📚Unit Plans → ✊Rights & Māori Resurgence → 📖Lesson 5: Takaparawhau / Bastion Point
Year 10 Tikanga-ā-Iwi / Social Sciences

Lesson 5: Takaparawhau — Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei at Bastion Point

A specific hapū, a specific block of whenua, a specific Crown history — the occupation, the eviction, and what the Waitangi Tribunal later found.

🕘 Lesson at a Glance | Te Hōtaka

Do NowWhose land is it?⏱ 5 min 1 · Whose whenuaNgāti Whātua Ōrākei⏱ 12 min 2 · 506 daysThe occupation⏱ 15 min 3 · 25 May 1978The state responds⏱ 18 min 4 · Ten years laterWho was proved right?⏱ 12 min ExitClaim and limit⏱ 6 min

Lesson Overview | Tirohanga Whānui

Lesson 4 was a national march about land in general. This lesson is the opposite: one hapū, one headland, one Crown decision. Takaparawhau — Bastion Point — is a promontory above the Waitematā Harbour, and it is Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei whenua.

In 1977 the government announced that expensive housing would be built on former Ngāti Whātua reserve land. The Ōrākei Māori Action Committee, led by Joe Hawke, occupied the land and stayed for 506 days. On 25 May 1978 the state removed them with police and army, arrested 222 people, and demolished what they had built.

Ten years later the Waitangi Tribunal supported the claim to the land, and the government accepted the finding. Students have to sit with what that sequence means.

Learning Intentions | Ngā Whāinga Ako

  • Describe the occupation of Takaparawhau accurately, naming the hapū, the group, the leader and the dates.
  • Explain what the occupation was claiming, and on what authority.
  • Evaluate what it means that the claim was upheld ten years after the occupiers were removed as trespassers.

⚡ Do Now · Two sentences that cannot both be casual

⏱ 5 min

“They were trespassing on government land.”

“They were standing on their own whenua.”

Run it

  1. Notice (2 min): what would have to be true for each sentence to be correct?
  2. Decide what settles it (2 min): what kind of evidence would you need to decide between them? Name two kinds.
  3. Hold (1 min): both sentences were said about the same people on the same day. Keep your answers.

Activity 1 · Whose Whenua — Name It Properly

⏱ 12 min
TakaparawhauThe Māori name for the headland overlooking the Waitematā Harbour in Auckland that is also known as Bastion Point. Use both names in this lesson, and notice which one each source chooses.
Ngāti Whātua ŌrākeiThe hapū whose whenua this is. Not “Māori” in general, and not “protesters” — a specific people with a specific relationship to this specific land.
Ōrākei Māori Action CommitteeThe group that organised and held the occupation. NZHistory calls it the Ōrākei Māori Action Committee; Te Ara calls it the Ōrākei Māori Action Group. Both are government sources — note the variance rather than picking silently.
Joe HawkeOf Ngāti Whātua. Led the Ōrākei Māori Action Committee and the occupation. He had already taken the Ōrākei claim to the Waitangi Tribunal — see Activity 4, because what happened to that claim is the most surprising part of this lesson.

Run it

  1. Precision (4 min): rewrite this sentence so that every vague word is replaced with a specific one: “Some Māori protesters occupied some land in Auckland in the 1970s.”
  2. Two names (4 min): the same headland is called Takaparawhau and Bastion Point. Look at the sources you are given today and note which name each one uses first. What does a naming choice do to a reader?
  3. The stakes (4 min): why does it matter, for understanding this event, that you know it is Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei and not “Māori” in general? Give a reason connected to the kind of claim being made.

🪶 Cultural integrity: Takaparawhau is the whenua of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, and the events in this lesson are within living memory for that hapū — people who were arrested in 1978 and their descendants are alive now. This lesson works from public heritage sources and a Crown tribunal’s findings; it does not speak for Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, and neither should the class. If your school is in Tāmaki Makaurau, kōrero with mana whenua before teaching this lesson. Wherever you are, do not let students treat the occupation as a spectacle: it was a hapū standing on its own land, and the arrests were of named people.

