ISLAND CLAIMED BY WHANGAREI MAN

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 103, 22 July 1927, Page 9

ISLAND CLAIMED BY WHANGAREI MAN

PARLIAMENT PETITIONED (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Thursday. A definite claim to the possession of the island of Poho-O-Tai-Area, one of the Stewart Island group, which was omitted from allocation by the Crown, of the islands in this vicinity many years ago, is made by Charley Stevens, a native of Maungatapere, Whangarei. Mr. Stevens says that when Rakuira (Stewart Island) was bought by the Government from the Maoris in 1864, Irihapete Stevens, mother of the petitioner, refused to sign her own and her children’s interests in Rakiura, and the surrounding islands, over to the Government. Petitioner’s claim was for Poho-O-Tai-Area (“Women’s Island”), as his own. When his father, Captain W: Stevens, was whaling at Port William, the Maori wives of his European sailors had no island to take mutton birds from, and leave was given by the petitioner’s uncle for them to utilise this island for that purpose, hence the name. “Women’s Island.” “We claim this island _as our own,” the petitioner says, “as Te Werar.ui, who lived and died and is buried, is our great-grandfather, and he was the first Ngaitahu to take possession of Rakiura and the surrounding islands for the Ngaitahu.