NONE SO BLIND

My late teens were a time when I was afflicted with three things that many teens still suffer apparently – vanity, poverty and a flirtation with delinquency. In my case it meant I refused to wear my glasses but couldn’t afford contacts, and occasionally sought solace in a bottle. To say I was delinquent is probably too dramatic. More like a tipsy mole than a gang moll really.

Now, according to a recent study out of Harvard, that part of the brain that deals with higher thought, anticipation, planning and goal-directed behaviour doesn’t mature until around 24 or 25, while the lower brain that deals with emotion and gut reactions is fully up and running between ages 11 to 17. So, daft though it seems to me now, that’s why it was once more important to my teenage brain for me to look good than to see good.

Engari, now that I’m old(er) I still see worrying signs of poor judgment in myself and other so-called adults. One instance of this is the way we are not coming to grips with the Kyoto protocol and its likely impact on our businesses, land use and climate.

The latest announcement out of Wellington that carbon credits will go to forest owners should make every Maori in Te Hiku sit up and go, “hmmm”. The biggest existing source of carbon credits and sinks in our neighbourhood are the forests currently growing on Maori land at Aupouri, Parengarenga, Waikeri, Epikauri, Owhata, Tapuwae, Te Puna Toopu O Hokianga and other pockets throughout the Far North. They are already major contributors to the economic life of every one of us in this region, not just the forestry contractors and the millworkers who are always on the front of any industry downturn. Without them our climate and land use would be very different. Ask anyone who has lived here longer forty years and they’ll get a faraway look in their eyes as they talk about earth-cracking droughts and land-consuming sand drifts on the Aupouri peninsula, or the back-breaking work of clearing ti-tree and blasting old kauri stumps for small-scale dairying in the Hokianga. They have an impact on the livelihoods of our local training providers, construction firms, cartage contractors, road-builders, quarry owners, pastoral farmers, horticulturists, and all the businesses and providers that ply their goods and services in the area.

If these trees were being planted now, they would earn someone a bunch of “carbon credits”. When they’re cut down in the future, they’ll cost someone a bunch of “carbon sinks”. This has big implications for whoever owns the Aupouri forest lands after the Treaty settlement dust settles.

Maori are drowning in new information that requires constant higher level thinking. So the Kyoto protocol has been one of those things where our brains have often defaulted to a gut response of hoha, and we’ve literally failed to see the forests for the trees. Engari it’s as plain as the noses on our faces that, quite apart from trade in the actual pieces of paper that allocate a credit or a sink, their future impact on us is going to be enormous.

Unlike teenagers, iwi with pending Treaty settlements cannot be excused for ignoring these mechanisms. If they do, they risk vain, poverty-stricken delinquency – and there would truly be none so blind.

Hei konei. Hei kona.

LAND OF THE LONG DARK SHADOW

About 320 years before the birth of Christ, Alexander the Great visited the philosopher Diogenes, who was sun-bathing at the time, and asked if there was anything he could do for him. The old man looked up at Alexander and replied, “Yes. Please take your shadow off me.” On 28th April 1840, here in Kaitaia, Pana Kareao convinced his chiefly contemporaries to sign Te Tiriti O Waitangi with these words, “Ko te atakau o te whenua i riro i a te Kuini. Ko te tinana o te whenua i waiho ki nga Maori." (The shadow of the land passes to the Queen, but the substance remains with us). These statements are metaphors for the optimism felt by Maori Rangatira and the Crown at the beginning of this Treaty nation. But they’re also sad counterpoints to the Crown’s broken promises ever since.

Anyway, earlier this year the Waitangi Tribunal put out a report into the impact of the Crown’s Treaty settlement policies on iwi in the Central North Island (CNI). Put simply, the report says that the Crown is setting up Treaty settlement winners and losers and causing once friendly iwi with close blood ties to become enemies over settlement packages.

The thing is that, relative to what the Crown took, these settlements are mingy and mean-spirited. So why, you might ask, do Maori bother fighting over something so piddling? It’s because the settlement assets include key elements of mana and rangatiratanga – cultural cornerstones, like land and authority and the wherewithal for an iwi to enlarge its substance. These are things New Zealanders of all ethnicities have always lived, fought and died over. So it comes as no surprise to see allied iwi going toe to toe over them.

Here in Te Hiku, iwi will have taken note. Te Aupouri, Whaingaroa and Te Rarawa have signed pre-settlement Agreements in Principle with the Crown, and they will not want what has happened in the CNI and Auckland settlements to happen here. Ngati Kuri, Ngaitakoto and Ngati Kahu are not at the table, and they will not want to be left fighting over diminishing settlement resources. All five iwi will not want to return to the Runanga Muriwhenua model of dependence on the patronage of Sir Graham or some other high profile individual, and none of them will have time to waste on ignoring or moaning about their differences. They will all know that they have serious business to do with each other – now.

I have no doubt that if either the Crown or any one of the three AIP iwi in Te Hiku steps one inch too far, the ‘fight filter’ we’ve seen in the past, both here and elsewhere, will click on again. And it will stay on until everyone understands that, while it’s fine for individual iwi to be strong and autonomous, they cannot move too far without the others.

