13/10/2026
SWIM OF ORIGINS TOUR
Taputapuātea, Ra‘iātea – Part 2:
Welcomed Home
As we arrived at the marae, we were met by a group of elders from Uturoa, the main township and administrative centre of Ra‘iātea.
Incidentally, the captain of the Tainui waka was the great Hoturoa. Uturoa. Hoturoa. Another intriguing connection in names.
Tania, a descendant of Tainui, led our group onto the marae. Trudi, a student of te reo Māori from Tauranga, led our waiata.
Tania spoke first, introducing our group and explaining why we had come. It was a heartfelt acknowledgement of our journey from Aotearoa and our desire to reconnect with the ancestral homeland.
Then, led by Trudi, we sang our waiata.
What followed was something quite special.
The elders from Uturoa were on marae duty today to welcome visitors to the marae. We had arrived at just the right time to be met by our distant cousins.
Unlike the formal pōwhiri protocols we know on marae in Aotearoa, the welcome here was much less structured. There were no elaborate formalities, no prescribed sequence of speeches.
But the essence of the encounter was unmistakable.
Two groups of people with a shared heritage meeting on ancestral ground.
The elders responded to our waiata with a song of their own. Their leaders spoke, and then came the words that gave our visit its deepest meaning.
They welcomed us home. You're back home, you are Ma'ohi.
We were not simply tourists visiting an ancient archaeological site. In their eyes, we were family returning to a place of shared ancestry.
Whānau.
The welcome was informal, but it lacked nothing in warmth or sincerity.
After the exchange of speeches and songs, the two groups greeted one another, mostly with handshakes.
Our hosts spoke about the hongi, which they said had been practised here in Tupaia's time but had since disappeared from their customs.
They also shared something that stayed with us.
They spoke of how visitors from Aotearoa were helping reconnect them with cultural practices and traditions that had faded over generations.
We had travelled to Ra‘iātea hoping to discover something of our own origins. Yet here were our hosts telling us that our return was also helping them rediscover something of theirs.
We had come looking for our ancestors. In some small way, we were bringing something of the past back.
And then came a gesture that made the welcome even more meaningful.
Rather than directing us through the usual visitor entrance, our hosts guided us to enter the marae through another entrance, which they described as the entrance for family.
We entered not as strangers, but as whānau.
This was a moving moment, it was difficult to imagine a more fitting welcome.
We had come to Taputapuātea to connect with the past. Instead, we found a living connection between our own.
