📚Unit Plans → ✊Rights & Māori Resurgence → 📖Lesson 4: Whenua and the Land March
Year 10 Tikanga-ā-Iwi / Social Sciences

Lesson 4: Whenua and the 1975 Māori Land March

Te Rōpū Matakite o Aotearoa, Whina Cooper, and the 1975 hikoi from Te Hāpua to Parliament — and why whenua sat at the centre of Māori political resurgence.

🕘 Lesson at a Glance | Te Hōtaka

Do NowA thousand kilometres⏱ 5 min 1 · The hīkoiTe Hāpua to Parliament⏱ 15 min 2 · What was carriedMemorial of Right⏱ 15 min 3 · Sources disagree5,000 or 40,000?⏱ 15 min 4 · Which claim?Frame + matrix row⏱ 12 min ExitClaim and limit⏱ 6 min

Lesson Overview | Tirohanga Whānui

In 1975, fifty people set out from Te Hāpua in the far north to walk about a thousand kilometres to Parliament. The march was led by Whina Cooper, a Te Rarawa leader who was seventy-nine years old, and it was organised under Te Rōpū Matakite o Aotearoa, launched at a hui she convened at Māngere Marae earlier that year.

Students study what the hīkoi carried — a Memorial of Right and a petition — because what a movement carries tells you what kind of claim it is making. They also do something historians do constantly and students rarely get to do: find two reputable sources that disagree about a fact, and work out what to do about it.

Learning Intentions | Ngā Whāinga Ako

  • Describe the 1975 Māori Land March using accurate dates, names and places.
  • Explain what a Memorial of Right is, and why that document makes this a different kind of claim from a protest alone.
  • Handle a genuine disagreement between two reputable sources without pretending it is not there.

⚡ Do Now · A thousand kilometres

⏱ 5 min

Fifty people set out to walk about 1,000 km. Their leader is 79 years old. It will take a month.

Run it

  1. Write (2 min): what would you have to believe to start that walk?
  2. Strategy (2 min): the walk itself takes a month and is very hard. What does the method — walking, slowly, through towns — achieve that a single big rally in Wellington would not?
  3. Hold (1 min): keep your answer to question 2. You will test it in Activity 3.

Activity 1 · The Hīkoi

⏱ 15 min

The verified record. Te Rōpū Matakite o Aotearoa — ‘Those with Foresight’ — was launched at a hui convened by Whina Cooper, a Te Rarawa leader, at Māngere Marae in early 1975. She had been the inaugural president of the Māori Women’s Welfare League in 1951.

After six months of planning, fifty marchers left Te Hāpua in the far north on 14 September 1975 for the walk to Wellington — NZHistory gives the distance as 1,100 km on one page and 1,000 km on another. Whina Cooper was 79, and Te Ara records that she “took the first steps, holding the hand of her mokopuna Irene”. The hīkoi grew as it travelled, rallying behind the catch-cry ‘Not one more acre of Māori land’. It carried no banners or signs — only a pouwhenua, a land-marker post, and a flag.

The march reached Parliament on 13 October 1975.

Run it

  1. Establish (5 min): copy the facts you will need — the organisation, the leader, the start place and date, the arrival date, the slogan. Exact. Note that the slogan is ‘Not one more acre of Māori land’ in NZHistory’s wording; a shorter form is sometimes printed, so quote the longer one.
  2. The date (3 min): the marchers left Te Hāpua on 14 September 1975. Where have you seen 14 September before in this unit? What might that choice of date be doing?
  3. No banners (7 min): a protest march that carries no signs is unusual. It carried a pouwhenua instead. Discuss: what does a land-marker post say that a placard cannot? Connect to the catch-cry — ‘Not one more acre of Māori land’ is not a request for something new. What is it a claim about?

Teacher note on step 2: 14 September 1972 was the day the te reo petition was delivered and was declared Māori Language Day. Whether the 1975 departure date was deliberately chosen is a question this lesson does not answer — put it up as a question, not a fact.

