On Saturday just gone Chris Finlayson and his officials were in Te Hiku meeting with different iwi in the region, starting with Ngāti Kahu. By Sunday we were hearing very muddled reports of the hui with Ngāti Kahu. There was this from TVNZ: “Ngati Kahu broke away from the four other iwi about a month ago, and asked to be allowed to come up with its own draft deed of settlement.”
That would have been news to everyone up here alright. Especially to those who know that, in order to write the deed, Ngāti Kahu made a planned and well-signalled withdrawal in January 2010 from the now-defunct Te Hiku Forum. But even if you didn’t know this background, hands up those who believe Ngāti Kahu ever asked anyone for permission to write its own deed.
Even more interesting than TVNZ’s piece, was the pollie-speak coming from Chris Finlayson himself about the meeting with Ngāti Kahu and our deed. He was reported on stuff.co.nz as saying the draft deed would be a ''partial settlement'' that would ''allow grievances to linger”, that ''full and final settlements are the cornerstone of the historical settlement process”, and that “finality allows the Crown and iwi to draw a line under the grievances of the past and focus on developing a positive future together.''
Translation: “If Ngāti Kahu wants to settle, they have to first let the Crown put the words ‘full and final’ on their deed, second stop acting like they own their lands and other estates, and third start pretending the Crown does.” As you can imagine, Ngāti Kahu’s response needs no translation.
Finlayson and the Crown have had the deed for two months now. The deadline for them to make submissions to it closes at 12 noon today. They hadn’t asked for an extension at time of this column being written.
If the Crown is still not ready to make full redress for all its wrongdoing and lawlessness, Ngāti Kahu will allow it to make a partial settlement at this time. We would prefer to sign a final deed of settlement, on the simple condition that it does actually contain full settlement redress.
It’s worrying for the future wellbeing of this country that the Crown still seems unable to see or portray Ngāti Kahu as anything but breakaways from the other iwi and beggars to the Crown. But even more worrying is the unnatural silence from the other iwi to whom I tātai. Just last month their leaders all sat unmurmuring, except for one of their number who told Ngāti Kahu off to a standstill for having finished our deed and then come expecting to sort out the finer details of our shared interests with them, when some of them hadn’t even started writing their deeds yet. But on Saturday Finlayson announced the other four iwi were all ready to sign their deeds of settlement.
What deeds of settlement are those? Who wrote them and when? Be interesting to hear something more than the sounds of silence from the other iwi.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Monday, May 23, 2011
A LEGACY
As a youngster I’d get hoha hearing my dad say things like, “Our family name is a good one. Don’t blinkin’ stuff it up.” Over the years since, I’ve come to understand that what dad was talking about was the importance of respecting our relationship to each other. What one did impacted on others in our whānau.
For Ngāti Kahu the relationship we agreed we would have with the British Crown was that between two sovereign nations as was set out clearly in the 1835 Te Hakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni (referred to in English as the Declaration of Independence) and Te Tiriti o Waitangi 1840. The British Crown recognized Te Hakaputanga and is a signatory to Te Tiriti.
More recently the United Nations has set out the minimum requirements to uphold basic human rights of indigenous peoples, including the Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa/New Zealand, in its Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Ngāti Kahu expects and will ensure that these minimum standards of human rights and mutual respect form the basis of our future relationship with the Crown. There is a great deal to be done before we can claim to have achieved those standards.
Due to the historical Crown breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi documented in the Waitangi Tribunal’s Muriwhenua Land Claims Report (1997) the Ngāti Kahu / Crown relationship is in very poor shape. The many ways in which the Crown has lied to, stolen from, discriminated against and oppressed Ngāti Kahu at every opportunity, are matters of public record.
Ngāti Kahu have now written “Te Hakapūmautanga o te Mana o Ngāti Kahu: the Ngāti Kahu deed of partial settlement towards extinguishment of all Crown claims to Ngāti Kahu lands.” We did this to show how and why the relationship is so bad and to outline a pathway to improving it. We have recorded for those coming after us the work undertaken by six generations of Ngāti Kahu to halt and then repair the damage wrought by Crown lawlessness in our territories since 1840. We have laid out what it will take to fully, fairly and finally settle our claims against the Crown for its numerous breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi since 1840, and to extinguish all Crown claims to our lands. We have written down what has actually been achieved towards that ideal. And we have recorded an agreement to commence those extinguishments through the Crown’s relinquishment of its claims to approximately 10% of our inland territories.
