According to Maori lore, the great Polynesian explorer Kupe was the first person to reach the then-uninhabited lands that would become known to the Maori as Aotearoa and, eventually, to the rest of the world as New Zealand. More than 1,000 years later, the multimillion-dollar cultural center Manea Footprints of Kupe opens this month near the spot where Kupe s canoe allegedly came ashore.
The area is now known as Hokianga and is sacred to the Maori. Yet despite its cultural inheritance, Hokianga s isolation at the remote top of the North Island, combined with urban migration, has made it one of the country s more depressed regions, even with its native kauri forests and South Pacific waters that glow like sapphires beside hills as bright as limes. Manea, therefore, has two objectives: to showcase Kupe s discovery and the millennium s worth of Maori history that followed via interactive displays and performance art, including traditional story-telling and singing on grounds lined with