnings as the space in front of the chief?s house where the village members gathered and where relationships were negotiated, marae today are complexes of buildings that reflect the necessities of the society that surrounds them, as well as the desire of the people to retain Maori culture in its most fundamental form. Urban marae have arisen to fulfil those desires for Maori in urban contexts, often separated from their rural homelands and for many, from their cultural heritage. Following changes in the ways in which wharenui were decorated and embellished also provides evidence of the ways in which Maori consciously innovated culture in order to endure in the new world.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Anthropology, August 2003. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Anthropology, August 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 459-477). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (MA--Art and Design) -- Auckland University of Technology, 2003. / Also held in print (114 leaves, col. ill., 30 cm.) in Wellesley Theses Collection. (T 700.899944 HAR)

Thesis (doctoral)--Uppsala University, 1993. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [174]-178).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Waikato, 2007. / Title from PDF cover (viewed April 1, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 143-153)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 268-284). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (MPhil) -- AUT University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print ( leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.) in the Archive at the City Campus (T 704.0399442 THY)

Te Papa-o-Rotu Marae is a Māori community settlement located in the Waikato region of New Zealand. Its hapu (sub-tribe) community was one of 33 hapu that formed the Tainui confederation claiming compensation from the Crown for land confiscated in the nineteenth century. The claim was settled in 1995 and it was within this context that research for this study was conducted at the marae from August 1997 to December 1999. This ethnographic study examines the way that the community at Te Papa-o-Rotu Marae managed its affairs through its two management bodies, the Marae Committee and the Trustees. It is argued in this thesis that the marae's mode of management is in transition from an informal to formal mode, and from an inward to outward looking focus. Bureaucratic administration, it is argued, has been the major catalyst for the transition and has been introduced into marae operations through an accumulation of state legislation affecting Māori land and communities. Furthermore, some aspects of bureaucratic administration have been legitimated and appropriated by the iwi authority, which has passed this on to the Marae Committee. The community have been complicit in the adoption of bureaucratic administration by accommodating the requirements of both the state and the iwi authority. However, a persistent question was whether the marae could maintain its own rangatiratanga (authority, self-determination, control) and separate identity in the face of increasing pressure to conform to a bureaucratic management style. The community managed the marae communally by way of hui (gatherings) and meetings, which were observed using a combined methodological approach of Kaupapa Māori research and ethnography, as described in Chapter 2. The philosophy of kotahitanga (solidarity) underpinned the social organisation of the Tainui tribal confederation, so understanding the place of the marae in its wider socio-political environment has helped in comprehending the nature of the pressure on the community to increase its scale of operations and is explained in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 introduces the accumulation of influences that have brought about a change of managerial style from informal to formal organising. The practical effect of these influences are demonstrated in the management structure and administrative systems that the community used. These are described phenomenologically in Chapters 5 and 6 respectively. The management plan, compiled since 1995, had a strong emphasis on management structural review and participation in tribal development initiatives and is discussed in Chapter 7. The implementation of a collaborative development project between the iwi authority and Marae Committee is described in Chapter 8. The final chapter reflects on the impact of bureaucratic administration on marae management as well as the dynamism of the community and how the rangatiratanga of the marae has thus far been maintained.

A whakapapa of the marae Whakapapa, a Maori word, is often abstracted to the English language as the word genealogy. Whakapapa however has a more subtle and comprehensive meaning in Maori. In that language it has complex connotations of genealogical lines, yes, but also the history of the people involved and perhaps most importantly, the inter-relationships between those people. Degrees of consanguinity are all important when establishing relationships within Te Ao Maori - the Maori world. Marae, the basis of this thesis, is another Maori word. A marae, at its simplest, might be referred to as an agglomeration of separated, functional buildings on an area of reserved land, usually deemed to be sacral to some extent. Marae have an ancient history both in New Zealand Maori culture, but really originating at least in part, in the older cultures from which our Maori culture was eventually derived, from other, earlier settled, Pacific Islands. This thesis then is a genealogy, a sort of cultural history of marae, but is based on the idea and Maori sense of the whakapapa and so partakes of the nuances involved. It is these additional complexities that are referred to by the use of the word whakapapa in the title of this thesis. This thesis investigates the lineage of the marae, tracing it back to legendary roots, but it also examines the relationships between the components of the marae and also the place the marae has established within Maori (and other) communities. Beyond the historical forms of the marae that this thesis investigates are the other aspects that delineate what a marae really is. It is not simply a group of buildings at all, although this is a common non-Maori understanding of its disposition. A marae is a tapu or sacred space, and within or nearby that space are buildings whose form, function and meaning have only come to their present conjunction in (written) historic times. What makes the marae is the combination of the people and the ritual that is involved on a marae, the marae space and lastly, the physical buildings. The buildings, particularly carved houses, have additional meaning that they lend to the thread of the story. They themselves represent the whakapapa of the marae, and specifically of the hapu (or sub-tribe) who inhabit that marae. They do this by direct representation, but also by analogy and by spiritual means that are little dealt with in most literature. Ancestors in Te Ao Maori are deemed to exist within the very fabric of the building and have a renewed or continuing existence that is created in the first instance by a melange of ritual and belief. This thesis discusses both the usage of ritual to create such physical interjacence, utilised in modern times within whare (houses), and the continued use of regular ritual on marae for human functions. It is only together that a complete modern marae is created. With any of these elements missing the marae form is truncated or lessened and diminished in some ways. So, marae which have been recreated in preserved forms, such as those in museums, are discussed at length in this thesis, by contrast with marae in regular usage for 'traditional' purposes. In essence then, this is an investigation of the marae, but in terms, manners and ways, which have not always been fully or comprehensively dealt with before.