Hekenukumai Puhipi, Te Rarawa and Ngati Kuri, was born at home at Pukepoto some 40 km from Aurere on the first of August 1932.  He went to the local Native School where one of the highlights was visits to Waitangi.  There he would sit and commune with the waka taua Ngatokimatawhaorua and wonder if he would ever see a waka like that in the water.

Hekenukumai left school at 15 years old to enter the workforce.  His first job was in a bakery and he tried his hand at a number of things (including the gum fields) before starting a 40 year career in bridge building in 1951. 

The first major Involvement with waka for Hekenukumai came in 1973 when, in response to an initiative of Prime Minister Norman Kirk who wanted to change Waitangi Day to New Zealand Day, it was decided to launch Ngatokimatawhaorua for the 1974 celebrations.

Hekenukumai learnt a great deal about waka building at that time from Taupuhi Eruera.  This included how to select trees and how to determine the “heavy” side that had been exposed to the weather (and is used at the bottom of a waka) even in trees that had been previously felled.  It was also Eruera who told Hekenukumai that if there were any canoes to be built in the North, Hekenukumai would be the one to build them.

Two other people profoundly influenced Hekenukumai to work on waka hourua.  The first was John Rangihau who, among many other things, introduced Hekenukumai to Nainoa Thompson of the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

The second was Sir James Henare who, at the powhiri for the crew of the Hawai’ian canoe Hokule’a, held at Waitangi marae in December 1985, said that he had hoped that one day in the near future a waka would be built in Tai Tokerau that would go back to where Maori came from.  That waka is Te Aurere.

Hekenukumai continues to make a massive contribution to waka in Aotearoa and the Pacific.  He has amassed sixty years experience in bridge and waka building and has built 27 waka, one the latest of which is the waka hourua Ngahiraka Mai Tawhiti named after his late wife.  

Hekenukumai received the New Zealand Commemoration Medal in 1990 and an MBE in 1994.  The Council of NorthTec, Tai Tokerau Wananga, recognised Hekenukumai’s outstanding leadership when it gave him its highest award of Honorary Fellow of NorthTec in 2007.