For Europeans during the nineteenth century, the Urewera was a remote and savagely enticing wilderness; for those who lived there, it was a sheltering heartland. This history documents the first hundred years of the ‘Rohe Potae’ (the ‘encircled lands’ of the Urewera) following European contact.

Early in the period, the terrain was criss-crossed by missionaries, and (from 1866) by government troops. In 1866–67 large areas were taken by confiscation or forced cession. At the end of the fighting in 1872, by the agreed terms of peace, the Urewera became an autonomous district, governed by its own leaders. The Urewera’s existence as a separate tribal district was formally ratified in 1896 – the only legally recognised tribal enclave in Aotearoa New Zealand. In 1896, Richard Seddon acknowledged that this formal recognition was made in fulfilment of the earlier promises exchanged with Tuhoe’s leaders in 1871–72.

In 1921–22, the Urewera District Native Reserve was abolished in law. Its existence, its history and even the very name of Rohe Potae as used for the Urewera became largely forgotten – except in local memory. Encircled Lands recovers this lost history from a wealth of contemporary archived documents, many written by Urewera leaders, and over 150 early photographs.

Encircled Lands explains how the idea of internal selfgovernment for Tuhoe was born – and for a period partly realised. It provides the historical context for an idea that has come again to the ‘negotiating table’: Tuhoe’s quest for a constitutional agreement that restores their ‘nationhood’.