Kupe is the ancestral navigator credited with the discovery of Aotearoa. His voyaging story is carried in tribal traditions across the country, but nowhere is the connection as specific and living as at Hokianga. This is where he made his home and secured the land for his descendants before departing on his return to Hawaiki. The name of the harbour, Te Hokianga-nui-a-Kupe, records this departure. Students encounter this story not through a textbook but through carvings, landscape, and the voices of people for whom it is whakapapa.
The programme is guided through the creation story of Ranginui the sky father and Papatuanuku the earth mother and their children. This is not a mythological backdrop. It is the cosmological framework within which Kupe's voyaging, the significance of the harbour, and the relationship between people and the natural world are all understood. Students who have been guided through this account at Hokianga arrive at the creation story in the classroom carrying a grounded, placed understanding of it.
The Manea theatre experience makes Kupe's ocean voyaging physical and immediate. Using animation, live performance, sound, scent, and visual effects, students experience what it meant to navigate the Pacific using stars, currents, birds, and accumulated ancestral knowledge. The contrast between this experience and a written account of the same voyaging is the point. The performance is the Layer 1 encounter.
Standing on the shore of the Hokianga Harbour, students are at the place where Kupe departed for his return to Hawaiki, and where, in Te Rerenga Wairua tradition, the spirits of the departed leave the land. The harbour is also where early European contact with the far north was established. These layers of meaning occupy the same view. Guide students to look carefully and ask what they are seeing.
In 1902, the SS Ventnor sank off the Hokianga Heads while transporting the exhumed remains of approximately 499 Chinese who had died in New Zealand, bound for repatriation to China. The wreck was discovered and the bones of the ancestors began washing ashore at Hokianga. Local Māori gathered and cared for the remains with great respect. The Ventnor story is a major piece of New Zealand history that intersects Chinese New Zealand history, Māori kaitiakitanga, and colonial-era race relations. Most New Zealand students have never encountered it. The memorial at Manea makes it visible.
Digital stations in the Footprints of Kupe Interactive Gallery allow students to explore further detail about Kupe's journey, key places in Hokianga, and Pacific navigation and exploration at their own pace. The gallery extends the programme for groups who have more time and curiosity to spend.
These prompts build on what students heard, saw, and experienced at Manea. They are most effective when students have a specific moment from the visit to anchor the AI conversation: the mihi whakatau, the 4D performance, the harbour view, the Ventnor memorial. The AI prompts are not a substitute for having been there. They are a way to deepen what being there produced.
You heard Kupe's story at Hokianga. Now ask a gen AI chatbot: "Who is Kupe and why is he important to Māori?" Compare its answer to what your guide told you at Manea. What did the AI include? What did it leave out? What did hearing the story at the actual place add?
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "How did Kupe and other Pacific navigators find their way across the ocean without GPS or maps?" After reading its answer, think about the 4D performance you watched. What did the performance show you about ocean voyaging that the AI's words cannot?
You were welcomed with a pōwhiri at Manea. Ask a gen AI chatbot: "What happens at a pōwhiri and why is it important?" Compare its explanation to what you experienced. Is there anything about the feeling of being welcomed that the AI can describe?
Ask a gen AI chatbot to tell you the story of Ranginui and Papatuanuku. Then think about what your guide shared at Manea. Where are the stories similar? Where are they different? Which version felt more connected to the place you were standing in?
Ask a gen AI chatbot to explain how Polynesian navigators read stars, currents, swells, and birds to navigate the Pacific. Then evaluate its explanation: does it describe a knowledge system, or a set of techniques? What is the difference, and why does it matter for how we understand Kupe's voyaging?
Ask a gen AI chatbot to tell you about the SS Ventnor and what happened when it sank off the Hokianga Heads in 1902. Evaluate the response: does it include the role of local Māori in caring for the remains? Does it locate the story within the history of Chinese in New Zealand? What did standing at the memorial add to your understanding that the AI's account does not?
Hokianga is where Kupe departed for Hawaiki, and in Te Rerenga Wairua tradition it is associated with the departure of spirits. Ask a gen AI chatbot: "Why is the Hokianga Harbour spiritually and historically significant to Māori?" Then write your own one-paragraph answer based on what you heard and saw at Manea. Where does your account differ from the AI's?
The Manea performance used live performance, 4D effects, sound, and music to tell Kupe's story. Ask a gen AI chatbot: "What can performance do that written history cannot?" Then think about your experience in the Manea theatre. What did the performance make you feel or understand that a written account of the same events would not have produced?
