THE 10 WORST THINGS

At almost 700 pages long the Te Rarawa Deed of Settlement was written mostly by the Crown, but is interspersed with some nicely presented Te Rarawa history. Between the Crown core and the Te Rarawa wrapping, it's easy to get confused about what it all means.

I read it with two simple questions in mind; at the end of the day, who controls what happens? and how do those with rangatiratanga benefit? The answers are so comprehensively bad it’s not possible to cover them all; so here are just the 10 worst things about it:

NO CHANGE ALLOWED:
The Crown has stipulated that no change to the deed is allowed.

LITTLE LAND RETURNED:
Less than 3.5% of Te Rarawa's original land base will be returned.

LAND RANSOMED:
Most of that <3.5% will be “sold” to Te Rarawa, and has to be paid for (ransomed) before the Crown will release it. LAND ENCUMBERED:
The rest of that <3.5% will be “given” to Te Rarawa with encumbrances on it that ensure the Crown keeps control of it. RANGATIRATANGA REPLACED:
In exchange for less than 3.5% of its land and some cash, Te Rarawa gives up its native title that even the Waitangi Tribunal said it still has; Crown sovereignty will replace hapū rangatiratanga.

CROWN CONTROLS 90 MILE BEACH:
Te Rarawa will become advisors to the Crown, Northland Regional Council and Far North District Council on the management of Te Oneroa-a-Tohe (90 mile beach); the Crown refuses to acknowledge the beach is still owned by the five iwi.

CROWN CONTROLS THE WARAWARA AND OTHER ‘CONSERVATION’ LANDS:
Hapū will get to nominate advisors to the Minister of Conservation on the management of the Warawara, and iwi will get to nominate advisors on the remaining conservation lands in their rohe. But it’s the Minister who will decide whether the iwi advisors will be appointed and when they will be removed. The department, Minister and New Zealand Conservation Authority can then amend any plans made by the iwi advisors; the Crown refuses to acknowledge the lands belong to hapū.

CROWN CAN ALLOW MINING ON OUR LAND:
The Crown has reserved the right to allow prospecting and mining anywhere it sees fit in Te Rarawa – including in the Warawara forest.

CROWN CAN SELL OUR LAND:
The Crown has also reserved the right in the future to sell any land it retains control over – including the Warawara; Te Rarawa will have right of first refusal.

CROWN CONTROLS SOCIAL WELFARE:
Te Rarawa will become advisors to 11 government departments on matters of social welfare; the Crown refuses to allow the iwi to control its own social welfare.

On the facebook page, Te Whenua i te Whakaaria Mai – the promised land, I have described the deed as: one ugly piece of Crown crap being sold to you as fertiliser.

You see, besides the Crown itself and those who get shoulder-tapped as its ‘advisors’, I cannot see how one single rangatira in Pawarenga, Panguru, Ahipara or elsewhere will benefit from this deal.

HOPE IS THE THE THING

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul,
and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all.”

Last Wednesday (30 November 2011), listening to Margaret Mutu being interviewed on the Ngāti Kahu radio show, we heard the sound of a text message being received and her tone change as she finished responding to the host’s question. “Something has distracted her,” I said to my husband. Then we heard her ask the host, “Have you heard anything about a fire up home?” He had not.

The text Margaret received that night was how many of us first learnt of the fire at Karikari that contributed to the deaths of two men later that night.

I never met John “Prickles” de Ridder but I know his name and it is held for good. I did meet Willy MacRae and he is a good man. As I think of them both flying through that night over our burning whenua, dipping down to the waters of Rangaunu, seeking to find and help our distressed people who had run there to escape death; I recall Emily Dickinson’s poem about the bird of hope.

“And sweetest in the gale is heard; and sore must be the storm
that could abash the little bird that kept so many warm.”

The next day, as messages and questions poured in from all over the world, the extent and nature of the losses were becoming horribly clear. Property and acres of land with all its fauna and flora were burnt. Fanned by strong winds, the fires were threatening more destruction. But the worst news of all was the deaths of John and Willy beneath the waters of Rangaunu. Traumatised and bewildered, the people all gathered in one home.

By the end of that day both men had been recovered from the sea and Te Taumata Kaumātua o Ngāti Kahu had placed a rahui from Wairahoraho Stream on the Rangaunu side, around Whakapouaka and down to Matai Bay on the Tokerau side.

Ever since then, it is upon the bereaved families of Willy MacRae and John de Ridder that the aroha and karakia of Te Whānau Moana, the hapū of Karikari have remained focused. Because they know that, while they can and will rebuild their homes, only God can and will resurrect these men from death.

The fire is being treated as suspicious by the police and a very few people have tried to use that to push their own causes and prejudices. But the vast majority have simply offered Christlike charity and comforting hope.

In the midst of this shared tragedy, may we will all listen for the song of that sweet bird.

“I've heard it in the chillest land, and on the strangest sea;
yet never, in extremity, it asked a crumb of me.”

Haere atu ra e rua nga tangata hautoa ki to mātou Matua i te rangi. Haere haere haere atu ra.

BRAVE NEW WORLD

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world!
That has such people in it!

Miranda’s speech, taken from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, aptly describes the mood of the nation, as the Prime Minister John Key assembles a new government.

Earlier in the week, the PM told Radio New Zealand he would continue the model used during the last parliament. He said that Peter Dunne, Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples had been very effective ministers for his government and they would likely retain their portfolios. And he mused (perhaps mischievously) that John Banks might suit the corrections portfolio.

This mixed bag cabinet is more to Key’s liking than a clear majority of blue ties around the table because the Māori Party, United Future and ACT leaders, once they’ve signed confidence and supply warrants in return for their portfolios, will be far less trouble than his own people.

Minor disciplinary infractions and infighting will be “their” problem, and giving them freedom to publicly disagree with his Government, without fear of non-confidence, takes some of the heat out of question time for him.

These small party partners will also act as a buffer for Key and National against the backlash over the coming austerity programme. If the European nations fail to meet the challenges they face, our debt crisis will evolve into a credit crisis and foreign lending will stop completely. When that happens, asset sales here will be accelerated against a backdrop of massive programme cuts.

The resultant carnage will be like that scene from Murder on the Orient Express where Inspector Poirot and Doctor Bianchi examine the scene of Mr. Ratchett’s murder. The body has twelve stab wounds of varying depth; some inflicted by a left-handed person and some by a right handed person. Handkerchiefs, buttons, a pipe cleaner and other things litter the scene, each pointing to a different suspect. Finally Poirot turns to Bianchi, and asks, “Has it occurred to you that there are too many clues in this room?”

As it turns out, twelve different people have stabbed the victim at least once with the same blade.

Well, the New Zealand we knew as children is about to experience a similar death of many cuts. Why?

Will the gap between rich and poor narrow? Will the outflow of New Zealanders stop? Will Papatūānuku be better cared for? Will our children be healthier? Will our country still be ours?

Whatever the outcomes of this ‘brave new world’, in three years time, John Key will simply point to his partners and remind the electorate that there were many hands on the blade.

SAVIOUR OR SELL-OUT?

Around 2,254,681 people took part in election 2011. But a further 1,000,000 eligible voters did not bother, producing the lowest percentage of voter turnout in 120 years. This continues a downward trend that’s been going on since 1987, the year in which Andrew Krieger, John Key’s colleague at Bankers Trust in New York, made a raid on the New Zealand dollar. Now John Key has a second term of office as Prime Minister.

Over the next three years there are specific indicators in a wide range of areas to watch out for that will tell us whether Key is the saviour that the slim majority of those who voted hope he is, or the sell-out that the slimmer minority believe he is.

Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement [TPPA]; the United States will continue its drive to take what is currently a small-ish free trade agreement, and transform it into a European Union-styled entity.

Signs of a Key sell-out on this issue will include any support he gives for the creation of a separate TPPA governing body of unelected officials. Keep a close eye on who, under the TPPA, will have the ability to commandeer and deploy our military and police forces. Watch also for TPPA directives forcing us to buy our pharmaceuticals, arms, energy, agriculture supplies and such from specific suppliers. Look out for any moves to create a unified currency, or to channel our currency through a private banking authority like the Federal Reserve in the US. And look out also for a rise in numbers of Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), particularly if they have anything to do with military training centres and water.

Asset Sales; it’s a foregone conclusion that Key will now push forward with asset sales. In the final debate he said that although he can’t guarantee it, he wants the majority and controlling share of our assets to remain in New Zealand hands. Keep a close eye on the detail around asset sales and measure it against this question: who or what will determine the majority ownership and control of our assets? If it’s not New Zealanders or New Zealand law, then it’s a sell-out.