Over the years I have seen time and time again how the mere mention of my parents’ names has opened many doors for their uri. It’s a pretty cool legacy. On the other hand what the Crown has done to Ngāti Kahu has created a legacy of prejudice, poverty, deprivation and marginalization that are still being experienced by us up to and at the present time.
It’s a pathetic legacy. But as long as the relationship between us remains the way it is, it will not change.
For Ngāti Kahu the relationship we agreed we would have with the British Crown was that between two sovereign nations as was set out clearly in the 1835 Te Hakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni (referred to in English as the Declaration of Independence) and Te Tiriti o Waitangi 1840. The British Crown recognized Te Hakaputanga and is a signatory to Te Tiriti.
More recently the United Nations has set out the minimum requirements to uphold basic human rights of indigenous peoples, including the Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa/New Zealand, in its Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Ngāti Kahu expects and will ensure that these minimum standards of human rights and mutual respect form the basis of our future relationship with the Crown. There is a great deal to be done before we can claim to have achieved those standards.
Due to the historical Crown breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi documented in the Waitangi Tribunal’s Muriwhenua Land Claims Report (1997) the Ngāti Kahu / Crown relationship is in very poor shape. The many ways in which the Crown has lied to, stolen from, discriminated against and oppressed Ngāti Kahu at every opportunity, are matters of public record.
Ngāti Kahu have now written “Te Hakapūmautanga o te Mana o Ngāti Kahu: the Ngāti Kahu deed of partial settlement towards extinguishment of all Crown claims to Ngāti Kahu lands.” We did this to show how and why the relationship is so bad and to outline a pathway to improving it. We have recorded for those coming after us the work undertaken by six generations of Ngāti Kahu to halt and then repair the damage wrought by Crown lawlessness in our territories since 1840. We have laid out what it will take to fully, fairly and finally settle our claims against the Crown for its numerous breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi since 1840, and to extinguish all Crown claims to our lands. We have written down what has actually been achieved towards that ideal. And we have recorded an agreement to commence those extinguishments through the Crown’s relinquishment of its claims to approximately 10% of our inland territories.
Over the years I have seen time and time again how the mere mention of my parents’ names has opened many doors for their uri. It’s a pretty cool legacy. On the other hand what the Crown has done to Ngāti Kahu has created a legacy of prejudice, poverty, deprivation and marginalization that are still being experienced by us up to and at the present time.
It’s a pathetic legacy. But as long as the relationship between us remains the way it is, it will not change.
Monday, May 16, 2011
THEM AND US
"Mana May Miss By-election" was the headline in last Friday's Herald, pretty much the same line we were fed by TV1 and TV3 the previous night. As a headline it at least had alliteration going for it, but as important news or even as mundane information, it held little merit. The headline might just as well have read, "Mainstream Media May have Missed the Point.”
Perhaps it’s not fair to expect the mainstream to get it, even 171 years after they began publishing in this country. After all, very few within it have either the chops or the insight to know what is politically important to Māori in general, let alone to Māori who will vote in the upcoming Taitokerau by-election. So let me spell out to them what is and isn’t important to us.
Iwi Chairs have very little influence on how we vote. In fact the support of certain Chairs will almost certainly lose a candidate more votes than it will gain; especially if that Chair is seen by us as a Crown puppet or, worse still, a Crown employee. However, anyone within our iwi who has a long record of standing apart from the Crown and standing up for us can swing a lot of votes.
Political parties don’t have the same clout with us that they held, say twenty or even ten years ago. Add that to the fact that there is no party vote in a by-election, and party branding just doesn’t have a lot of relevancy for us today. Not unless it’s tagged to someone who does.
Planks of policies and platforms of promises; even though most of the razzamatazz of campaigning is based around such things, they don’t impress us much. No matter who the government is, we’ve seen most policies and promises aimed at addressing issues of concern to us come to nothing.
What is important and does impress us is the candidate and his history amongst us. We want to know, does his public campaign match his private character? Is he known to tell his party what we want it to do? Or does he sell us what it wants to do? Does he equate his ambitions with our needs? Do we see him at our hui, laughing and crying over the same things we do? Has he got an honest mouth instead of a smooth tongue? Does he live clean or dirty? If he’s got skeletons, are they closeted or are they out in the middle of the floor dancing for all to see? When we watch him do we sense his strength and mana, or does he feel just like a big puff of emptiness?