Activity 2 · What the Hīkoi Carried

⏱ 15 min

The verified record. At Parliament on 13 October 1975, a document signed by 60,000 people was presented to the Prime Minister, Bill Rowling.

Te Ara calls it a memorial of rights and records exactly what it asked for: “the repeal of all statutes through which Māori land could be alienated, with remaining tribal land invested in Māori in perpetuity”. NZHistory calls the 60,000-signature document a petition and describes a memorial of rights being presented as well.

Te Ara continues: “Rowling promised that steps would be taken to address these concerns, but some protesters were not happy with his response. About 60 people set up a Māori embassy on Parliament grounds.”

A petitionMany people asking a decision-maker to do something. Its force comes from numbers — 60,000 signatures says a lot of people want this.
A memorial of rightsA formal statement of rights that are asserted to already exist. Its force does not come from how many people agree — it comes from what is being asserted and on what authority.
The two named sources disagreeNZHistory and Te Ara describe the 60,000-signature document differently. Notice that, and attribute each phrasing to the source that uses it rather than merging them.

Run it

  1. Read what it asked for (5 min): copy the memorial’s demand exactly — the repeal of all statutes through which Māori land could be alienated, and remaining tribal land invested in Māori in perpetuity. That is not a request for consultation. What is it a demand for?
  2. The four questions (6 min): run all four on that demand. Question 4 matters most — what gives it its authority? Is this a petition-shaped claim, or a Te Tiriti-shaped claim?
  3. The embassy (4 min): the Prime Minister promised that steps would be taken, and about 60 people set up a Māori embassy on Parliament grounds anyway. What does that tell you about how the promise was received?

🪶 Cultural integrity: the whenua in this lesson belongs to specific iwi and hapū across the country, and the loss being marched about is still being negotiated in Treaty settlements today. Whina Cooper is named here as a Te Rarawa leader on the authority of the sources cited below; do not extend that to claims about her whakapapa that the sources do not make, and do not treat the march as though it spoke for all Māori — it did not, and there was disagreement about it at the time. Where a local kōrero about this hīkoi exists in your rohe, it belongs to the people who hold it.

Activity 3 · Two Reputable Sources, Two Different Numbers

⏱ 15 min

What it is: real historical method. This is not a trick — it is a live discrepancy in the public record, and students get to handle it properly.

How many people were at Parliament on 13 October 1975?

Source 1 — NZHistory (Ministry for Culture and Heritage): approximately 5,000.

Source 2 — National Library of New Zealand: an estimated 40,000.

Both are New Zealand government heritage institutions. Both are describing the same afternoon.

Run it

  1. React (3 min): first instinct — which one is right? Now stop, and ask a better question: how would a crowd number be produced in 1975 in the first place?
  2. Explain it (7 min): in groups, list three reasons two careful sources could give such different figures for the same event. Think about who counts, when they count, and what they are counting — the marchers, the crowd at Parliament, or everyone who joined at any point.
  3. Decide what to write (5 min): you have to write one sentence about the crowd for your final inquiry. Write it so that it is true given both sources. Compare sentences; the best ones will name the disagreement rather than hide it.

The rule to take from this: when good sources disagree, you do not pick the number you like. You say what is agreed, name the disagreement, and keep going. A historian who writes “40,000” without mentioning the other figure is not being more confident — they are being less careful.

Activity 4 · Which Kind of Claim?

⏱ 12 min

Run it

  1. Classify (6 min): the hīkoi carried both a petition and a memorial of rights. Using Part A of your spine sheet, which kind of claim is each document making? Can one march make two kinds of claim at once? Argue it.
  2. Fill the matrix (6 min): complete the Lesson 4 row of your evidence matrix. In the Change achieved column, be careful — think about what changed in law versus what changed in public attention.

Teacher listen-for: students who put “nothing changed” in the Change column. Push: the march is widely described as bringing Treaty issues to public attention more strongly than at any time since the nineteenth century. Is a change in public attention a real change? That question is the whole of Lesson 8.