Covert Surveillance and War on Terrorism; now that it is legal for Police to secretly record any private citizen of this country, watch out for expansion of the definition of the word “terrorist” to include activists of every kind, because that too is a sell-out sign.

Settlement of Treaty of Waitangi land claims; the settlement of claims will escalate rapidly between now and 2014. Take care to read each Deed of Settlement with one question in mind: who or what has final control over the resources attached to the land included in those settlements? Particularly look out for who controls any minerals, petroleum and freshwater found on those lands. Again, if it’s not New Zealanders, we’re being sold out.

Three years will go very quickly. Whether the downward trend of voter participation will continue in the 2014 general election is yet to be seen. But before then we will know for sure whether Key is a saviour or a sell-out.

BEHOLD YOUR LITTLE ONES

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a very new infant and seen them see you, then watched as they shifted their gaze to somewhere just beyond you and smiled in delighted recognition?

When that happens I always ask, “Are you talking to the corner-angels darling?” By that I mean those flickers seen from the corner of adult eyes, but which our little ones see square on and clearly until earth life claims them fully.

I thought of the ‘corner angels’ after watching this week’s Inside New Zealand documentary on child poverty in our country, and I wondered where they were, not just for the children but for their parents.

In the mid-1980s my mother wrote an essay titled “Starving in Paradise” in which she talked about the craziness of living in a country with enough land, water, food, health, housing and education services to meet everyone’s needs, but not enough paid work to give families at the bottom the wherewithal to provide those things adequately to their little ones.

The Prime Minister of that time, Rob Muldoon (for all his well-deserved reputation as an often nasty man) saw what people needed was meaningful, paid work. In Pawarenga the six month PEP schemes with two week stand-downs between each that he established were heaven-sent. Crime rates dropped, health stats rose, and the kainga was abuzz with happy, active, engaged whānau.

Unfortunately not one government since Muldoon’s has shown any common sense about those at the bottom. Instead they’ve clung to the hopelessly failed ‘trickle-down’ theory of enriching the 1% at the top, believing that will lift the earning power of everyone else.

It’s not working for our little ones, because it’s not working for their parents.

I’ve seen good parents break under the stress of not being able to pay for what their little ones need. Some have simply walked away, some have struggled on, some have gone half or wholly mad. Most make it through somehow, a few turn bad. But many, many more are simply choosing to take themselves and their families out of the country entirely.

My brother left for Australia last week to work in the mines. He’s a registered nurse and a qualified teacher with reasonable earning power. But he’s had enough. So he’s gone, and his wife and kids will join him in the New Year.

We’re expecting two new mokopuna in the next few months. When they arrive I want to be able to say to them, “Say hi to me, I’m your corner angel and always will be.”

Then I want to be able to turn and say to their parents, “Behold your little ones, they have a happy, healthy future here in Aotearoa, and so do you.”

MMP - MORE MANA IN POLITICS

In this last week before we go to the polls I have been thinking a lot about Naomi Wolf’s 2007 book, “The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot,” in which she lays out the rise of world-wide fascism in this century and the one before it.

Many people may think they don’t know what fascism is, but if you’re old enough to vote, you actually know it better than you may realise.

In simple terms, fascism is a political ideology based on strong leadership, stable government and the removal of human rights and personal freedoms from the citizenry.

Mussolini invented fascism in Italy during the 1920s. Ever since then, fascist leaders from Hitler to Bush have all followed the same ten steps he used to shift their free, open societies into closed fascist states; and all with the consent of their citizens.

Naomi Wolf identifies those ten steps as follows:

1. Invoke a terrifying enemy; it doesn’t matter whether it’s internal or external, as long as it’s terrifying.
2. Create or support secret prisons where torture takes place; preferably outside your borders.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to your citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens' groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release; again, preferably outside your borders.
7. Target key individuals; academics, students, investigative journalists, activists.
8. Control the press.
9. Treat all political dissidents as traitors; recast dissent as treason and protest as terrorism.
10. Suspend the rule of law; remove habeus corpus (innocent until proven guilty) and due process (notice and opportunity to defend oneself).

Do you recognise these steps? You should, because New Zealand governments have advanced quite far down the checklist. We are not yet at the stage that the United States is with regard to human rights violations and suspension of the rule of law, but we’re getting there.

Fascist shifts don’t happen in a straight line of progression. Instead they happen as a series of tipping points (Malcolm Gladwell); here a little, there a little. And, as Wolf says, "When it reaches the point of no return – when democrcy can no longer heal itself – collapse happens real fast. When these tipping points start to come thick and fast, free societies close down very quickly."

As they prepare to go to the polls this Saturday, a number of people are asking me for advice about why they should vote for this person or that party.

In answer I give them the above checklist and tell them to ask themselves one simple question. Which party and which candidate is not following this check list?

Then vote for that party, their candidate and their policies.

And vote yes to keep MMP because it means More Mana in Politics.

SHOW US THE DEEDS

While an American visitor was shocked at the racism against Māori that he witnessed from a policewoman in Kerikeri during his recent visit here [Lance O’Sullivan’s column in the Northland Age 10 Nov 2011], most New Zealanders would have found it unremarkable, in the same way that they find the Crown’s Treaty settlement dealings with Māori unremarkable.

In fact, of all the letter writers to the Northland Age, only a handful can be relied upon to remark at all about the insitutitional racism which is endemic in this country against Māori and, of those, most blame Māori for it.

Anyway, rather than rage ineffectively against the machine I prefer to target its power source, or as close to it as I can get. With that in mind I have written today to Chris Finlayson, Crown Minister of Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, as follows:

Dear Chris,

Last week we asked your staff at the Office of Treaty Settlements for copies of the deeds they had drafted to settle our claims against the Crown for breaching Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The reply was that the documents were too large to email and would be uploaded to the OTS website on Monday just gone. They haven’t been.

Given that we are expected to ratify your Te Aupōuri deed in less than 6 weeks and your Te Rarawa deed not long after that, we want to see the actual deeds. In this age of electronic scanners and high speed broadband, we had expected them to have been made available to us by now. In fact we would have preferred to have seen them before they were intialed by our self-proclaimed chiefs; a courtesy your Pākehā constituents take for granted when agreements are being made in their behalf. But we know that is not how you deal with Māori.

It is not up to Te Runanga o Te Rarawa or Te Runanga Nui o Te Aupōuri to give us access to these documents. They are already very busy posting us explanatory booklets about them, and preparing to hold hui to explain those explanatory booklets to us. So these chiefly persons cannot be expected to also send or give us access to the actual documents. That’s your job.

Please instruct your staff to upload the Te Aupōuri and Te Rarawa deeds of settlement to the OTS website pronto; preferably before the chiefly ones hold their first explanatory hui.

In closing, I shall be in Wellington on the 25th of this month at the Waitangi Tribunal where these deeds will be part of the evidence presented to show why the Tribunal should make binding recommendations on the Crown to return all Ngāti Kahu lands (currently occupied and used by State-owned Enterprises or leased as Crown Forest Licenses) to Ngāti Kahu - plus compensation.

Na,

Anahera Herbert-Graves (Inside an Iwi)

SHOW US THE MONEY

“Show us the money! Show us the money!”

In the first of two televised debates held in early November for election 2011, that was the repeated one-liner that National’s John Key used to pressure Phil Goff over Labour’s election promises.

Disappointingly Goff failed to respond with any conviction whatsoever. Even more disappointing both Key and Goff completely ignored the obvious answer. In these globalised times, to fund our social and economic recovery, tax the banks on every speculative transaction they make in our territories.

How would that work?

In England it’s being promoted as the Robin Hood bank tax. Of course the banks are screaming blue murder that it would be horribly complex, unfair to individual rich members of the public, terribly tough on the banking sector, and would be of minimal benefit to the poor. But let’s unpack these objections and see whether they hold water or not.

First, how tough has this recession been on the banking sector? This is the same sector that has over the past four years received trillions of dollars worth of taxpayers moneys from across the globe to keep it going, and is still paying itself billions of dollars in bonuses. Sound like tough times to you?

Second, how unfair would this be on rich members of the public? The taxes proposed would be charged on all bank transactions that do not include members of the public; bonds, derivatives, currencies, speculative stuff. The bankers would give something like 0.05% on each deal that they did, sometimes even less. Does that does sound unfair to you?

Third, how minimal would these benefits be? Even the most conservative estimates suggest that this tiny tax on the banks would raise hundreds of billions of dollars every year across the globe, Not only would that help save lives and fund vital environmental action around the world, it would help avoid cuts to crucial public services here in this country and fund improved outcomes for us all.

