The forest is calling and we are answering.

Just 300 years ago over 80% of Te Ika-a-Māui was cloaked in ancient native forest.

Towering rimu, sprawling tawa entire ecosystems pulsing with life each species part of an intricate, living harmony. Today, less than a quarter remains.

What’s left is fragmented, disconnected and managed in pieces where once there was wholeness.

And yet there are still places where the what remains of what was remembers.

Ngāmanawa is one such place.

This week eight iwi and hapū-led kaupapa from across the Kaimai Mamaku and Raukūmara ranges, heeding the call of these ancient landscapes converged on Ngāmanawa forest and what we experienced was far beyond anything we could've imagined.

As the corridor of this rich ngahere opened before us, time shifted.

Standing on the banks of the mangapapa river we were silenced by the presence of their towering tipuna kauri a formidable ancestor that both humbled and grounded us in the same breath. His limbs stretched skyward in quiet defiance of time, but his knowing ran deep carried through the living threads of his vast mycorrhizal network. 

An ancient, intelligent web that connects tree to tree, forest to forest, ancestor to descendant. Within his vast root system, he carries both the memory and mourning of our own once-great tipuna rākau in Te Raukūmara, who were felled burned and cleared in the name of progression.

He remembers a time when the rich forest canopy stretched uninterrupted across the motu. One contiguous ngahere one breath one whakapapa rooted deep in the soil of this whenua. And in that moment, he remembered us.

Beneath the korowai of that ancient tipuna kauri, the noise fell away and time softened. 

Ngāmanawa, just as it once did for Ngāti Hangarau during times of war, became sanctuary once more. The armour we are so often forced to carry into rooms quietly dissolved as we dismantled the competition, pressure, positioning and protective walls built from years of fighting for permission to protect what's left of our taonga.

The mycorrhizal threads beneath our feet did what they have always done they connected and so did we. This was so much more than a wānanga It was a remembering.

To the whānau of Ngāti Hinerangi, Ngāti Hangarau, Ngāti Hauā, Ngāti Maru, Ngāti Te Rangi, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāti Ranginui, and Ngāti Tamaterā thank you for reminding us that this work, though heavy, is never carried alone.

This is what iwi-led conservation truly means. This is Raukūmara Pae Maunga a movement guided by tūpuna, carried by uri, and shaped for our mokopuna yet to come.

Uncompromising. Interconnected. Unstoppable.

The forest is calling and we are answering.