Story: Kīngitanga – the Māori King movement

King Tāwhiao established the Kauhanganui (Kīngitanga parliament) at Maungakawa, north of present-day Cambridge in Waikato, in 1890. This 1890s photograph shows the parliament's wharenui. The Kauhanganui administered a bank with its own currency, a police force and a newspaper, Te Paki o Matariki (the girdle of the Pleiades).The wharenui with its carvings and Tāwhiao's crown and throne were destroyed by a farmer's burn-off in 1908.