Every one standing in this election says they care, and are going to do something about our falling standards of living and rising poverty. So, in the debate between the two who are most likely to form some kind of government after the election, that’s what I was listening for. What are they going to do? How are we going to pay for it?

What I heard Key say was that National would sell assets to fund education, housing and health, while Goff said Labour would rejig taxes to do the same. But neither gave me a clear vision of what that would look like.

The answer is as plain as the nose on Goff’s face; don’t sell our assets and don’t just take GST off fruit and veges; tax the banks.

The MANA movement has renamed it the Hone Heke tax, and it’s the only sensible answer to John Key’s challenge to, “Show us the money!”

WHAT PRICE SOVEREIGNTY?

The clear trend across the world is to concentrate decision making and resources in fewer hands by over-riding the sovereignty of nations. Just look at Greece and Italy where elected leaders, unable to govern as a result of having joined the European Union and done a deal with the devil itself (Goldman Sachs) have been replaced by EU appointed bureaucrats who weren’t elected by their citizens and aren’t accountable to them. Instead both men (Mario Monti in Italy and Lucas Papademos in Greece) have very strong ties to Goldman Sachs and banking.

The same devil is now behind moves to change the membership and rules of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was originally set up in 2006 between Chile, Brunei, New Zealand and Singapore. Now Australia, Peru, the United States and Viet Nam also want to join it.

It’s the US interest in joining which has made it a hot topic, because America represents seventh heaven to free trade marketeers and hell on wheels to everyone else.

Right now the TPP has no enforcement provisions, no common currency, and no common governing body. But last year Ian Ferguson (international finance specialist) and Bruce Vaughan (Asian affairs specialist) wrote a paper for Congress identifying the changes that must be made to the TPP if it is to “serve the security and trade interests” of the US.

First, it must have a common governing body made up of non-elected bureaucrats appointed by participating governments. Second, it must have the power to enforce its decisions by force of arms if necessary. Third, it must be able to sue governments, but must itself be exempt from being sued.

Just last week, Secretary of State Clinton said, now that US engagement in the middle east (Iraq and Afghanistan) is winding down, it ‘vows’ to expand its ‘engagement in the Asia-Pacific...’

For us, America’s entry into the TPP will almost certainly mean the end of Pharmac which buys our pharmaceutical and medical supplies from whoever gives us the best price. It will also be the end of the private online auction facility that Fonterra had created to allow us to get better prices than other countries for our dairy products. It will tie us irrevocably to serving the ‘security and trade interests’ of America. And it will destroy what little is left of our already taretare sovereignty.

Already we know that under John Key US Marines will be housed somewhere in New Zealand. Under him, government will have a public-private partnership with some unknown entity to build an SAS training base somewhere in New Zealand. He has shown himself willing to use our navy and police forces to arrest us in favour of foreign commerce. And his government has made laws to prosecute us for taking action against foreign spy activities in our country.

If the steward of our sovereignty is John Key, how buttressed do you feel knowing that he has a home in Honolulu and all his money in US banks? Who is he really speaking for when he has his bolt hole elsewhere and his money safely offshore?

POISONED FRUIT

Fruit of the poisonous tree is a legal metaphor in the United States used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. The logic of the terminology is that if the source of the evidence (the "tree") is tainted, then anything gained from it (the "fruit") is as well.

Last week Māori TV showed the documentary, “Operation Eight” about the illegal and racist terror raids carried out by the New Zealand Police for and on behalf of the Crown on the Tūhoe settlement of Ruatoki in 2007.

I say illegal because, in August this year, the video surveillance which comprised much of the Police’s raison d’etre for the raids was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court. Cue mad scramble by the Crown to pass retrospective legislation to make the video footage legal. It went through as law just last month after a lot of cross-party dealing and wheeling.

But, as the documentary lays out with precision, even if the video surveillance had been obtained legally, how it was edited and presented by the police in order to get authority to make the raids on Tūhoe is a black joke and an example of ‘fruit of the poisonous tree.’

You can watch the documentary on Māori TV’s website for free and see it for yourself.

Attorney-General, Chris Finlayson, who shepherded the Covert Police Surveillance Bill through the house, is also the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations, and he’s been a very busy little bee.

First, he was in the Far North again early last week, trying to convince Ngāti Kuri to drop its bottom lines regarding its lands and initial a deed of settlement with the Crown. Another poisoned fruit metaphor comes to mind here; the one that Snow White ate. To their eternal credit, Ngāti Kuri rejected what the Crown was offering and refused to swallow. Poof! Crown plan one up in smoke.

Then last Friday Finlayson hosted what was supposed to be a four-iwi initialing ceremony of four deeds of settlement (full, final and fair ones) with the Crown. But the negotiators for Ngāitakoto changed their minds when it became clear they too were being asked to drop their bottom lines on a key piece of land (Te Make aka Sweetwater) in which Te Paatu also has an interest. To their credit, Ngāitakoto also refused to swallow. Poof! Another Crown plan up in smoke.

On the same day the annual hikoi to commemorate the 1881 invasion of Parihaka by Crown troops (shades of Tūhoe terror raids) happened. And, as the marchers stood outside the barrier between them and the steps of Parliament, they spotted our Te Rarawa and Te Aupōuri whānau standing on the steps with fresh ink on their hands.

At the end of this month Ngāti Kahu has a judicial conference on our Waitangi Tribunal claim for binding recommendations against the Crown coming up. That means any deed initialed last week is somewhat moot; poisoned fruit even.

Why would anyone swallow that?

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

The theory of social contract is based on the notion that governments only exist by consent of the people; we the people agree to be governed if, in exchange, government agrees to protect us.

But here in this country, instead of protecting us, governments of left and right have spent the last thirty years deregulating all sorts of laws that have made us easy pickings for Big Banking, Big Pharmaceuticals, Big Energy, Big Farming and Big Industry.

To illustrate, after the Great Depression (1929 – 1945), laws were passed across the world, including here, to reduce the likelihood of it happening again. But in the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher took the gloves off in Great Britain, New Zealand governments rapidly followed suit.

Laws that had stopped banks from gambling investors’ money were repealed. Strict separations between bankers, brokers and insurers were removed. Laws that protected workers from unfair employment practices were put aside or weakened. Laws that protected the environment were amended or watered down. And more recent laws that recognised Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the special relationship of Māori with their whenua have been changed to diminish that relationship.

So, what has all that deregulation gained us? Our economy is now in a state of collapse (Hanover Finance, Southern Finance and triple credit rating downgrades), our infrastructure is a basket case (Pike River, the Taranaki gas line), and our environment is under pressure (Raukumara Basin, the Rena). On top of that, people are working harder for less, students are leaving university burdened with mortgage-sized debt, our housing bubble has burst, and our health and education statistics are tumbling down the OECD scale.

The only recent bright spot has been six weeks of RWC and an All Black victory. But even that’s beginning to dim as the spotlight turns on the state of the nation before the election. If you were looking for a metaphor for that state, then look no further than a ship called Rena.

“The government didn’t ground the Rena on that reef,” John Key said. True. But neither did it protect against or prepare adequately for such an event. Instead, it allowed a poorly serviced ship, under-manned by an under-paid and over-worked crew, to sail under a flag of convenience around our coastline and harbours until it fetched up on that reef.

Imagine a revolver with four chambers. First chamber represents our environment, second is our economy, third are our labour laws, and the fourth represents us the people. Well, the Rena is the bullet that fits all four chambers, while governmental negligence is the fire power.

It will take some time before the black oil works its way out of the seafood, sands and aquifers of Tauranga Moana and Te Tairāwhiti. But as each blob sinks downward or drifts shoreward, it becomes more and more clear; our government has smashed its social contract with us all.

And in its place looms a social nightmare called the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement [TPPA].

THE REVOLVING DOOR

Across the world there’s a revolving-door between politics and finance through which high-ranking political retirees like Tony Blair move from government straight into banking, and high-flying bankers like John Key move unerringly into government.

In that world, governments have not only failed to protect their people from the predations of financiers, they’ve actually passed laws that enable financiers to lure people into a state of indebtedness off which they then feast.

In a spectacularly accurate piece of purple prose, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi described Goldman Sachs, the world's most powerful investment bank, as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

To illustrate, the housing bubble was never about getting people into housing. Rather it was about neighbourhood banks and lenders acting as funnels for debts which were then packaged up with thousands of others and bought by investment banks like Goldman Sachs to either be sold again as mortgage-backed securities or held as reserves. Alternatively they could be used as collateral or gambled on via the purchase of credit default swaps (CDS).

On paper, every transaction generated more money. But it was all plaque; a gigantic fraud that makes the Nigerian scam look puny.