Activity 2 · 506 Days

⏱ 15 min

The verified record. Protesters occupied Takaparawhau / Bastion Point in early 1977 (5 January), after the government revealed that expensive houses would be built on former Ngāti Whātua reserve land. Ngāti Whātua maintained the land had been unjustly taken from them, and were angered by plans to subdivide it for private housing.

Under the banner of the Ōrākei Māori Action Committee, led by Joe Hawke, they refused to leave and occupied the land for 506 days.

Run it

  1. Do the maths (3 min): 506 days. How many months is that? How many seasons? What does living outdoors on a headland through that look like?
  2. Occupation as a tactic (7 min): compare with Lesson 4. A march moves and ends. An occupation stays. In pairs: what does staying achieve that marching cannot, and what does it cost that marching does not?
  3. The argument underneath (5 min): the occupiers were not asking for land. They were saying the land had been unjustly taken and was still theirs. Run the four questions. Which kind of claim is that — and notice that it is not the same claim as “the government should be fairer to Māori”.

Activity 3 · 25 May 1978 — What the State Did

⏱ 18 min

The verified record. On 25 May 1978 the government sent a massive force of police and army personnel to evict the occupiers. 222 protesters were arrested. Their temporary meeting house, buildings and gardens were demolished. Te Ara puts the scale of the force at 800 police and the New Zealand army, evicting over 200 protesters.

Run it

  1. Read it precisely (4 min): three separate things happened that day — a removal, 222 arrests, and a demolition. Which of the three was necessary to end the occupation? What was the demolition for?
  2. The army (6 min): police enforce the law. The army is for something else. Discuss: what does a government communicate by using both? Who is the audience for that decision — the occupiers, or the country watching?
  3. The legal position (8 min): in law on 25 May 1978, the occupiers were removed from land the Crown treated as its own. Now hold that beside Activity 2 step 3: they said the land had been unjustly taken and remained theirs. Both of those statements are accurate descriptions of that day. Write two sentences explaining how that is possible — and what it tells you about the difference between what is legal and what is right.

Teacher listen-for: this is the hardest thinking in the unit. The answer is not “the law was wrong” and it is not “they broke the law”. It is that the law of the day and the Te Tiriti claim were answering different questions, on different authority — which is exactly the Lesson 1 frame. Bring it back there explicitly.

Activity 4 · Ten Years Later

⏱ 12 min

The verified record — and it starts earlier than you think.

1977: the very first claim ever heard by the Waitangi Tribunal was lodged by Joe Hawke of Ngāti Whātua, about his rights to tribal land at Ōrākei. The Tribunal rejected his arguments. The occupation began the same year.

1978: 222 arrests, the buildings demolished.

1987: the Tribunal reported on the Ōrākei claim again — this time it is Wai 9, heard under the jurisdiction extended in 1985 to cover grievances back to 1840. Now it found for Ngāti Whātua. Te Ara records the recommendations: that Bastion Point “should remain public open space, but be administered jointly by Ngāti Whātua and the Auckland City Council”, and “an award of $3 million to Ngāti Whātua – the first cash payment recommended as part of a treaty settlement”. The government accepted all the Tribunal’s findings, and announced the return of Takaparawhau to Ngāti Whātua.

Run it

  1. Sit with the sequence (5 min): the same claim, about the same land, brought by the same person — lost in 1977 and won in 1987. Nothing about the land’s history changed in between. Write two sentences on what did change.
  2. Name the change (4 min): the answer is in Lesson 7 territory, and students can reach it here: in 1977 the Tribunal could only look at events after 1975, so a nineteenth-century land grievance was outside what it was allowed to consider. After 1985 it could go back to 1840. Discuss: does that mean the 1977 decision was wrong, or something else?
  3. The awkward question (3 min): did the occupation cause the 1987 finding, or did the jurisdiction change do that on its own? What evidence would you need to decide? You are not expected to settle it.
  4. Fill the matrix (3 min): complete the Lesson 5 row. The Limitations column matters here — the Tribunal recommended Bastion Point remain public open space under joint administration. What did that settlement not undo?

