Where did Hōne Heke grow up and live?

📍Kaikohe, Northland, New Zealand

1807 – 1850

“Ko au ko Hōne Heke Pōkai. I was born around 1807 in the Bay of Islands, of Ngāpuhi descent, and I became the first rangatira to sign Te Tiriti o Waitangi in February 1840. I signed in good faith, believing the promises that were made. When those promises were broken — when the flagpole at Kororāreka flew the symbol of a sovereignty I had not ceded — I cut it down. I cut it down four times. Each time the Crown re-erected it, I returned. The cutting of the flagpole was not vandalism. It was a precise political statement: that the authority of the Crown over Māori land and Māori rangatiratanga had not been agreed to at Waitangi, whatever the colonists chose to believe. I fought at Ruapekapeka in 1846 and died in 1850, still undefeated. My people remain.”

👍 LovedThe Bay of Islands — its harbours, its people, its long history of encounter with the outside world. The mana of Ngāpuhi and the responsibility it placed on me. The clarity of the political act — cutting the flagpole — that said in one gesture what words had failed to convey.

👎 DislikedThe broken promises of Te Tiriti. The Crown's refusal to honour what had been agreed. The knowledge that the world my children would inherit was already changing beyond recovery.

Map showing where Hōne Heke lived — Kaikohe, Northland, New Zealand

🗺️ Approximate location today

Street view of Hōne Heke's home at Kaikohe, Northland, New Zealand

📍 Street view today

Sources: Cowan, J. The New Zealand Wars (1922), Government Printer; Belich, J. The New Zealand Wars (1986), Auckland University Press; Orange, C. The Treaty of Waitangi (1987), Allen & Unwin