That became clear when New York-based bank Lehmann Brothers (the main competitor of Goldman Sachs) collapsed in 2008. Although Lehmann owed a shocking $65 billion when they collapsed, it turned out there was more than $400 billion worth of CDS being held by various speculators on just such a collapse happening.

The biggest holder, and therefore the biggest winner when Lehmann collapsed, was none other than Goldman Sachs. Conversely the biggest loser was a single insurer which was exposed to more than a quarter of those CDS: That was AIG, and it didn’t have a hope in hell of covering their exposure.

AIG had their back to wall, bankruptcy loomed, threatening to bring down the entire derivatives market, and with it the global banking system.

To forestall further collapses, the US Treasury and Federal Reserve bailed AIG out with more than $175 billion. In exchange, they took more than 80% ownership of the company. In short, all AIG’s losses fell on the backs of American taxpayers. Goldman Sachs, and other banking counterparties were paid 100 cents on the dollar. One single individual, John Paulson, received $8 Billion dollars.

The American government and these financiers have done an al-Qaeda on what was once the strongest economy in the world; they’ve flown it straight into the ground.

And yet nothing much has changed since 2008. Lenders are still luring borrowers into debt. Debt is still being bundled and on-sold to investment banks. Speculation continues. The only difference is that, now that housing is a bust, the lenders are using credit cards and student loans as the bait.

Here in New Zealand we’re seeing a similar pattern of financial collapses followed by taxpayer-funded government bailouts. Here too, credit cards and student loans are replacing home mortgages as the bait for borrowers to take on debt.

And here, as well as in America, the revolving door between politics and finance has never been busier.

CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS

Until this year I’d never heard of a credit default swap. It’s taken some time for me to get my head around what it is and why it’s so important to what’s happening to the economy today. In essence, a CDS is like an insurance policy on methamphetamine.

Here’s a hypothetical: Mr X borrows $50 from me. I want to get insurance on his debt in case he goes broke, so I go to Miss Y and, for a premium of $4 per year, she insures the debt.

Y is betting that X will pay me back, especially since she did her homework by looking at X’s credit rating and saw it was superb. But instead of writing a standard insurance policy, Y writes me a CDS.

Unfortunately Y then has some problems with her business, and she no longer has $50 to pay me in case X goes broke. The premiums I paid her are long gone.

Credit agencies notice this and kill Y’s credit rating. Now Y is stuffed because she can no longer raise cash at good rates to keep her business open (today’s large businesses need a constant flow of credit to maintain operations). Y goes bankrupt.

Now I’m in trouble. The debt X owes me is now uninsured. The credit agencies look at my books, see I have this exposed debt, and downgrade me. I enter bankruptcy as well. But I’m knee deep in the CDS game too. I wrote a ton of them for my mate Z, insuring debts owed to him by other parties. When I go down it puts pressure on X, Y and Z. Like dominoes we fall.
In the carnage it turns out that the ratings we all used to judge each other’s debt worthiness were bogus from the start. Essentially we all just gambled like we would at a blackjack table, but we did it while drunk. And blind.

In reality, the insurance company AIG wrote $78 billion worth of CDS between 2004 and 2009. Ivy League bright boys with MBAs then turned those CDS into a device which didn’t just insure against debt, but speculated if companies would fail or not. These speculative CDS could be on-sold, and often were. So, when a company went belly-up, whoever the lucky sod was holding the CDS on it at the time made a killing.

The Toxic Asset Relief Programme (TARP) in the US, and other taxpayer funded bailouts New Zealand and other countries, meant the bright boys not only survived, they were guaranteed to make money regardless of what happened to the company. As for the poor souls who had invested in it; for most of them it was a case of, “How sad, too bad, never mind!”

Here’s the bad news: the Bank for International Settlements recently reported that total derivatives trades, including CDS, now exceeds one quadrillion dollars – that’s 1,000 trillion dollars.

How is that figure even possible? The gross domestic product of all the countries in the world is only about 60 trillion dollars.

The answer to that is the real bad news.

THE TIPPING POINT

Spoilt sportsmen, conniving politicians, dishonest financiers; they all get caught eventually. And yet it often seems that, instead of kicking their sorry butts, we meekly accept their nonsense.

Perhaps that is the price we feel has to be paid for being associated with winners. Perhaps it’s what we feel has to be done to keep the leaky ship of state, sport or enterprise afloat. Hei aha? Whatever the reason, the tipping point always comes and change happens.

Right now we’re seeing it happening with regards to ‘the economy.’ As millions of homeless, jobless, cashless people (and those who are about to join their ranks) wake up to the fact that someone is making a financial killing off their misery, they are taking to the streets in protest.

Waves of civil disobedience are rippling across North America, the Middle East, and Europe against the moneymen who profit at every turn of the screw. The brokers, insurers, bankers and financiers, as well as the princes and politicians who serve their interests; to millions across the world they all deserve to be thrown out on their ear. And who can blame them for feeling that way?

However a word of caution.

It is good to see the rising awareness amongst the middle-class in particular that our nations and economies are not being run well by those in power. But, unless we understand that it is our own attitudes, expectations and practices that feed the problem and support those in power, nothing will change for us.

It does not matter what kind of government it is. Democracy, autocracy, theocracy, and even that strange beast called plutocracy (the rule or power of the wealthy); they are all addicted to an economic system called money upon which all international trading and commerce occurs. In turn we are addicted to it, mainly as borrowers.

As with any addiction, we who suffer from it are all subject to the increasingly centralised control of the money by an increasingly small and powerful group.

So, until enough of us understand how the addiction works and how to recover from it, nothing will change. In fact it will just get a whole lot worse as the cycle of boom and bust recurs on ever-increasing scales.

How do we break the cycle? Well, the people I respect most are all advising the same things. First, stop spending on anything but the necessities and pay your debts down. Second, drop your expectations and ‘use it up or wear it out, make it do or do without.’ Third, grow your own food as much as possible. Fourth, make alliances with likeminded people.

Depending on how much of this advice you take, when the tipping point comes (and it will), you’ll either already be in recovery, in jail, or dead and buried.

GO FLY A KITE

For some time now Chris Finlayson has been flying kites for the crown amongst the iwi of Te Hiku o Te Ika, gauging how much he can get away with and who will support him against Ngāti Kahu.

In August he wrote instructing Ngāti Kahu to comply with Crown deadlines about providing information relating to the settlement of the other four iwi. Last month he wrote again saying he has now decided how to extinguish (not settle) Ngāti Kahu’s claims.

He intends to vest a lot of Ngāti Kahu lands in other iwi; Rangiāniwaniwa (kura kaupapa and airport), Te Make (the Sweetwater farm), Te Hiku forest lands as far north as Hukatere, and several properties in Kaitāia and Takahue. On top of that, he has withdrawn more than 60 other properties altogether that were in the Ngāti Kahu and Te Rarawa agreements in principle, saying the Crown wants to keep them (presumably to sell). In any event they have disappeared off the ever-shortening list of lands the crown is willing to transfer to the other iwi.

With regard to Rangiāniwaniwa, Finlayson instructs that the land will be transferred in a 50:50 split to Ngāi Takoto and Ngāti Kahu. But, until Ngāti Kahu behave like good Mowries, the crown will hang on to the Ngāti Kahu share. And if Ngāti Kahu are still being bad Mowries 36 months later, then the crown will transfer the Ngāti Kahu share to Ngāi Takoto. So, if Ngāi Takoto waits long enough, they can swoop in and take all of Rangiāniwaniwa. Never mind that the two whānau from whom it was taken during WW2 are still living right next to Rangiāniwaniwa; the Erstich and Pōpata whānau of Ngāti Kahu. Fortunately we can rely on the rank and file Ngāi Takoto not to fly that kite.

But wait, there’s more. Finlayson has also decided he must protect Far North District Council’s $1 per annum lease on more than half of Rangiāniwaniwa. Never mind that the lease doesn’t expire until 2013 or that he has no title on the land. Never mind that it still belongs to Patukōraha and Ngāi Tohianga hapū of Ngāti Kahu and Ngāi Takoto. And never mind that the council is lead by a man who, when told in 2008 that the land was going back to Ngāti Kahu and Ngāi Takoto, said there was no way Mowry could ever own an airport.

The legal owners of Rangiāniwaniwa met last Thursday and reaffirmed that they are happy for both the airport and the kura kaupapa to remain on their land. But it is they who will determine the terms of the renewed leases.

As for crown and council, they will get their answers in the Waitangi Tribunal soon enough. Until then, they are invited to take their racist whim, will and purported authority over all iwi including Ngāti Kahu, and go fly a kite.