In the end, whether amongst Treaty claimants, Grey Power or Federated Farmers, these ‘fights’ are a filter and protection against the Crown’s tendency to decide who will be the winners and who the losers amongst us. The five iwi now have an opportunity to disagree without being disagreeable, move forward independently but together, and say to the Crown, “Take your shadow off us.”

Hei konei. Hei kona.

UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCES

400 years ago Shakespeare wrote, "There are more things under heaven and earth than are in our understanding." Six years ago, and only four days after he’d arrived in New Zealand, I took my future husband to a tangi. Later that week I listened with amazement to him describe his understanding of the karanga to a mate of his back in Canada. "We stood at the gate until a woman came out of the building and screamed at us," he said, “and then Anahera screamed back at her.”

We have a lot in common – born the same year, grew up on the same programmes and movies and listened to the same music. So this was our first concrete encounter with our cultural differences. His understanding has grown hugely over the years since, and it’s now an inside joke between us to spot "the screamers" at every powhiri or tangi we attend. But for many people in this country, other cultures’ practices still fall well outside their understanding. Throw death, grief and spousal ignorance into the mix, and you have a tragi-comedy in the making.

That’s how I saw it when Billty T James died in 1991. The quirky public comedy of his life flowed into his death when his uncle uplifted him from under his Pakeha wife’s nose and buried him at Taupiri over her objections. The media had a field day at the time, and Howard Morrison criticised his old mate and colleague, saying he should have prepared his whanau better. Just how unprepared James’ whanau were, was shown by the fact that, with his death, his only child from a previous relationship, got to experience her first ever tangi. More than a bit sad, but hardly surprising, really, given the freedom we enjoy in this country to love as we choose.

Inevitably, once the media spotlight faded, most of us forgot Sir Howie’s key message which was bang on. Billy T should have prepared his whanau for the inevitable.

So – have you clearly spelt out to your nearest and dearest what you want to happen after you exit this mortal coil? Have you made a Will yet? What if something happened that didn’t kill you but left you unable to act for yourself? Are there people you’d trust to act as your Power of Attorney and take care of your business if that happened? Preferably you’ll be able to think of two such people and can then give one of them POA over your personal property and the other POA over your personal care.

This month’s very public tangle over the burial of James Takamore represents a lot of private heartbreak for his longtime Pakeha partner and his Maori whanau who are now in a classic Mexican standoff where the only thing they agree on is that he died in Christchurch and is now buried at Kutarere, just about exactly 1000 kilometres north of where his partner and kids want him. It could all so easily have been avoided if the gentleman had prepared his whanau before he died.

Koutou ma, there’s enough mystery about death without leaving your whanau ill-prepared for it. Help them to understand what will happen at your death, and do whatever it takes to ensure the karanga doesn’t turn into a scream. Hei konei. Hei kona.

THE STUPOR CURE

Have you ever had the experience of hearing an embarrassing or hurtful truth from a child, or a simple and certain truth from an adult, and not known what to do with or about it?

There’s a lot in common between the tamaiti who blurts to the smiling newly-introduced adult, “Pooh, you’ve got stink breath,” and the kaumatua who says to his Iwi’s Treaty negotiators, “This government is nothing but a fiction, and that’s a fact, yet you want to settle with them”. Both get either short shrift or a diplomatic sideways shove from the targets of their comments.

A good case can be made for teaching children that not every truth has to be spoken. But for adults who know the difference between tact and teka, we can’t always avoid saying or hearing something that hurts, embarrasses or resembles a lead balloon. How truth-tellers react to the short shrift / sideways shove is up to them. But how we react when we witness these exchanges is totally on us.

Last Thursday I went out to Rangi Point to listen to what was in the Agreement in Principle (AIP) with the Crown to settle all the historical claims of Te Rarawa. Apart from the negotiations team, there were about 25 of us there and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, excepting two passionate and very well-delivered criticisms.

As I listened to the back and forth of the hui I felt troubled. Not at the detail of what’s in the AIP. That’s pretty much embargoed anyway until after it’s signed. I know, it’s cart and horse stuff and makes no sense to me either. No. What really unsettled me was the fact that we were all there wracking our brains and baring our souls over a process (treaty settlements) with a group (the government) that not one of us openly admitted to believing in or supporting. Why?

Whenever I feel confused I always apply what I call the “stupor cure” taken from a revelation given in 1829 through the Prophet Joseph Smith, part of which says – “… you must study it out in your mind; then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right I will cause that … you shall feel that it is right. But if it be not right … you shall have a stupor of thought that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong …”

I tried that here and came up with this clear answer. I choose to give feedback on treaty settlements with this government because I find the alternatives scary and impractical, and I don’t believe it’s necessary to overthrow or step completely outside the process or the government to make change happen.

Wow. That wasn’t easy to write or say. But, having done it, I no longer feel troubled and I either stand upon it, or I stand for nothing.

I recommend the stupor cure to you for use in all your dealings. Hei konei. Hei kona.