Exit · Claim, Limit, Question

⏱ 6 min
  1. Claim: one sentence about the hīkoi using at least two exact facts — a date, a name, a number or a place.
  2. Limit: one sentence about something today’s sources cannot settle.
  3. Question: what happened after 13 October 1975? Write the question you would investigate.
🎯 Curriculum Links | Te Hononga ki te Marautanga
  • Te Mātaiaho (2025) · Social Sciences · Phase 4 (Years 9–10) (Knowledge): “Māori language revival, land rights activism (e.g. Land March, Raglan Golf Course protests, and Bastion Point occupation). Urban protest movements (e.g. Ngā Tamatoa, Haka Party Incident, and Foreshore and Seabed Hikoi).”
  • NZC (2007) · Social Studies · Level 5: “Understand how the ideas and actions of people in the past have had a significant impact on people’s lives.”
📦 Materials & Resources
📊 Assessment Framework
  • LI 1: exit claim uses two exact facts correctly.
  • LI 2: Activity 2 step 3 shows whether students grasp that a memorial of right is not answerable by counting heads.
  • LI 3: Activity 3 step 3 — the sentence names the disagreement rather than picking a side.
🚀 Differentiation & Extension
  • Support: pre-fill the fact list in Activity 1 and have students verify each item against the frame box rather than transcribe it.
  • Language support: pre-teach hīkoi, memorial, petition, pouwhenua. Note that “memorial” here does not mean a monument.
  • Extension: the march is often described as changing the relationship between Parliament and Māori. Test that: find one thing that happened after 1975 that could be evidence for the claim, and one reason to be cautious about it. Cite your source.
  • Extension (numeracy): 1,000 km in about a month. What daily distance is that? What does the answer tell you about who could and could not take part?
  • Cultural safety: see the flagged note in Activity 2.
🔗 Unit Progression | Te Ara o Ngā Akoranga

Lesson 3 followed the language thread; this lesson opens the whenua thread. Lesson 5 narrows from a national march to one specific block of land and one specific hapū — and the difference between those two scales is itself worth naming to students. The Treaty of Waitangi Act was passed in the same year as this march; Lesson 7 asks whether that was a coincidence.

Sources checked 23 August 2026. Te Rōpū Matakite o Aotearoa (‘Those with Foresight’), its launch at a hui convened by Te Rarawa leader Whina Cooper at Māngere Marae in early 1975, the fifty marchers leaving Te Hāpua on 14 September 1975 after six months of planning, Cooper’s age of 79, the catch-cry ‘Not one more acre of Māori land’, the arrival at Parliament on 13 October 1975, the figure of about 5,000 marchers at Parliament, and the 60,000-signature document presented to Prime Minister Bill Rowling: NZHistory — Whina Cooper leads land march to Parliament and NZHistory — 1975 key events. What the memorial of rights asked for, Rowling’s response, the Māori embassy of about 60 people, Cooper’s 1951 Māori Women’s Welfare League presidency and her taking the first steps with her mokopuna Irene: Te Ara — Ngā rōpū tautohetohe. The absence of banners and the pouwhenua, and the crowd estimate of 40,000 used in Activity 3: National Library of New Zealand.

Four live discrepancies, all real and none invented for teaching. (1) Crowd: NZHistory gives about 5,000 at Parliament; the National Library gives an estimated 40,000. Activity 3 teaches this. (2) Distance: NZHistory gives 1,000 km on one page and 1,100 km on another. (3) What the 60,000-signature document was called: NZHistory says petition; Te Ara says memorial of rights. Both official sources use the plural “memorial of rights”, not “Memorial of Right”. (4) The slogan: NZHistory prints ‘Not one more acre of Māori land’ (without a macron inside the quotation); a shorter variant is printed elsewhere. Also: Whina Cooper is named as a Te Rarawa leader on the authority of NZHistory and the National Library; another summary describes her as Ngāpuhi, so this lesson names Te Rarawa and no more. A kaiako intending to teach her whakapapa should confirm it from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography first.