UP IN SMOKE

On 12th November 1996 the first MMP general election in New Zealand was held. Just five months earlier, on the morning of 17th June, Ruapehu had erupted spectacularly, spewing 7 million tonnes of ash into the air.

Both these events impacted hugely on the land claims of Ngāti Kuri, Te Aupōuri, Ngāitakoto, Te Rarawa and Ngāti Kahu. But of the two, the Ruapehu eruption had the most immediate impact.

How so? Because, apart from contaminating the drinking water for miles around, damaging buildings, vehicles and the Rangipo Power Station, the ash and smoke also brought air travel between Auckland and Wellington to a halt for several days.

That meant a scheduled meeting between then Minister of Treaty Negotiations, Doug Graham, and Te Rūnanga o Muriwhenua didn’t happen. Partly as a result of that missed meeting, the Crown’s plans to quickly settle the five iwi claims before the general election of 1996, and before the Tribunal released its 1997 report on those claims, went up in smoke.
In the fifteen years since, there have been four more general elections, countless meetings between Crown and Iwi negotiators, and Ruapehu has erupted twice.

In 1996, those who supported settling on the Crown’s terms had two catch-cries; “Land the whale first, then cut it up,” and “Settle now, or miss the bus.”

I never beleived either catchcry. Instead I insisted on knowing how fresh the whale was, where the bus was going and who was driving it. I’ve always been picky that way.

In 1996 the whale was said to be worth $120 million. Where that figure came from and what it was based on, is not known. In the end it didn’t matter because both it and the bus it rode into town on were chimera. The original chimera was a monster in Greek mythology with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a snake’s tail. The word now means a vain or idle fancy.
For hapū rangatira, unless settlement is based on extinguishing the Crown’s false claims to their lands, and until the Crown relinquishes its grip on those lands, the whale will prove to have been a chimera. And if settlement is done under the Crown’s current terms of extinguishing Te Tiriti and Te Whakaputanga, the bus will have delivered them into its hands.

Fast forward to 2011. On November 26th, another general election happens. Before then, in the week of October 10th – 15th, the Crown plans to sign deeds of settlement with four iwi other than Ngāti Kahu. Those deeds will include the gains that Ngāti Kahu won off the Crown. They will also include lands that Ngāti Kahu, through Te Paatu, has a strong interest in; Kaitāia, the airport, the forests, Te Oneroa-a-Tohe, Te Make (Sweetwater), Kaimaumau and Maungataniwha.

Ngāti Kahu has not agreed to any of its lands being included, and will not be present.

Hei aha. Regardless of what Ruapehu might do, someone’s plans are about to go up in smoke.

WAITANGI TRIBUNAL MEMORANDUM AND DIRECTIONS

Thanks to Ngāti Kahu the Muriwhenua Land Claim before the Waitangi Tribunal is alive again.

Last week (12th September), the Tribunal’s Chief Judge released a two page memorandum of directions on Ngāti Kahu’s application for binding recommendations asking that the Crown be ordered to return all State-owned Enterprise and Crown Forest Lands in the Ngāti Kahu rohe, plus pay compensation to Ngāti Kahu. Following is the substance of that memo.

1. On 5 July 2011 the Tribunal received a memorandum of counsel for Ngāti Kahu seeking to revive the application for remedies filed in October 2007 and amended in November 2007.
2. In accordance with my memorandum-directions of 19 July 2011 and 19 August 2011 the Waitangi Tribunal’s Registrar has completed a review of the record of inquiry for the Muriwhenua Land Claim and concluded that despite some inconsistencies in the record there is a reasonable level of docmentation available, both physical and electronic, to enable a new peresiding officer to be appointed.
3. Notwithstanding this conclusion, the review identified missing documents that may be of relevance to the current application, and may be in the possession of the Crown. These documents are as follows:
a) Topographical display map with overlays.
b) J Williams, Claimant Submission in support of Kaimaumau recommendation (22 Oct 91);
c) Submission from Te Runanga o Muriwhenua, “Outline of Te Runanga o Muriwhenua to this and subsequent Tribunal processes”;
d) Letter from Juken Nissho Ltd to OTS, 2 Apr 98, which is attached to Crown submission re pre-remedies hearing, 31 Mar 98; and
e) Submissions of Te Runanga-a-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu, 5 Apr 98
4. If the Crown is in possession of these documents it is to file these documents with the Tribunal no later than midday, Monday 19 September 2011. Alternatively, the Crown should notify the Tribunal if these documents are not available.
5. However, having regard to the report I have received from the Registrar, I am satisfied that there is an adequate record of inquiry that is in a condition to enable a new presiding officer to review and familiarise himself or herself with the relevant documents.
6. Accordingly, pusuant to clause 5AA(1) of the Second Schedule to the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, I now appoint Judge S J Clark, a judge of the Maori Land Court, as the replacement presiding officer of the Muriwhenua Land Claim inquiry.
For the bush lawyers amongst us, that means the Crown had until yesterday to respond as directed.

Interestingly prior to releasing this memo, the Tribunal had released a much lengthier one on 26th August with regard to the Turanganui a Kiwa inquiry; that’s the consolidated claim which includes Stephen Haronga, the man whose success in the Supreme Court reopened remedies as an option for Ngāti Kahu. In that memo the Tribunal has decided to hold hearings. Its decision to do so is based on a number of determinations it had made in 1998 about binding recommendations in Muriwhenua.

The Crown should be worried.

UNRIGHTEOUS DOMINION

A phenomenon I have only just recently registered, but which really (when I cast my memory back) has been around all my life, is how little conviction and belief the Crown and its supporters have in the language, culture and laws they derived from England.

Take just one word and its legal, linguistic and cultural meanings as an example: “rightfully.”

When I see and hear that word I immediately get that it is a compound of “right” and “fully”.

The first part (right) brings to mind classic English words, phrases and colloquialisms like: “the golden rule”, “courage of one’s convictions”, “a moral compass”, “a sense of responsibility”, “the sword of righteousness”, “defender of truth”, “the ten commandments”. When you use the word “right” you are describing something in the Crown’s language and law that is right – not wrong.

The second part (fully) brings to mind other great English colloquialisms and phrases like “a sense of completeness”, “full as a bull”, “chocker-block”, “pregnant with possibility”, “my cup runneth over”, “total capacity”. When you use the word "fully", you are describing something in the Crown’s law, language and culture that is in a state of fullness – not emptiness.

The compound word “rightfully” not only holds all of the meanings of both its parts, it takes on a number of additional meanings as well. However, none of those meanings adds up to a state of wrong or emptiness.

So, can the word “rightfully” be applied today to the Crown’s assertions in word and deed that it is sovereign with dominion over the country known as New Zealand?

The answer to that question has been evolving for some time now through the kōrero, research and writings coming out of the marae and hui, parliament and select committees, the universities and institutions of this and other lands, the United Nations, the media. But nowhere is it more clearly to be seen taking shape than within the courts and tribunals of this and other lands.

From my long observation of the courts and three decades of working on the interface between the Crown and Māori, the answer is “no”. No, the Crown cannot yet rightfully assert that it holds sovereignty and dominion over this country. No, it cannot continue to get away with breaking its own laws. No, it cannot continue without a written constitution based on Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The Crown is inching towards doing the “right” thing “fully”. It’s going begrudgingly, even angrily at times; consider Chris Finlayson’s outburst last year telling Ngāti Kahu to go to hell. But it is going.

It has been prophesied that one day we shall all see eye to eye, and that which is wrong shall be set right. That day is coming.

Until then the trend is clear. Māori and others who have strong conviction and belief in both the Māori and English cultures, languages and laws will continue to fight for and win well-argued and legal outcomes against the Crown’s unrighteous dominion.

THE CROWN'S CROWBAR

How can you tell when the Crown is lying? Who decides how and when your people's claims are settled?

If you know the answers to those questions, congratulations; you have just passed the minimum entry requirement to a tough course in the school of hard knocks titled, ‘Direct Treaty Negotiations With The Crown 101'. 

Work hard and you might one day be qualified to be given the mandate to negotiate for your people who lodged, researched and presented their claims to the Waitangi Tribunal.

But you will first have to reach a much higher level of knowledge, even wisdom.

Paper one is titled, What Does Settlement Mean? You will need to answer that question correctly with regard to the different perspectives of at least four distinct groups; the Crown, the public, your people and you. Here is your cram sheet.

• With regard to your people, only they can tell you what settlement means for them, because only they know what they have lost since their tūpuna signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi. You must take the time to be instructed by their ahikāroa, kaumātua kuia and historians because it is they who know what and how settlement will be reached, not the individual iwi and hapū members scattered throughout the world. It is their mandate you must first seek, and the best place to hear their kōrero is in the preparation and presentation of their claims to the Waitangi Tribunal.