The Manea experience is structured through whakapapa: the genealogical connections between Ranginui and Papatuanuku, their children, Kupe, and the people of Hokianga today. Ask a gen AI chatbot: "How does whakapapa function as a historical framework, and how does it differ from Western linear historiography?" Critically evaluate the response against what you experienced at Manea and any academic sources your teacher provides. What does a whakapapa-based account of Kupe's arrival preserve that a conventional historical account does not?
Research the Ventnor sinking and its aftermath using at least two sources beyond the AI. Then ask a gen AI chatbot: "What does the story of the SS Ventnor reveal about race relations, colonial policy, and the treatment of Chinese New Zealanders in the early 20th century?" Evaluate the AI's account critically. Whose perspectives does it centre? What does it omit? How does the response of local Māori to the wreck complicate or enrich the story?
Manea was built from a vision held by local Kaumatua to preserve heritage and share it with the world. The experience uses 4D technology, live performance, and digital interactive stations. Ask a gen AI chatbot: "What tensions exist between the use of digital technology and performance in presenting Indigenous heritage, and how can these be navigated responsibly?" Critically evaluate the response against what you observed at Manea. Does the technology serve the story or compete with it?
Research the science of traditional Polynesian navigation: star paths, wave piloting, wind patterns, biological indicators. Ask a gen AI chatbot to explain the same body of knowledge. Then write a short analysis: in what ways is traditional Polynesian navigation a scientific system? Where does the AI's account treat it as science and where does it frame it as cultural knowledge? What is at stake in that distinction?
| Level | Years 1–6 | Years 7–10 | Years 11–13 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Student can name Kupe, say what Hokianga means, and describe one thing from the visit that they did not know before. Understands they were welcomed with a pōwhiri and can say what that is. | Student identifies the significance of Hokianga for Kupe and for Māori today, explains the key elements of the programme (Hono, Ruku, Toro), and gives a basic account of Kupe's voyaging and the significance of the Hokianga Harbour. | Student gives an accurate and detailed account of Kupe's significance in tribal tradition, the cosmological framework of Ranginui and Papatuanuku, the historical significance of the Ventnor, and the role of whakapapa in the Manea programme. |
| 2 | Student connects Kupe's story to the Hokianga Harbour: this is not just any harbour, it is the place where something specific happened. Can say in their own words why Hokianga matters to the people who live there. | Student explains the relationship between whakapapa, the creation story, and Kupe's voyaging as a connected historical and cultural account, not as separate topics. Links the Ventnor memorial to the broader history of Chinese in New Zealand. | Student analyses how the Manea programme uses whakapapa as a structuring framework for historical knowledge, and evaluates what this approach preserves and makes visible that a conventional historical account of the same events would not. |
| 3 | Student compares what a gen AI chatbot says about Kupe with what the guide at Manea shared. Can identify at least one thing the AI knew and one thing it could not convey about the story or the place. | Student systematically evaluates AI outputs about Kupe, Hokianga, and the Ventnor against their Manea experience and at least one authoritative source. Identifies where the AI account is accurate, where it is incomplete, and what the guided, placed encounter added. | Student produces a critical analysis of AI outputs on Pacific navigation as a knowledge system and on the Ventnor as a historical event, evaluating whose perspectives the AI centres, what it omits, and what the material encounter at Manea revealed that AI-generated accounts cannot. |
| 4 | Student can say what the 4D performance made them feel that reading the same story would not have produced. Describes one specific moment from the Manea experience they will remember. | Student articulates what the guided, placed, multisensory encounter at Manea provided that secondary sources cannot replicate: the pōwhiri as a participant, the harbour as a specific standing place, the performance as a bodily experience of Kupe's voyaging. | Student reflects on what presence at Hokianga and participation in the Manea programme contributes to historical and cultural understanding that no AI, documentary, or textbook account can provide, and connects this to the epistemological argument for experiential learning in Māori and Pacific history. |
| 5 | Student generates one question about Kupe, Hokianga, or the Ventnor they want to investigate further, and identifies where they would look for an answer: a library, a kaumatua, the Manea gallery, the National Library. | Student formulates a sustained inquiry question arising from the Manea visit: about Pacific navigation as a knowledge system, about the Ventnor and its historical significance, about the relationship between Hokianga and the wider history of Aotearoa. | Student designs or begins a sustained inquiry project grounded in the Manea visit: a historical research essay, a comparative analysis of two knowledge systems, an investigation of the Ventnor as an event of significance to New Zealanders, or a community or cultural heritage project developed in consultation with appropriate people and sources. |