Named in 1969, Māui was chosen to preserve the use of Māori names for the streets in the area and celebrate the memory of Sir Māui Pōmare. It had the added bonus that it coincided with the discovery of the Māui gas and oil field off the coast of Taranaki in that year.
Māui of course looms large in the myths and legends of Māori. The cheeky demigod is responsible in folklore for slowing the sun and giving us a reasonable length of day, hauling up the North Island from the ocean, and making us mortal, among other things.
Huge mana attaches to the name as it certainly does when carried by Sir Māui Pōmare. Sir Māui strode comfortably in both the Māori and Pākehā worlds as a doctor and politician. His father, Wiremu Pōmare, had implored him to "go forth into the world and seek the wisdom of the Pākehā knowledge". This led him to study medicine in the USA.
Back in New Zealand in 1901, he began work as a Māori health officer to improve the health of his people. Fiercely proud of his Māori heritage, he nevertheless crusaded against poor health practises, which brought him into conflict with iwi. He hated what he called "charlatan tohungaism" which had corrupted the traditional practises of the tohunga (Māori specialists and spiritual men). This led to the Tohunga Suppression Act of 1907.
In 1911, Sir Māui entered parliament as an independent for the Western Māori electorate where he became a member of William Massey's cabinet and represented Māori and other Polynesian peoples on the executive council.
He died on 27 June 1930 and was cremated. Sir Māui's ashes were interred at Ōwae Marae in Waitara where he is remembered annually on Pōmare Day. Te Ātiawa come together to remember him and discuss matters of importance to their people on the Sunday closest to the anniversary of his death.
As for the oil and gas field, well I guess, like Māui giving us Te Ika a Māui (the North Island), the oil men and women were also pulling riches up from the ocean floor.
This story was originally published in the Taranaki Daily News.
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