• With regard to the public, you can take it as a given that settlement means little to most of them. That is sad. But you don’t have time to educate them and it is not your job to do so.

• With regard to the Crown, settlement means ‘extinguishment’ of Te Tiriti and amen to the mana whenua, rangatiratiratanga and kaitiakitanga of your people. Having finally and irrevocably crowbarred your people away from their lands and everything that made them and you rangatira, the Crown will make itself your sovereign.  

• In exchange the Crown will not pay a cent of compensation. Instead it will, with one hand, give you no more (probably a lot less) than three cents in the dollar on the current value of the land it stole from your people. Then with the other hand it will force you to give back more than 90% in ransom before it will partially relinquish control over perhaps 5% of that land. Those calculations are based on the largest ‘settlements’ to date.

For you, based on those same settlements, it means the Crown will write a deed into which it will slip clauses that beef up its false claims to own everything under the land of your people, and its control over everything above it.

If you are the negotiator that lets all this happen, you will have successfully swapped the rangatiratanga of your people for a position as advisors to Crown agents like DoC and FNDC. Instead of revitalising your people, you will have gutted them.

Finally, you will be remembered forever as the Crown’s crowbar; the one who let the Crown decide when and how your people’s claims were settled; the one who never learnt that the Crown is lying whenever its many lips are moving.

Q & A

At the hui-a-iwi held last Thursday in Kareponia marae a good cross-section of people from across Te Hiku got their questions answered about Ngāti Kahu’s application to the Waitangi Tribunal. For everyone’s enlightenment, I’ve summarized the kōrero in a question and answer format.

Why have Ngāti Kahu gone back to the Tribunal? Because negotiations reached an impasse, so the claimants told the negotiators to go back for binding recommendations.

Why did negotiations between Ngāti Kahu and the Crown fail? Because of ongoing Crown bad faith.

Will this hold up the other iwi? Potentially. They can settle their own claims where they have exclusive interests any time they and the Crown agree. But if they attempt to settle claims on lands and resources in which Ngāti Kahu hold an interest, this process may hold that up.

Who are we acting for? For all the claims which have already been investigated and reported on by the Waitangi Tribunal. Additionally we act for several claims lodged after the Tribunal report was released in 1997.

What redress comes from binding recommendations? We get a percentage of the lands under the Te Hiku (formerly Aupōuri) and Ōtangaroa forests, a percentage of the forest value, plus a percentage of the annual rentals paid by JNL. Additionally we get Rangiputa and Kohumaru stations, other SoE and education properties, and properties that have 27B Memorials on their titles.

However, we don’t get any pūtea to ransom back our lands from the thief, or the interest on those funds as per the 2008 AiP. Nor do we get our wāhi tapu sites or reserve lands, the social revitalisation funds or the Ngāti Kahu Statutory Board over DoC administered lands. In short we don’t get settlement. But seeing as the Crown uses settlement to extinguish the Treaty rights and status of those settling, that’s not as great a loss as some might make it out to be.

Who holds the redress from binding recommendations? The Tribunal decides, so the options will be part of legal argument presented to the Tribunal.

What happens to negotiations? After the Tribunal makes a binding recommendation, the Crown has 90 days to negotiate an acceptable settlement, otherwise the recommendations become binding. The negotiators will return to Ngāti Kahu during this time for instructions on any Crown offer.

Can hapu negotiate their own claims? They have been able to elsewhere. But for some unknown reason the Crown refuses to negotiate with hapū or individual claimants in Te Hiku o Te Ika.

What happens next? The Crown has to file its response to the Ngāti Kahu application this month. The Tribunal will complete its review of the Muriwhenua record of inquiry and readiness for hearing next month. There may be additional interlocutory steps required before the end of 2011. Appointment of a new presiding officer and panel will then happen, followed by the setting of dates and issues for hearings, hearings themselves-, consideration of arguments from all parties and a Tribunal decision, all hopefully in 2012.

Then, dependent on the outcomes of any negotiations during the 90 day period following binding recommendations, either a negotiated settlement will be processed for ratification by the Crown and Ngāti Kahu, or the recommendations will become final.

THE IK FACTOR

As I prepare to vote in the general elections later this year, I’m looking at the environment and carefully measuring every candidate and party for what I call the Ik factor.

I coined the phrase from the late Lewis Thomas who had the knack of writing about all sorts of things in a way I could understand. In one of his best known essays he considered the case of the Iks, an indigenous tribe of Uganda who had two disasters befall them in the 1960s. First they were displaced from their land to create a national park and consequently suffered extreme famine. Second they had a British-American anthropologist come live with and study them for two years, by the end of which he seems to have thoroughly despised them.

He recorded that they lived solitary and unloved lives, snatched food from their weakest members. defecated on each other’s doorsteps, and shouted derision at each other’s misfortunes. Even worse, they treated him as one of the family, meaning they showed him no love at all.

As a result he concluded that not only were they the grabbiest bunch of misery-guts imaginable, they were also proof that at heart humans are naturally inclined to be brutish and anti-social.

When I read that I felt sick because, although my experience said it wasn’t true, it reminded me of something. What? I go with Lewis who suggested that the Iks, in their despair, had gone mad and devolved into singular municipalities, even nation states of one, with no sense of familiness or social bonding to each other or their environment.

Yes, that was it. To illustrate, while such nastiness is still relatively rare between neighbouring whānau, we see Ikness between district and regional authorities every time there’s another spill of raw tiko into our waterways. It’s even worse between sovereign nations where warfare is widespread and whole oceans are polluted. Iks the most of them.

In this, as in every election year, the current government has made sure that any issue that might anger voters is either out of sight, or sopped into silence. Asset sales? Not this year. Protesting Māori? Leave them to mainstream media. Shoddy health and safety standards in our mines? Reinstate mine inspectors. Deepsea oil exploration? Off the table.

Will any of these silencers and sops last? Unlikely while parliament is full of Iks who see people as labour units and Papatūānuku as an impersonal resource that can be exposed to risk of pollution and sold to the highest bidder.

Back to Lewis. "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am by the realization that we are a social species,” he wrote in 1976, “you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us." Ever since then, I’ve been keeping my eye out and it’s clear. Being a ‘social species’ is not only good for us it’s good for the environment. But only when we bring the Ik factor way down and treat Earth and each other as known and loved members of the whānau.

REVIEW

As they prepare to return to the Waitangi Tribunal, it is timely to review the Tribunal and its work, as well as that of the Crown, with regard to Ngāti Kahu.

The Waitangi Tribunal is a Crown appointed Commission of Inquiry established in 1975 to inquire into and make recommendations on breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi by the Crown. It is made up of people who have specialist knowledge and expertise in British culture and law as well as in aspects of tikanga Māori. It relies on claimants appearing before it to advise on the tikanga of each hapū and iwi making claims. From 1990 to 1994 Ngāti Kahu, led by McCully Matiu, sent many kaumātua to explain their tikanga to the Tribunal.

The Tribunal inquired into the actions of the British Crown, settlers and settler governments to find out whether they had complied with British law when they made claims to or took over control of Ngāti Kahu lands. The Tribunal found that they had not. Instead they had deliberately ignored and violated Ngāti Kahu tikanga in respect of their lands, repeatedly breached the Treaty of Waitangi, and stolen most of that land. As a result, the Tribunal recommended the Crown transfer substantial property back to Ngāti Kahu.

The fact that the Tribunal made the findings it did is extremely important. This is one part of the Crown telling another part of the Crown that it has acted illegally and that it now has very large and serious liabilities as a result. In terms of both Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and in terms of its own laws, the Crown has little choice but to return what it stole.

All of Ngāti Kahu’s rohe has historical and cultural significance. Many of those places and their associated wāhi tapu have suffered severe degradation physically and/or spiritually when the Crown and its supporters have falsely claimed them, and when Ngāti Kahu have been unable to maintain full association as mana whenua.

Before European contact, Ngāti Kahu exercised its own laws and customs based on values rather than a rigid set of rules. Despite superficial changes after contact with Europeans, the essential nature of Ngāti Kahu social organisation, authority, leadership, tikanga, law, and protocols, has remained unchanged.

In 1840, Te Tiriti o Waitangi set out the conditions under which the Queen of England could exercise authority over her own British people and guaranteed that the rangatira of Ngāti Kahu would continue to exercise the same rangatiratanga that they had always exercised and that had been previously acknowledged in the 1835 Te Hakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni. It also guaranteed that Ngāti Kahu would enjoy all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of British citizens.

As the Tribunal has already found, the Crown has failed to honour these guarantees to Ngāti Kahu.

