Ngā Tapuwae o te Kāhui Maunga (the Footsteps of the Ancestors) is a memorial at the base of Pukeahu Hill in Pukeahu National Memorial Park, Wellington. It generally commemorates the participation of Māori in all the wars of New Zealand Aotearoa, including within NZ.
More specifically, the monument represents the historical journey and association of Te Āti Awa with Pukeahu. It consists of three boulders, set in a garden, representing the mountains, Taranaki, Ruapehu and Tongariro, and the statue of Hinerangi. Each boulder has engravings representing Māori of the moa hunter era (pre-1600s) who lived around the Taranaki and Wellington regions. The gardens reflect the once extensive Māori gardens that covered the hill and surrounding area.
The statue of Hinerangi within the garden was designed by Darcy Nicholas and is a stylised kuia (mother figure). She faces the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior below the tower Carillon on the Pukeahu and, beyond that, Aoraki Mt Cook in the Southern Alps. She is a kaikaranga (caller) calling the fallen warrior home.
At the top of the hill, at the northwest end of the Dominion Museum building, is the Parihaka Sculpture, which commemorates an atrocity committed by the NZ government against Taranaki and Te Āti Awa Māori at the end of the NZ Wars in 1881.
