Margaret Hume wakes at 4:30am to the sound of
her last cow lowing into mud. The paddock’s edge
has slipped again — another metre gone since
Tuesday. The soil doesn’t erode. It sucks.
Rogernomics took her husband’s loan guarantee.
The bank took the tractor. Now the land takes
the fences.
She digs where the old pā wall once stood — not
for relics, but for concrete to shore up the
bank. Her spade hits something that isn’t stone.
A carved tiki, wrapped in oilcloth. Then another.
And another. Five in total. All Māori. All
buried deep beneath the soil she’d been told was
“unclaimed Crown land”.
Her husband, Tom, died two winters back. No note.
No funeral kōrero. Just a rusted key taped under
the kitchen sink.
The council sent a notice last week: Te Rūnanga
o Ngāpuhi claim ancestral rights to the site
under the Treaty of Waitangi Settlement Act 1995.
No compensation. No warning. Just a letter with
a wāhi tapu marker drawn in red ink.
That night, the wind howls through the kōwhai
trees like voices. Margaret walks the boundary
with her father’s old lantern. The fence posts —
all new, all steel — are bent inward. As if
something beneath is pushing up.
She finds the sixth relic buried under the
milking shed’s foundation. A pounamu pendant.
Tom’s. Worn smooth.
The hard rule bites: No relic removed from a
wāhi tapu may be returned by hand — it must be
placed by a descendant, or the land will take
its due.
She doesn’t call the iwi. She doesn’t call the
lawyer.
At dawn, she digs a trench beside the old pā
stones. One by one, she lays the relics into the
earth. The pendant last. She presses it into the
soil where Tom’s boots used to stand.
The ground settles. Quiet.
By noon, the puddles in the paddock have dried.
The fences stand straight. The cows graze
without sinking.
The council sends another letter: Claim
withdrawn. Site confirmed under customary use.
Margaret sells the farm for half its value. Buys
a caravan. Moves to the coast.
She never speaks of it.
But every year, on the anniversary of Tom’s
death, she plants a kōwhai sapling where the pā
wall once stood.
And each spring, the tree blooms — bright gold
against the grey sea wind.
The land remembers.
It always does.
