Who Are Ngāti Kahungunu? Inside New Zealand’s 3rd-Largest Māori Iwi

Ngāti Kahungunu is one of Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest Māori iwi, rooted along the eastern North Island from Wairoa to Wairarapa.

Its story reaches back through the ancestor Kahungunu to the Tākitimu waka and forward to more than 400 hapū today.

So how did one ancestral line grow into one of Aotearoa’s great iwi?

Ngāti Kahungunu is a Māori iwi whose traditional rohe covers a large part of the eastern North Island.

Its people descend from Kahungunu, an ancestor remembered as a skilled and energetic leader who built villages, developed irrigation, carved, and made canoes.

Today, Ngāti Kahungunu descendants live across Aotearoa and overseas, but their ancestral connections remain rooted in a vast rohe along the eastern North Island.

Ngāti Kahungunu is not one enormous community gathered around a single place.

It is a network of hundreds of hapū and dozens of marae, each carrying strong local identities while sharing connections through whakapapa.

Ngāti Kahungunu is based along the eastern side of New Zealand’s North Island, facing the Pacific Ocean.

Its traditional rohe stretches for hundreds of kilometers, from around Wairoa in the north, through Hawke’s Bay, and south into Wairarapa.

The Pacific Ocean forms its eastern edge, while the Kāweka, Ruahine and Tararua mountain ranges help define the inland side.

Ngāti Kahungunu describes its customary boundaries as extending from Paritū in the north to Tūrakirae in the south.

This traditional tribal area is known as a rohe. But a rohe is more than a boundary on a map. It includes rivers, mountains, pā, food-gathering places and marae connected to generations of local whakapapa.

Because Ngāti Kahungunu covers such a large area, no single landscape represents the entire iwi. Places such as Whakapūnake, Maungaharuru, Te Mata and Kahurānaki hold particular significance for different communities across Kahungunu country.

That vast rohe also helps explain why Ngāti Kahungunu developed such strong regional identities.

The ancestral story of Ngāti Kahungunu can be followed through four generations:

Tākitimu waka
 ↓
Tamatea Arikinui
 ↓
Rongokako + Muriwhenua
 ↓
Tamatea Ure Haea + Iwipūpū
 ↓
Kahungunu

Ngāti Kahungunu traditions trace their origins to Tākitimu, one of the great ancestral waka associated with Polynesian migration to Aotearoa.

According to tribal tradition, Tākitimu arrived from Hawaiki under Tamatea Arikinui. 

Tamatea settled around Tauranga, while Tākitimu continued along the coast.

The waka and its people then became important to several Māori communities, including Ngāti Kahungunu.

Rongokako was Kahungunu's grandfather, the ancestor from whom Ngāti Kahungunu descends. Son of Tamatea Arikinui and father of Tamatea Ure Haea, he links the Tākitimu waka to the generations that would become Ngāti Kahungunu.

Rongokako is remembered as a giant whose enormous strides carried him across great distances.

His story is closely tied to Te Mata Peak in Hawke’s Bay, whose long ridgeline is said to resemble Rongokako lying across the landscape - the famous “Sleeping Giant".

While competing for Muriwhenua’s hand, Rongokako is said to have crossed enormous distances over land and sea.

His footprints became associated with places including Kahurānaki, Māhia and Te Tapuwae o Rongokako near Whāngārā.

Rongokako and Muriwhenua had a son called Tamatea Ure Haea, also known as Tamatea-pōkai-whenua-pōkai-moana for his journeys across land and sea.

His travels are still remembered near Pōrangahau, in a hill with one of the world’s longest place names: Taumatawhakatangihangakōauauotamateapōkaiwhenuakitanatahu.

The name roughly means “the hill where Tamatea, who traveled all over the land, played his flute to his loved one".

With Iwipūpū, Tamatea had a son whose name would eventually be carried by an entire iwi: Kahungunu.

Kahungunu is the ancestor from whom Ngāti Kahungunu takes its name. Traditions remember him as a skilled leader who built settlements, developed irrigation, carved and made canoes.

One of the best-known stories about him is his courtship of Rongomaiwahine of Māhia. Kahungunu impressed her community through displays of skill, including gathering large amounts of food and diving for pāua.

Their story was complicated, but Kahungunu and Rongomaiwahine eventually married and had five children. Their descendants created an important whakapapa connection between the communities associated with Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāti Rongomaiwahine.

