Whakapapa is who Ngāi Tahu are. This dissertation problematic nature of recording of Ngāi Tahu identity and whakapapa through the first colonial attempt to do so Mantell’s census of 1848 and 1853. The nature of recording and the historical record has failed to adequately represent my ancestor, Mereana Teitei Haberfield and her whānau, in the way that they and their Ngāi Tahu community saw them at the time, to the extent that three of her children were erased from the record. The conflicting knowledge systems and understandings of what it means to be Ngāi Tahu at play within Mantell’s census went on to permeate throughout the processes that define Ngāi Tahu identity following the establishment of the Native Land Court as the authority for Ngāi Tahu whakapapa whilst working alongside the Ngaitahu Claims Committee in 1925. The tensions between the legal record and Ngāi Tahu lore that began with the recording of Mantell’s Census in the mid-nineteenth century continue on today as we consider Ngāi Tahutanga within the context of rangatiratanga in the post-settlement era.