It’s fascinating how words get most of their power from a context that very few of us have an inkling about. An example of that happened at the opening of the new Mangonui police station a few weeks ago. From my perspective the whole affair was strange for a bunch of reasons, not least being the relegation of Ngati Kahu kaumatua to a supporting role in their own rohe. But the strangest moment of the day for me personally came from a local VIP with whom I’ve always been reasonably friendly. After congratulating me on my recent appointment, she turned to the staunch Ngati Kahu man with me and said, “I’m so glad Anahera is on board with Ngati Kahu. Now we might have a decent relationship with you.”
I have no idea what the VIP meant to communicate but I had a very clear idea by the curl of his lip what my mate heard her say. Ask anyone who knows me, I’m not often left speechless. But the utter crassness of the moment frustrated me, and I just walked away. It’s not my style anymore to have public stoushes with VIPs, especially in a police station, but I wondered how Ngati Kahu could have a “better relationship” with someone who hadn’t a clue about our context?
Think about it. This is an iwi dealing with development pressures in our rohe like no other in Tai Tokerau. Karikari peninsula alone had a 7% population increase between 1996 and 2001 when the change for the entire Far North district was only 3.3%. And you can bet the house that the population has shot up even more sharply in 2006. The last lot of unjust land clearances in our rohe happened in the 1960s when the Hetaraka whanau were forcibly removed from their farm on what is now the fantastically popular camping ground administered by DoC at Maitai Bay. That’s in the living memory of a lot of us. Land is still being lost to rating pressures, and the Crown is still resisting the chance it has in the treaty negotiations to return or pay a fair price for what it stole from us.
The correlation between landlessness and powerlessness is our context and VIPs of varied ilk have presided over that. So to all VIPs out there – past, present and budding – no. I won’t tame this ‘stroppy’ Ngati Kahu lot and I won’t deliver them on a silver platter anywhere they don’t want to go. But I will do my very best to help you understand, if you want to, their context.
Who knows, you might come to admire this quite resilient iwi as we change our context and, in the process, you might get to have a real relationship with us.
Hei konei. Hei kona.
I have no idea what the VIP meant to communicate but I had a very clear idea by the curl of his lip what my mate heard her say. Ask anyone who knows me, I’m not often left speechless. But the utter crassness of the moment frustrated me, and I just walked away. It’s not my style anymore to have public stoushes with VIPs, especially in a police station, but I wondered how Ngati Kahu could have a “better relationship” with someone who hadn’t a clue about our context?
Think about it. This is an iwi dealing with development pressures in our rohe like no other in Tai Tokerau. Karikari peninsula alone had a 7% population increase between 1996 and 2001 when the change for the entire Far North district was only 3.3%. And you can bet the house that the population has shot up even more sharply in 2006. The last lot of unjust land clearances in our rohe happened in the 1960s when the Hetaraka whanau were forcibly removed from their farm on what is now the fantastically popular camping ground administered by DoC at Maitai Bay. That’s in the living memory of a lot of us. Land is still being lost to rating pressures, and the Crown is still resisting the chance it has in the treaty negotiations to return or pay a fair price for what it stole from us.
The correlation between landlessness and powerlessness is our context and VIPs of varied ilk have presided over that. So to all VIPs out there – past, present and budding – no. I won’t tame this ‘stroppy’ Ngati Kahu lot and I won’t deliver them on a silver platter anywhere they don’t want to go. But I will do my very best to help you understand, if you want to, their context.
Who knows, you might come to admire this quite resilient iwi as we change our context and, in the process, you might get to have a real relationship with us.
Hei konei. Hei kona.
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