Ohinemutu, Mokoia Island & Lake Rotorua

Ōhinemutu was a Ngāti Whakaue village before the government laid out Rotorua on the other side of Pukeroa Hill. The Tamatekapua meeting house, on Te Papaiouru marae, is named after the captain of the Arawa canoe, which brought the tribe’s ancestors from Polynesia. First opened in the centre of Ōhinemutu in 1873, the meeting house was demolished in 1939, but was rebuilt and reopened in 1943. Many of its carvings may be much older. An earlier Tamatekapua meeting house stood on Mokoia Island. The Kotahitanga (Māori parliament) met at Ōhinemutu in 1895.