Qualla: Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill

Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill: Introduction

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit German302, Public domain. The tree is gone. That is the first thing visitors notice at the summit of Maungakiekie, the 182-metre volcanic cone that Aucklanders still call One Tree Hill. A lone Monterey pine stood here for decades, a stand-in for the tōtara that gave the mountain its older Māori name: Te Tōtara-i-āhua, the tōtara that stands alone. Activist Mike Smith took a chainsaw to the pine in 1994 to protest the Crown's treatment of Māori land claims. The damaged tree held on for six more years before a second attack finished it. The chainsaw now sits in the national museum, Te Papa. The summit sits bare, waiting for the young tōtara planted in a 2016 dawn ceremony to grow tall enough to reclaim the name.

Image: German302 | Public domain

Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill: Fire Beneath the Pastures

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ulanwp, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sixty-seven thousand years ago, magma punched through three craters here. Lava poured in every direction, much of it flowing toward what is now Onehunga, spreading over 20 square kilometres and making Maungakiekie the second-largest eruption site in the Auckland volcanic field, b...

Image: Ulanwp | CC BY-SA 3.0

Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill: The Greenstone Gong

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. By the 17th century, the terraces of Maungakiekie had been shaped into a formidable pā by Ngāti Awa chief Tītahi, who carved the slopes into the defensive earthworks known as Ngā Whakairo a Tītahi. At the mountain's summit, the umbilical cord of rangatira Korokino was buried, and...

Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill: Campbell's Gift and Its Contradictions

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Winstonwolfe at English Wikipedia., Public domain. The Waiohua era ended in the 1740s after conflict with Te Taoū of Ngāti Whātua. European ownership followed. In 1853, Auckland businessman John Logan Campbell purchased the surrounding land and renamed it the One Tree Hill Estate. He farmed cattle and sheep, planted what became N...

Image: Winstonwolfe at English Wikipedia. | Public domain

Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill: Sovereignty in Stone and Song

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Prosperosity, CC BY 4.0. The obelisk's meaning has always been contested. Campbell intended it as a tribute to Māori, but the term 'memorial' drew objections, and the structure's colonial framing sat uneasily on a mountain sacred to tangata whenua. A 2014 Treaty of Waitangi settlement vested ownership of...

Image: Prosperosity | CC BY 4.0

Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill: Waiting for the Tōtara

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit E James Bowman, CC BY-SA 4.0. On 11 June 2016, at dawn, the Tūpuna Maunga Authority planted nine young tōtara and pōhutukawa on the summit, grown from parent trees on the maunga itself. The plan is patient: the strongest single tree will eventually remain, and kiekie vines will be added, restoring the plant t...

Image: E James Bowman | CC BY-SA 4.0