Listen Now: 
Napier hapu are happy to be involved in the city’s annual art deco festival for the first time.
The festival, which attracts thousands of visitors to the city, focuses on the cityscape created after the 1931 Napier earthquake.
The Art Deco Weekend will be launched tomorrow with a powhiri at Napier’s Inner Harbour, at which the ocean voyaging waka Te Matau a Maui will be welcomed into the marina.
Navigator Piripi Smith says this weekend visitors will get the chance to sail on the waka around the harbour.
The crew will share some of the stories they have collected over the year the waka has been based in the city.
"We’ve been taking kaumatua out from different marae and some historians, collecting the different korero along the way. For this one we’re going to specifically focus on the role of Maori around the early 1900s mainly around te Whanganui o Orutu which was the inner harbour. That harbour was lost as a result of the earthquake, so that’s where the airport is, Te Whanganui o Orotu," Mr Smith says.
Copyright © 2014, UMA Broadcasting Ltd
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