GHOSTBUSTERS

Last month, Te Runanga-a-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu lodged an application formally asking the Waitangi Tribunal to order the Crown to return all Crown forest and State-owned Enterprise lands in the Ngāti Kahu rohe. A mere four days after the application had been lodged, the Tribunal issued a memorandum in which it directed the Crown to respond by 5th August.

When the application was lodged I had fully expected a two-pronged attack from the Crown. First, it would claim Ngāti Kahu was holding up other iwi in the region from settling their claims. Second, it would try to delay any hearing so it could sort out the details of settlement with the other iwi this month, before parliament shuts for the general elections.

Sure enough, media reports quickly appeared saying that the other iwi’s settlements would be jeopardised if the Tribunal agreed to hear Ngāti Kahu’s application. These reports are total kaka. There is nothing stopping other iwi settling their claims. What they cannot settle are claims over lands in which Ngāti Kahu has an interest.

But it gets better. By the end of the month the Crown had sent a memo to the Tribunal saying it couldn’t respond to the application until Ngāti Kahu had provided further information. Quite apart from the fact that it is not for the Crown to dictate the Tribunal’s direction, it actually already has all the information it claims it needs.

Then, just four days after that delaying gambit, the New Zealand Herald ran a story saying that, so rarely is the power of binding recommendations used by the Tribunal, ‘that some have likened it to a “kehua" or ghost.’

Such a claim is astonishing. I have been intimately involved with land claims for almost three decades now, and I have never, ever heard anyone refer to the Tribunal’s power to make binding recommendations as a ‘ghost.’ Who are these nameless ‘some’ quoted by the Herald? They can only be Crown stooges. Certainly no self-respecting Māori would ever say such a thing.

However in the same report the Herald does quote another iwi’s leader saying he believed [Ngāti Kahu] was on a "hiding to nothing" with its application, because ‘the Haronga decision applied to land which originally belonged to a Māori incorporation.’

That is such utter gobbledegook that I must assume he has been misquoted. Anyone who has actually read the Haronga decision knows it applies solely to the duty of the Waitangi Tribunal to hold a hearing and make a decision on an application.

What next? Well, I expect the Crown to carry on trying to delay the hearing, to continue painting Ngāti Kahu as ‘bad’ and the other iwi as ‘good’, and to persist in urging those other iwi to settle fully and finally on Ngāti Kahu lands. I also expect the Tribunal to hear Ngāti Kahu’s application and make a decision based on law, not on politics.

Now that the kehua has been well and truly busted, the Crown should just get on with preparing itself for the hearing.

Kei a rātou.

AN EPIC FIGHT

In 1847, in an epic decision that was not appealed to the Privy Council, the Supreme Court declared that aboriginal title "cannot be extinguished (at least in times of peace) otherwise than by the free consent of the Native occupiers."

Instead of developing laws around that decision, the New Zealand Parliament responded with the Maori Lands Act 1862 and the Native Rights Act 1865 which established the Native Land Court (today the Māori Land Court) to hear aboriginal title claims, and—if proven—to convert them into freehold interests that could be sold to Pākehā.

Why did the Crown do that? Because it knew that the key to removing land from Māori hands and getting it into the hands of Pākehā, was to break and replace the hapū system of collective ownership with a system of individual ownership. Having done that, it was then able to ‘legally’ separate hapū from their lands, and vice versa.

Given the suffering caused by individualisation, you’d think Māori would recognise and shun it like the plague if it ever appeared again, wouldn’t you? Well, apparently not.

Earlier this year the hapū of Ngāpuhi, the largest iwi in Aotearoa, finally began to establish before the Waitangi Tribunal the basis of their many grievances against the Crown for its innumerable breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi since 1840. Having completed the first phase of their hearings, they were preparing for the second stage when it became clear that, with the Crown’s support, Tūhoronuku, a sub-committee of Ngāpuhi’s iwi authority, were about to seek a mandate to settle their claims for them.

The hapū are not happy. Under the banner of Te Kotahitanga o Ngāpuhi they are now trying to persuade Tūhoronuku to back off the mandating process so they can focus their energies on second phase hearings of their claims.

Last week I listened to the live broadcast on iwi radio of the hui held in Te Tii between the two groups. With several hundred people present, it was clear that the overwhelming majority favoured the Kotahitanga position. But it was just as clear Tūhoronuku are not going to back off.

That is very bad news for all of us who don’t want them to fight each other.
Their key messages are very similar sounding but are actually quite different. Tūhoronuku says repeatedly, “Let Ngāpuhi speak.” Te Kotahitanga says just as consistently, “Let Ngāpuhi be heard.” The difference hinges on the fact that Tūhoronuku is not seeking its mandate from the hapū, but will instead appeal directly to individuals like myself.

For hapū, the use by their iwi of individualisation will be even more destructive than when the Crown did it to them in 1865.

Hapū are the transformer in the circuit between whānau and iwi, and many Ngāpuhi hapū are bigger than some iwi. So regardless of what I and others want, unless key iwi leaders do what is right by their hapū, an epic fight is inevitable.

Aue! E koutou, e ngā mea ataahua, nā te aha i āhei ai i a koutou te kōtiti ke atu i ngā huarahi a te hapū?

BACK TO THE TRIBUNAL

In 1986 Ngāti Kahu’s hapū leaders agreed to allow our land claims to be consolidated into WAI 45, along with those of Ngāti Kuri, Te Aupōuri, Ngāi Takoto and Te Rarawa.

What followed were thirteen long and arduous weeks of hearings held over five years. It then took a further three years before the Waitangi Tribunal released the Muriwhenua Land Claims Report (1997) in which it comprehensively upheld all of Ngāti Kahu’s claims and found that the Crown had breached Te Tiriti grievously, thereby seriously prejudicing us. The Tribunal also recommended in its report that the Crown make immediate redress for its breaches, starting with a substantial transfer of assets to the claimants.

Ngāti Kahu has been trying to negotiate a settlement for eight years now. But from the start the Crown has shown nothing but bad faith.

First it tried to dictate both the settlement process and the content of our settlement. Then it passed laws to steal the takutaimoana, sold off claim lands to private buyers, sold mineral exploration rights to foreigners, and allowed Landcorp to try and sell parts of Rangiputa station.

More recently it has insisted that Ngāti Kahu and the other iwi must pay it almost $10 million for the Aupōuri forest lands when it has already had a return on that land of $37 million from JNL for the cutting rights. Now it has told every iwi in Te Hiku, except Ngāti Kahu, that it has given up trying to settle with us at the same time as the others because it doesn’t like the terms of our deed of partial settlement.

Instead of settling with Ngāti Kahu at a high level, thereby lifting the other iwi settlements up, the Crown is maneuvering to leave us to the side while using lands in which our hapū share an interest to settle at a lower level with the other iwi.

Ngāti Kahu’s hapū have now instructed our mandated negotiators to file with the Waitangi Tribunal for a resumption of the hearing it adjourned in 2008, and to make binding recommendations that the Crown return to Ngāti Kahu all Crown forest and State-owned Enterprise lands in the rohe, plus pay compensation on the forest lands. Legal counsel for Ngāti Kahu filed last Friday.

The Crown has never acknowledged the findings of its own Tribunal. Nor has it paid a cent or transferred any assets to Ngāti Kahu. For now it will get its way ~ there will be no settlement done on Ngāti Kahu’s terms at this time.

But the Crown also knows that this is only a delay, not a reprieve, because even after our hapū get what they can through the Tribunal, they will still be able to pursue settlement, and it is a dead cert that they will.

But an even greater certainty is that the next generation of Ngāti Kahu hapū leaders will be even stronger than the six generations who preceded them.

This delay will cost the Crown dearly.

FEAR OR FREEDOM

At a recent meeting of Christian women here in Kaitaia, one of our number walked out because two others publicly commented on her perceived shortcomings. In a mere minute the feeling in the meeting went from pleasant to poisoned. I actually envied those amongst us who were deaf because they didn’t get to hear the acid tones of the petty and unintelligent exchange.

At another meeting on the same day another group of women, this time Māori in Auckland, openly mocked and ridiculed a Christian woman who they perceived as being wrong for their organisation. Whether Hannah Tamaki should lead the Māori Women’s Welfare League or not is a matter for their ballot box. Certainly the lady doesn’t float my boat, but to belittle her for being a peroxide blonde was nothing but petty and unintelligent.

The presenting problems between these different groups of women are not unique to any gender, race, faith or age group. Instead they are symptomatic of some deeper difficulty. What is it that causes any one of us to act offensively, or react defensively? How can we feel right about hurting or being hurt? I believe that in every case the underlying cause is spiritual and is triggered by fear.