Exit · Claim, Limit, Question

⏱ 6 min
  1. Claim: one sentence about Takaparawhau naming the hapū, the leader and one exact figure.
  2. Limit: one sentence about what today’s evidence cannot establish — about what the land means to Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, or about the terms of the later settlement.
  3. Question: one question you would put to the Waitangi Tribunal record.
🎯 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: Activity 1 step 1 rewrite replaces every vague term with a specific one.
  • LI 2: Activity 2 step 3 identifies the claim type and its authority.
  • LI 3: Activity 3 step 3 holds both descriptions of 25 May 1978 without collapsing one into the other.
🚀 Differentiation & Extension
  • Support: Activity 3 step 3 is demanding. Provide the two-sentence frame: “On 25 May 1978 it was true that ______. It was also true that ______. Both can be true because ______.”
  • Language support: pre-teach occupation, eviction, reserve, subdivide, jurisdiction.
  • Extension: read the Waitangi Tribunal’s own education page on the loss of the Ōrākei block — it was written for the Year 10 social-studies syllabus — and find one fact about how the land was lost that this lesson does not include. Explain why it strengthens the occupiers’ case.
  • Extension: the 1987 report recommended $3 million to Ngāti Whātua, the first cash payment recommended as part of a treaty settlement. Argue whether a cash payment can be an adequate answer to a land grievance, and say what your answer depends on.
  • Extension: compare the state response here with the state response in Lesson 6 (the 1981 tour). Same country, four years apart. What is different, and why?
  • Cultural safety: see the flagged note in Activity 1. Some ākonga may have whānau connections to these events; do not seek them out.
🔗 Unit Progression | Te Ara o Ngā Akoranga

Lesson 4 was national and general; this lesson is local and specific, and the pair of them shows students that “land rights activism” is not one thing. Lesson 7 returns to the Waitangi Tribunal that appears at the end of this lesson and asks what an institution can carry. The 1985 jurisdiction change named in Activity 4 is what let the Ōrākei claim be heard on its history — rejected in 1977, upheld in 1987. It is not what made the Wai 11 te reo claim of Lesson 3 possible. Wai 11 was lodged and heard in 1985, before the extension took effect on 6 January 1986, because it alleged an ongoing failure to protect te reo rather than a historical grievance. That contrast — one claim needing the extension, the other not — is a stronger hinge than either case alone, and Lessons 7 and 8 build on it.

Sources checked 23 August 2026. The occupation beginning in early 1977 (5 January) after the government revealed that expensive houses would be built on former Ngāti Whātua reserve land, Ngāti Whātua’s position that the land had been unjustly taken, the Ōrākei Māori Action Committee under Joe Hawke, the 506 days, the eviction of 25 May 1978 by a massive force of police and army, the 222 arrests, and the demolition of the temporary meeting house, buildings and gardens: NZHistory — Occupation of Bastion Point begins, NZHistory — Bastion Point protesters evicted, and NZHistory — Bastion Point land returned. The 506-day figure is confirmed independently by Te Ara, which also gives the eviction force as 800 police and the New Zealand army. The 1977 claim being the first heard by the Tribunal and being rejected: Te Ara — Waitangi Tribunal, page 1. The 1987 Ōrākei report is Wai 9 per the Waitangi Tribunal’s own report index; the recommendations (public open space jointly administered by Ngāti Whātua and the Auckland City Council, and $3 million — the first cash payment recommended as part of a treaty settlement — all accepted by the government): Te Ara — Waitangi Tribunal, page 2. The Tribunal also publishes an Ōrākei education resource kit written for the Year 10 social-studies syllabus — directly usable with this class.

Two discrepancies and one omission. (1) Group name: NZHistory says Ōrākei Māori Action Committee; Te Ara says Group. Both are government sources; this lesson uses Committee and names the variance. (2) Report year: Te Ara says the Tribunal reported on Ōrākei in 1984; the Tribunal’s own report index says 1987. This lesson uses 1987, on the Tribunal’s own authority. (3) Not stated here: the exact date and legislation of the land’s return, because they were not confirmed against the settlement legislation during this build. Send students to the Tribunal and legislation.govt.nz rather than to this page.