Te Puea Hērangi (1883-1952) was for many years the effective leader of the Māori Kīngitanga on the North Island of New Zealand. The Kīngitanga, or King movement, sought to unite New Zealand’s Māori under a single Māori monarch. Te Puea was a granddaughter of Tāwhiao, the second Māori king. She was determined to retrieve the land that the government had taken from Māori of the Waikato area in the mid-1860’s, during the New Zealand Wars. She was also a strong advocate for Māori autonomy (self-rule) the central principle of the Kīngitanga. In the 1930’s, she supported a move to buy land at Ngaruawahia as a site for the pā (fortified village) that became the seat of the Kīngitanga. Te Puea was born in Whatiwhatihoe, near Pirongia, on Nov. 9, 1883. She died on Oct. 12, 1952.
See also King movement .