That connection remains today, although Ngāti Rongomaiwahine maintains its own distinct iwi identity.

Ngāti Kahungunu is one iwi, but life within it is deeply local.

Across the wider rohe are more than 400 hapū and 87 marae, connected across six regional areas known as taiwhenua:

• Wairoa
• Te Whanganui-a-Orotū
• Heretaunga
• Tamatea
• Tāmaki-nui-a-Rua
• Wairarapa

This is why you may encounter names such as Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairoa or Ngāti Kahungunu ki Tāmaki-nui-a-Rua.

These names reflect connections to particular communities and parts of the wider Kahungunu rohe.

Within this network, hapū are kin-based communities connected through whakapapa, while marae are places where whānau gather for hui, celebrations, tangihanga and community life.

Someone can therefore belong to Ngāti Kahungunu while also identifying closely with a particular region, hapū and marae.

Ngāti Kahungunu is not one uniform community, but a network of locally rooted communities connected through shared whakapapa.

The 19th century brought major change to Kahungunu country as European settlement expanded and large areas of Māori land left Māori ownership.

Land loss accelerated dramatically in Aotearoa during the 1850s.

By 1859, the Crown had purchased about 1.4 million acres from Ngāti Kahungunu in Hawke’s Bay, leaving only 3,000-4,000 acres of the ancestral estate for around 3,500 Māori.

For Kahungunu communities, losing whenua (land) meant more than losing property.

It affected whakapapa, livelihoods, and their connection to ancestral places.

From 1871, Kahungunu leaders joined the Repudiation Movement, challenging land transactions they considered unjust.

Later, leaders also joined Te Kotahitanga, the Māori parliament movement, advocating for greater Māori authority over land and their own affairs.

Eventually, settlements brought some culturally significant land and sites back to Kahungunu communities, alongside Crown apologies, financial compensation, and other forms of redress.

But they did not return all the land that had been lost.

Because different Kahungunu communities pursued their own claims, there is no single settlement story for the entire iwi.

Through these decades of change, Kahungunu leaders also began taking their voices into politics, publishing and public life across New Zealand.

Over these decades of change, Kahungunu leaders also began to make their voices heard in politics, publishing, and public life across New Zealand.

• Hēnare Tomoana - Tribal Leadership & Politics:

A leading Ngāti Kahungunu rangatira from Heretaunga who became a newspaper publisher and Eastern Māori representative in Parliament.

• Hāmuera Tamahau Mahupuku - Kotahitanga:

A Wairarapa leader who helped make Papawai an important center of Te Kotahitanga and Māori political organization.

• James Carroll (Timi Kara) — National Politics:

Born in Wairoa to a Ngāti Kahungunu mother, Carroll became one of the generation's most prominent Māori politicians.

• Niniwa-i-te-rangi - Wāhine Leadership & Publishing:

A Ngāti Kahungunu leader and editor who became an important voice in Māori politics and publishing.

• Paraire Hēnare Tomoana - Waiata & Culture:

A composer, writer and publisher whose work helped preserve Ngāti Kahungunu history and Māori waiata for later generations.

Their influence reached across politics, publishing, music and Māori cultural life.

Across its many communities, Ngāti Kahungunu remains connected through Kahungunutanga - the shared identity, knowledge and ways of being that keep Kahungunu culture alive today.

To help represent and support such a large iwi, Ngāti Kahungunu Iwi Incorporated (NKII) serves as the main iwi organization connecting communities across the wider rohe.

It works to strengthen te reo Māori, cultural knowledge, education, whānau wellbeing, and environmental care, while local taiwhenua and marae continue to lead community life in their own areas.

With Kahungunu communities spread across such a large rohe, supporting whānau also happens at the local level.

Regional Kahungunu organizations provide practical services close to their own communities, from Māori nursing and Whānau Ora to kaumātua support and rongoā Māori.

Across the wider iwi, Te Ara Toiora o Ngāti Kahungunu brings health, housing, education, employment and culture together as part of a broader approach to whānau wellbeing.

Supporting Ngāti Kahungunu today is only part of the picture.

The iwi is also asking what life should look like for future generations of Kahungunu.

That thinking led to KAHUNGUNU2050, a long-term vision shaped around stronger whānau, cultural identity, and greater self-determination.

One focus is health, with NKII working toward greater Kahungunu leadership in affordable, culturally grounded healthcare.