The name Omeka for the Justice Precinct comes from the Biblical omega. Dating back to the prophecy of Ratana early last century, it is testimony to Ngāi Tahu’s faith that their claims for justice would be settled.
Claimed as a fishing reserve by the Tuahiwi chief Te Aika but sold by government, this area used to have eel weirs and eel drying. The land within the horseshoe lake also contains an urupā (cemetery).
Puari is a longstanding fishing area for Ngāi Tūāhuriri. It was claimed by chief Pita Te Hori for the hapū in 1868 but denied by the Crown, because the land had been allocated to settlers. This site is now owned by Ngāi Tahu and a building named after Te Hori stands here.
The city centre and Tuahiwi Marae, the home of Ngāi Tūāhuriri, are now linked by names. The Anglican cathedral and Tuahiwi’s church, both called St Stephens, sit on land called Whitireia. Whitireia was the house of Paekia, the ancestor who landed on the North Island on the back of a whale at Tūranga, which is now the name of Christchurch’s city library.
This is where Tuahiwi people fished, eeled and gathered other kaimoana until the waterways were blocked and the land confiscated for public works in 1956. Getting land back in Christchurch was a key part of the Treaty claim lodged in 1986.
The story of the city’s urban marae, Ngā Hau e Whā, built from 1981 onwards, begins in the migration of Māori from their tūrangawaewae to cities. The marae project is linked to a desire among city elders to move Māori out of the city centre to the east.
During the 2011 M7.8 Kaikōura earthquake, ground motions recorded near the epicentre showed a significant spatial variation. The Te Mara farm (WTMC) station, the nearest to the epicentre, recorded 1g and 2.7g of horizontal and vertical peak ground accelerations (PGA), respectively. The nearby Waiu Gorge (WIGC) station recorded a horizontal PGA of 0.8g. Interestingly, however, the Culverden Airlie Farm (CULC) station that was very closely located to WIGC recorded a horizontal PGA of only 0.25g. This poster demonstrates how the local geological condition could have contributed to the spatially variable ground motions observed in the North Canterbury, based on the results of recently conducted geophysical investigations. The surficial geology of this area is dominated by alluvial gravel deposits with traces of silt. A borehole log showed that the thickness of the sediments at WTMC is over 76 metres. Interestingly, the shear wave velocity (Vs) profiles obtained from the three strong motion sites suggest unusually high shear wave velocity of the gravelly sediments. The velocity of sediments and the lack of clear peaks in the horizontal-to-vertical (H/V) spectral ratio at WTMC suggest that the large ground motion observed at this station was likely caused by the proximity of the station to the causative fault itself; the site effect was likely insignificant. Comparisons of H/V spectral ratios and Vs profiles suggest that the sediment thickness is much smaller at WIGC compared with CULC; the high PGA at WIGC was likely influenced by the high-frequency amplification caused by the response of shallow sediments.