Words : Te Rangikaheke Kiripatea
Whakaotirangi, our Te Arawa ancestress, was entrusted with the safe passage of the kūmara tipu from Hawaiki to Aotearoa aboard Te Arawa waka. On arrival at Maketū, she disembarked and began the first plantings at Kiokio, later extending to other parts of Te Moana-a-Toi, including Rotorua.
From this legacy comes the well-known whakataukī: “Te kete rokiroki a Whakaotirangi” — the secure basket of Whakaotirangi.
Now, in 2026 at Kaharoa, the legacy continues. Whakaotirangi lives on through Kai Rotorua’s pataka kūmara — an above-ground storehouse prepared to hold and protect our harvest. Built from hempcrete, a material both innovative and rooted in ancient practice, the pataka stands as a living expression of old knowledge meeting new.
