Arama Karaka Mokonuiarangi, the renowned Ngāti Rangitihi chief in 1884 lamented that "During the days of the Ancestors our people were numerous and the land was held against all comers." Today, as in Arama Karaka Mokonuiarangi's day, Ngāti Rangitihi remain, effectively, a landless people, dispossessed of their tribal lands, with now an interest in less than 4 percent, approximately 9,000 hectares, of their original 250,000-hectare tribal rohe. Forced out of the inland rohe land by the eruption of Mount Tarawera, Ngāti Rangitihi relocated into what was left of their limited coastal rohe lands at Matatā and Hauani. By the time their inland rohe was again fit for human habitation, the Crown had taken over almost all of it as public conservation estate and forestry.