There is an old wisdom that says we are only as sick as our secrets. I would amend that to say that we are only as sick as our secret fears. I know what it is to regret saying something stupid or doing something dumb, and to know that it can’t be unsaid or undone. In those cases I’ve had to watch the reactions of others play out, and know that they are beyond my control. I’ve had to face my own fears and failings, and admit to them. I’ve given and received forgiveness, and have experienced the freedom which comes with that.

As a Christian I’ve gotten used to some of my whānau looking at me sideways and making snide comments like, “The problem with Christianity is that it’s full of Christians.” At one level they’re right, wherever there are people there are problems. But at another level they’re wrong, because as someone wiser then me once said, the church is a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints.

Similarly, as a Māori I’ve gotten used to the Crown and its supporters treating me differently and then blaming me for that difference. At one level I’m hoha with them for projecting onto me their fear of losing power and control, especially to Māori. But at another level I feel sorry for them. No matter how much material wealth they garner, they still don’t feel safe from Māori ‘radicals.’ Their fear is poisoning them. They need a hospital.

As one who has to regularly engage with these fearful folk, I can choose to either pass on their poison or to rise above the fears that lie beneath their behaviour.

Every choice has a consequence, but the unique thing about the choice between fear or freedom is that they are also their own consequence. I choose freedom.

KRIS KJELDSEN

When my Pākehā grandmother married my grandfather she probably had no idea that sometime during their long and fiery union she would move from being considered a stranger amongst Māori, to becoming he tau iwi. But that is what happened.

There are other Pākehā who, although their starting point was different, became similarly connected. One such was Kris Kjeldsen, aka Kris Hippy.

Kris came to Pawarenga with his wife Diane in the early 1970s. Us rangatahi were riding home after a day of just being, when this old bomb stopped, a Pākehā hopped out, looked up and drawled, “Which one of you kids wants to swap your horse for my car?” Willie Pirini was the quickest to do the deal. So that’s how he became the first of us to own a car, while Kris and Diane took tenure of a spavined nag named Freepass. As we watched that delicately blonde and very hapū girl ride away with her husband walking in front, I thought they looked like Pākehā versions of Joseph and Mary. Of course, the horse outlasted the car by many years.

California was Kris’ birthplace, but Papatūānuku was his true address and Tangaroa his post-code. He was an ecologist. During his Zuma Beach / Baja surfing days, he’d fought against Chrysler naming its cars after marine creatures like the Barracuda. And, at a time when we Pawarengans were just starting to gain electricity, flush toilets and inside plumbing, he was renouncing them. We thought he was mad, but the energy crises during the mid and late 1970s proved him sane.

Kris' accent enthralled us. We'd talk to him just to hear it. "How are the kūtai?" we asked one day. "Jerst lahk rerber-banz," was the answer. So that became our response to any number of questions. Sister Peters to our confirmation class, "What is faith?" Answer: "Just like rerber-banz."

Kris’ two oldest children were born in Pawarenga and schooled at Hāta Maria. A third child is buried there. He was a founding Trustee of the Pawarenga Community Trust, and tutored our first community garden courses there. He was also one of the people who revived the sport of waka ama in Aotearoa. In fact its national body was founded in Pawarenga in 1987 at a hui in Taiao marae.

For the last twenty years, Kris had dedicated his life to the growth of that sport. He’d built thousands of waka and many more paddles. However it was during his first twenty years amongst the hapū of Te Uri o Tai in Pawarenga that Kris had moved from being ‘that strange hippie’ to becoming our beloved brother and friend – he tau iwi.

Kris lived and worked beside Māori whakawhiti i ngā mōtu for just over forty years, and he loved us just as we are. Kris died last Thursday.

He tohu aroha tēnei ki te whānau pani kua noho mokemoke nei mo tātou hoa, he tangata aroha kua moe nei ki te pō roa. Haere ra e Kris. Haere ra e hoa, haere atu ra. Say hello to Bo and Chris from us.

THE RACE RACE

As the provisional results of the Taitokerau by-election emerged on Saturday night, a question was posted to the yahoo newsfeed site from a chap calling himself Bruce. “As a relative newcomer to these fair islands can someone please explain why in a supposed first world civilised country there is a political party called Mana based on race??!!!” The punctuation is his.

Bruce is confused because he doesn’t know that, as a political party, Te Mana is not race-based. But his confusion is understandable because, while Te Mana is not race-based, the Māori seats are. However the racism that gave rise to them was and is entirely that of the Crown and its supporters who, in 1867, created the original four Māori seats in a parliament of 74 at a time when the majority of the population were clearly Māori.

The relevant Act was passed only after lengthy debate. Most conservative MPs considered Māori "unfit" to participate in government, and opposed Māori representation in Parliament, while some MPs from the other end of the spectrum (such as James FitzGerald, who had proposed allocating a third of Parliament to Māori) regarded the concessions given to Māori as insufficient. In the end the setting up of separate Māori electorates assuaged conservative opposition to the bill; they had previously feared that Māori would gain the right to vote in general electorates, thereby forcing all MPs (rather than just four Māori MPs) to take notice of Māori opinion.

Before this law came into effect, no direct prohibition on Māori voting existed, but other indirect prohibitions, like the property qualification, made it extremely difficult for Māori to exercise their theoretical electoral rights. In order to vote, one needed to possess a certain value of land. Māori owned heaps of land, but held it in common, not under individual title, and under the law that disqualified them from voting. Donald McLean explicitly intended his bill as a temporary measure to give specific representation to Māori until they adopted European customs of land ownership. In effect, the Māori seats were the Crown’s way of dressing up as enlightened and benign, its racist marginalisation of Māori and their customs. The Māori electorates remain in place today, despite the property qualification for voting being removed in 1879.

Racism is illogical and it breeds irrational consequences. Currently Māori refuse to relinquish these race-based seats, not because we see them as the best option for our political representation in the future, but because they are the only option. However there is an opposite (hopefully stronger) force working against the racism behind them, which is currently manifesting in an emerging movement composed of a younger, poorer, hungrier and smarter demographic across all races.

If, as I expect, Hone takes the special votes and reclaims the Taitokerau seat, then that movement will have a place on the front bench of parliament as well as more resources with which to unite its constituency before the general election.

Regardless of the final by-election result, Te Mana had to hit the ground still running the moment the polls closed on Saturday night because, as long as racism remains entrenched in the institutions and systems of government, the race has not ended.

FRANKLY FASCINATING

On Radio Live last Friday morning, Hillary Barry who is arguably the first lady of mainstream news, had a fit of giggles so bad that she had to stop and hand over to the sports reporter. She’d introduced a story in which New York Congressman Anthony Wiener was resigning after having been exposed for sending images of a certain body part to women who weren’t his wife. Cut to Wiener solemnly making his announcement to a handpicked hometown audience. But, instead of politely clapping as one would expect, they cheered loudly and then started chanting, “Leave, you per-vert!” Frankness in politics is as rare as a redneck with all his teeth, so this unexpected frankness completely undid Hillary. Unprofessional? Totally. Forgiveable? Completely.

This time next week we will have a result in the Taitokerau byelection. Like no other, this election is for and about Māori. Its result is also fascinating like never before, not because of the individuals standing, but because of the very different implications that a win for any one of them holds for us.

As a voter in this byelection, my job has been to figure out what each of the candidates’ parties stands for, which one stands closest to where I am, and which is heading where I want to go. It’s become clear to me that although there are three serious contenders in this byelection, there are really only two positions; government by and for the rich and powerful, or government by and for everyone else. So what are the voting options for Māori? I’ve boiled them down to what I call the satellite, the landing craft or the planet.

In my frank opinion, a vote for Kelvin will maintain the Māori satellite that orbits the potential Labour government of the future, while a vote for Solomon involves replacing a crew member on the manned Māori Party landing craft within the current National government. Alternatively a vote for Hone is a stake in the planet itself. As for the other two candidates who are standing, in my opinion a vote for them is a wasted one – pardon the pun.

If my political frankness causes the majority of eligible Māori voters to fall about laughing, then my candidate of choice may be in trouble. But if that same majority share my view, they won’t be clapping politely when the result is announced next week, but will be cheering and shouting, “Go, you bea-u-ty!”

P.S. News has just reached me that Cathy Crene (nee Semenoff) has passed away. She hailed from Te Rarawa, Te Paatu and Ngāti Kahu, and if ever there was a frank lady it was Cath, or Giddy-Gas as some of us affectionately knew her. Moe mai ra e te whaea Cath. I know one thing, if she’d have been in Congressman Wiener’s crowd she wouldn’t have clapped politely either.