Arapaoa (Arapaoa Island) 

Ngāti Apa ki te Rā Tō trace their connection to Arapaoa from their ancestor Kupe. According to tradition, in the ancestral homeland of Hawaiki there lived a wheke, or octopus, which was in the habit of interfering with fishing expeditions undertaken by Kupe’s people. By some accounts, this wheke, named Te Wheke-a-Muturangi, had been responsible for the death of Kupe’s relatives. Kupe set out in his waka Matahourua to destroy the wheke, and pursued it all the way to Aotearoa, where he killed it at the entrance to Kura te Au (Tory Channel) with a fierce downward blow of his spear or paoa (paddle) – hence the name Arapaoa.