When Tainui travelled to Wellington in May 1995 to formally settle their Treaty claim, almost every elder from my mother's marae, Te Papa-o-Rotu, was on the train. From then until the end of the millennium, I spent much of my time at the marae as a community member involved in the development of the marae and as a PhD candidate researching the marae's management activities. The marae draws a profound commitment from its community, one that I believe is unsurpassed in any other arena. The marae was in transition from an informal to formal management style that eroded the rangatiratanga of the community, an issue upon which my thesis focused.