With the news of Pākehā in Ōwairaka claiming to be mana whenua, I just wanna make a small point as a Pākehā who& #39;s just finished 2+ years of work on my whakapapa (additional to all the other far more important points that have been made):

Pākehā claiming that they& #39;re *of* this land is insulting to their own ancestors, as well as mana whenua. I feel like if I did that, my ancestors would whoop me. They didn& #39;t (rightly or wrongly) come here in earnest so that I could forget where they came from or who went before me

My ancestors toiled in mines & workhouses in Cornwall, starved in Ireland and were forcibly sent from England to the end of the world - never to see their families again - for stealing a length of rope or a petticoat. God help me if I forget that for some janky attempt at clout.

I whakapapa to them, and to the Treaty, but not to *this* land. The maunga are not my tūpuna, even if many generations of my family were born and raised in their shadows. For me personally, I rationalise this as not being *from* or *of* this land, but I can be *for* this land.

And I& #39;m comfortable with that because I have lands of my own, even if I don& #39;t live on them and may never do. There are lands which have native trees which gave me my last name. Lands where my family& #39;s bones lie with stones that have measured the earth& #39;s movements for 5,000 years.

Maybe if more of us REALLY knew our whakapapa, we wouldn& #39;t be so desperate for a sense of belonging at the expense of tangata whenua and native ecosystems.

Settler identities can feel a bit like limbo (trust me, I get it!) but it& #39;s on us to find better ways to ground ourselves.