A self‑described “Germaori” has returned to court, insisting the Chatham Islands waka – and even the term Māori – has been wrongly understood for generations, a position an appeal court has dismissed.

It marks the second failed attempt by Catherine Sixtus to halt research on the historic discovery, which she claims came from Germany.

In August 2024, on the northern coast of Rēkohu/Chatham Islands, the remnants of what is believed to be a pre-European Polynesian voyaging canoe were found.

Excavations were undertaken in 2025, revealing more than 400 pieces, and testing has confirmed that it arrived in New Zealand in at least 1400.

The pieces have been stored in the care of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and parties were invited to submit applications to determine ownership.

The trustees of Hokotehi Moriori Trust and Moriori Imi Settlement Trust jointly applied while Sixtus also emerged as a vocal participant.

Sixtus identified herself as an interested party and applied to the Māori Land Court in September 2025 for an interim injunction preventing any removal, conservation, or handling of the artefacts.

She argued the court should recognise what she described as “Gerlandicial appurtenant and adverse possession right” and claimed the waka was connected to people of Germanic origin, whom she said had interacted with Māori and Moriori in antiquity.

“Preliminary analysis of reasonable probability that the vessel is made with New Zealand wood exported by High Chiefs to Germany, designed and manufactured by Native Moimoi Lutherans in Germany, ‘namely Te Nayti’, transported to the Chatham shore by Native Moimoi and received by Moriori and buried,” Sixtus told the Māori Land Court at the hearing last year.

The Māori Land Court dismissed her application, finding they lacked jurisdiction because her claim did not fall within the statutory definition of taonga tūturu.

Sixtus appealed that decision to the Māori Appellate Court in December 2025, but her paperwork was rejected from the outset.

The court found her application cited incorrect acts, such as the judicial review procedure and the State Owned Enterprises Act.

The court gave her a month to file the correct documentation with a $1000 security costs which she paid.

But at the hearing in January, the court noted those documents were also incorrect.

The waka was discovered buried in the sand dunes in Rēkohu - Chatham Islands. Photo / Manatū Taonga

The court found her application referred to sections that held no relevance, such as powers of an incorporation and damages for trespass or injury to Māori freehold land.

“In our view, none of these sections is relevant to the Māori Land Court decision or the appeal before this Court,” the decision said.

She also went into her interpretation of the word “Māori”, claiming the word was an invention.

Sixtus pointed to early dictionaries by Thomas Kendall (1815) and Ernst Dieffenbach (1839), saying they “make no mention of Māori, this word did not exist in their language”.

She claimed the words Pākehā and Māori derive from older root words she calls “Pakkekka/Pakkahah” and “native… ab-originals Māori” from places such as the Roggewein Islands and Tikopia.

She also argued the Treaty of Waitangi used the terms Native Chiefs and Aboriginees, not Māori or Pākehā, and therefore the original “natives” could include people of Germanic origin.

“Pākehā peoples are clearly ‘Germaori people’ sea voyagers and come within the Native define‑ations of the word ‘Māori’,” she said in claiming her Germanic ancestors should qualify as Māori for the purposes of the Act.

In the recently released decision, the appellate judges said the claimant was basing her right to be in the Māori Land Court on an asserted ancestral link to “those of Germanic origins who visited or settled in New Zealand and had dealings with Māori”.

But the court noted she provided no mandate to speak for such a group, nor any evidence to support her theory, relying instead on “supposition as to what might have happened”.

Her submissions were rejected.

“The word ‘Māori’ as used in the Protected Objects Act 1975 carries the legal meaning of ‘Māori’, defined in the Māori Purposes Act 1974 as ‘a person of the Māori race of New Zealand; and includes any descendant of such a person’,” the decision said.

“This clearly does not include ‘Pakkahah’ or ‘Germaori’ as defined by Sixtus.

“As Ms Sixtus is claiming on behalf of those of Germanic origins that the waka was built by Germans, her claim does not fit within the definition of taonga tūturu.”

The appeal was dismissed.

The artefacts remain in the care of the Crown and a full heritage report is due this month while ownership determinations progress through the courts.

Sixtus and Moriori Imi Settlement Trust did not respond to requests from NZME for comment.

Shannon Pitman is a Whangārei-based reporter for Open Justice covering courts in the Te Tai Tokerau region. She is of Ngāpuhi/ Ngāti Pūkenga descent and has worked in digital media for the past five years. She joined NZME in 2023.