There is a chair in the Treaty House at Waitangi.
It was made for the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe, and presented to him at Picton on the eighteenth of January 1934, and the tāniko on it was worked by four women whose names were printed on the key sheet that went with it.
Hariata Huntley née Kere. Puhi Huntley. Tini (Pongi) Hemi. Tete Arthur.
Four names on a piece of card. That is how it has been recorded for ninety years, and that is how the Sheltered Water site already carries it, and everybody has read it the way you read a list of contributors. Four skilled women, presumably from around Picton, who did a job together.
Then, in July 2026, Karen sent her son a photograph of a chart.
It is signed and dated at the foot. It has Māori Land Court minute book numbers written on it, Nelson MB 8/159, Nelson MB 6/112, Nelson 7/329-330, Nelson 9/51-52, which means it is not just a family drawing, it is a family drawing with receipts.
And it sets out a marriage and a family:
> Maipapa married a European named Smith. > Their daughter Pipi Smith married, first, a man called Kere. > By Kere she had: Hariata Kere, Te Pu Kere, Mihirona Kere, Te Rangikawepana Kere, Hiripa Kere, > Tini Kere, Ngatoto Kere. > Then Pipi Smith married, second, a man called Keepa. > By Keepa she had: Ngaira Keepa, Ramiri Keepa, Taihuri Keepa.
Now put that chart beside the key sheet from the chair.
| On the chair | On Karen's chart | |---|---| | Hariata Huntley née Kere | Hariata Kere, who married a Huntley. Daughter of Pipi Smith by Kere. | | Tini (Pongi) Hemi | Tini Kere, who married Eruera Hemi Whiro. Daughter of Pipi Smith by Kere. | | Tete Arthur | Ngaira Keepa, called "G. Aunty Tete", who married Arthurs. Daughter of Pipi Smith by Keepa. |
Three of the four women who worked that chair were sisters. The fourth was their sister-in-law.
Karen set the four of them down in her own hand: "Hariata my grandmother. Tini (Pongi) Hemi, sister. Ngaia (Tete) Arthur, half sister. Putti Huntley, sister in law."
Hariata and Tini were sisters. Ngaia, who everybody called Aunty Tete, was their half sister through their mother. Nobody has said full sisters and this story will not either.
All three of them were Pipi Smith's daughters.
Sit with what that changes.
For ninety years this has been four craftswomen. It was not. It was a mother's daughters, grown women by 1934, sitting down together with the wool and the weaving pegs to work the tāniko on a chair that was going to a Governor-General.
They would have talked while they did it. About their mother. About who was minding whose children. About the other one who could not come, or who came and is on the sheet as the fourth name. It would have taken days. There would have been food, and someone would have been better at it than the others and been told so.
And then the chair went away and was given to a man in a ceremony, and it ended up in the Treaty House at Waitangi, which is the most loaded room in the country, and it is still there.
And here is the part that is closest to home.
Hariata Kere is Karen's grandmother. She married William Huntley. Their son was Oswald Te Āhuru Huntley, the shark man of Fishing Bay. His daughter is Karen.
So this is not a story about the deep past and other people's ancestors. This is Karen's grandmother and her grandmother's two sisters, in a room together, ninety years ago.
Nobody had put the two documents side by side until August 2026, and when they were, this fell out of them.
And the argument it settles
There has been a conflict in the family record for a while.
Karen's own handwriting said: Api Kere married John Smith, an Englishman, and their daughter was Hariata (Noti).
A research file said: Hariata's parents were Teone Kere and Pipi Wharauroa Smith.
The two accounts have the Kere and the Smith the other way round, which one was the mother and which the father, and it has sat there unresolved.
The chart settles it, and it settles it in Karen's favour.
Kere is the father. Pipi Smith is the mother. The European Smith is Pipi's father, one generation further back.
Karen had the marriage exactly right. A Kere married a Smith. That marriage is on the chart. What moved was only which generation it sat in. And Api and Pipi are the same sound, the way Piri and Pipi and Phoebe turned out to be one woman on the other side of this family.
She was not wrong. She was one rung out on a ladder she wrote from memory, and the chart she sent is the thing that proves it.
Where this comes from, and what is actually proven
The four names on the chair are from the printed key sheet and are already carried on the Sheltered Water timeline for 1934. That part is solid.
The family structure is read off `WHAKAPAPA__SMITH_KERE_KEEPEA_FAMILY_TREE__READABLE__2026-07-20.png`, the chart Karen sent on 20 July 2026, signed and dated at the foot and carrying its own Nelson Minute Book citations. That part is a reading off a photographed chart.
SETTLED BY KAREN, 23 AUGUST 2026, IN HER OWN HAND. She wrote: "HARIATA MY GRANDMOTHER. TINI (PONGI) HEMI, SISTER. NGAIA (TETE) ARTHUR, ½ SISTER. PUTTI HUNTLEY, SISTER IN LAW." Her note matched the page word for word and the long-standing "chair women unconfirmed pending Karen" caution was closed that afternoon. Anthony confirmed again on 2 September 2026 that Karen said there were three sisters and one sister-in-law. He also said plainly that he is not sure they were full sisters, so this story does not say it.
The reading below is what was put to her, and it is kept here so the working is visible. It rested on three name matches across two documents:
- Hariata Huntley née Kere ↔ Hariata Kere = Huntley - Tini (Pongi) Hemi ↔ Tini Kere, who married Eruera Hemi Whiro - Tete Arthur ↔ Ngaira Keepa "G. Aunty Tete" = Arthurs
They were strong matches, and she settled them. The 1934 entry is no longer four named weavers. It is three sisters and one sister-in-law, and what that chair means to this family changes with it.
The Nelson Minute Book numbers on her chart are requestable from the Māori Land Court by anybody. That is the road from "a strong reading" to "documented", and nobody has walked it yet.
Corrected 21 August 2026. This line used to read "No living person is named in this story." That was false. Karen is named in this story, and in all fifteen, here as the holder of the manuscript and as the granddaughter whose chart settles it. Everyone the story is about died long ago, but that is a different sentence and the first one should never have been written.
Question 3 of the eleven emailed to her on 21 August asked whether Karen's name may appear on a public page. Anthony brought back her answer on 2 September 2026: yes, that is fine.
Two things about the names are still open and are not hidden here. Her hand writes Putti; the printed key sheet and the four-women caption both print Puhi, and the site keeps Puhi until she chooses. Her hand writes Hariata's maiden name as Kelly; the printed caption and her own big chart write Kere. She rules both, and neither is settled by this story.
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