TECTONIC TALES

One of the most enduring relationships I know of is that between my 83 year old dad and his 85 year old sister. For years she used to come home every holiday and set up camp on our lawn until dad built her a bach right where she used to put up her tent. No legal paperwork was signed, and no cash exchanged.

Things went well until aunty stopped coming and her mokopuna started turning up instead with their Pakeha mates and their different ways. That was OK too, until the Pakeha mates arrived one day by themselves and began treating the whole place, not just the bach, like it was theirs.

The time had come to cancel the gift. Aunty understood but didn’t want the hassle of dismantling camp that one last time. So to satisfy any claims her mokopuna or their Pakeha mates might make, dad paid her for the bach and its contents, and that was that. Gift cancelled.

It all went smoothly because both dad and his sister understood that the gift and its cancellation were expressions of Tuku Whenua under Tikanga Maori. The only right attached to the gift was that of use. When the use ended, so did the gift; but not the relationship which continues happily to this day.

I thought of this Tuku Whenua Tikanga while reading two recently released publications. The first is the report by United Nations Special Rapporteur, Dr James Anaya, titled “The Situation of Maori People in New Zealand.”

Several key issues are addressed by Dr Anaya, but his main focus is the settlement process for historical and contemporary claims based on the Treaty of Waitangi. He reports that, while there has been progress since 2005 when the last UN Special Rapporteur was here, there is still a long way to go “to achieve the increased social and economic parity that is necessary for Māori and non-Māori New Zealanders to move forward as true partners in the future, as contemplated under the Treaty of Waitangi.”

The second publication is a book titled “The State of Maori Rights” by Professor Margaret Mutu which brings together a set of articles she wrote between 1994 and 2009. In it she places on record the Maori view of events and issues that have been more typically reported to the general public from a 'mainstream' media perspective. Having lived through all of the events reviewed and taken part in many of them, even I was astonished at how clearly the threads of racism are there for the world to see. Actually, what with the footnotes and cross-references, they are more like whopping great ropes.

Both these publications stand as stark counterpoints to the Tuku Whenua transaction between my dad and his sister. They reveal the racist rubbishing of most things Maori and the tension arising out of that, while the Tuku Whenua transaction shows Maori unselfconsciously practicing Tikanga, and the relaxed ease of that.

Both Dr Anaya’s report and Professor Mutu’s book have understandably been overshadowed by the most recent tectonic shifts in and around Christchurch and the push to rebuild that city. But it is their messages that will contribute more to shifting the tectonics between races and rebuilding this country.

However the key message for Maori lies in the Tuku Whenua transaction. It shows that while others can either support or oppose Tikanga, Maori must do it. Why? Because, if we don’t, race relationships are going to get a whole lot worse in this country; and Papatuanuku will let us know about it for sure.