We did not create the Māori seats, and if Don Brash has his way we won’t be there when they’re uncreated. But while they exist we do take an interest in who sits in them based on the answers to all the above, and not on whether they have money to run their campaign. In the end, if we like the candidate and what they stand for, we’ll raise the necessary funds. We may even vote for them.
As for mainstream media, they do a fair to middling job analysing the Dons and the Keys of politics. But they still don’t get us.
Perhaps it’s not fair to expect the mainstream to get it, even 171 years after they began publishing in this country. After all, very few within it have either the chops or the insight to know what is politically important to Māori in general, let alone to Māori who will vote in the upcoming Taitokerau by-election. So let me spell out to them what is and isn’t important to us.
Iwi Chairs have very little influence on how we vote. In fact the support of certain Chairs will almost certainly lose a candidate more votes than it will gain; especially if that Chair is seen by us as a Crown puppet or, worse still, a Crown employee. However, anyone within our iwi who has a long record of standing apart from the Crown and standing up for us can swing a lot of votes.
Political parties don’t have the same clout with us that they held, say twenty or even ten years ago. Add that to the fact that there is no party vote in a by-election, and party branding just doesn’t have a lot of relevancy for us today. Not unless it’s tagged to someone who does.
Planks of policies and platforms of promises; even though most of the razzamatazz of campaigning is based around such things, they don’t impress us much. No matter who the government is, we’ve seen most policies and promises aimed at addressing issues of concern to us come to nothing.
What is important and does impress us is the candidate and his history amongst us. We want to know, does his public campaign match his private character? Is he known to tell his party what we want it to do? Or does he sell us what it wants to do? Does he equate his ambitions with our needs? Do we see him at our hui, laughing and crying over the same things we do? Has he got an honest mouth instead of a smooth tongue? Does he live clean or dirty? If he’s got skeletons, are they closeted or are they out in the middle of the floor dancing for all to see? When we watch him do we sense his strength and mana, or does he feel just like a big puff of emptiness?
We did not create the Māori seats, and if Don Brash has his way we won’t be there when they’re uncreated. But while they exist we do take an interest in who sits in them based on the answers to all the above, and not on whether they have money to run their campaign. In the end, if we like the candidate and what they stand for, we’ll raise the necessary funds. We may even vote for them.
As for mainstream media, they do a fair to middling job analysing the Dons and the Keys of politics. But they still don’t get us.
Monday, May 09, 2011
YOU'VE GOTTA LAUGH
That great Māori writer, Mark Twain, once wrote, “Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”
On a recent flight to Kerikeri, my seat mate was a Ngāpuhi woman coming home from Perth for time with whānau, particularly the mokopuna. She’d been away for a year, and had at least two new descendants to meet for the first time. Like many grandparents who live on either side of Te Moana Tāpokapoka a Tāwhaki, she relies heavily on the internet to keep in touch with her mokopuna.
As the Māori diaspora continues, one of its saddest and yet most appreciated outcomes is that it’s given rise to the facebook whānau. It’s a phenomenon that social commentators and historians will have a field day with in the future. But here, in the present, it’s just about whānau doing what we must to communicate our love and longing for home, and for each other.
And that has given rise to an emerging vocabulary of facebookisms; new words for old meanings, as well as old words with new spellings and meanings. These, in turn, have given rise to a new wave of that unique brand of Māori humour; the kind that keeps us sane in the face of insanity.
The hallmarks of a really good facebookism are that it’s got to make you laugh, it has to be slightly off the mark and yet be oddly appropriate.
A six year old in Perth to her recuperating nanna, “We love you nanna. No more harder tacks ay.” A newly politicised youth in Melbourne commenting on Osama bin Laden’s death, “It’s disgusting to see americans celebrating OBL’s death, nothing but proper gander!” A middle-aged man describing the climate in Brisbane to his mum in Auckland, “Rain rain rain yet stinkin hot, over 30 degrease.” A young father on white Australian attitudes to Aboriginals, “They’re so pignorant.”
You’ve gotta laugh ay. While more of our whānau succeed in Ozzie rather than here at home, we get to stare at and lovingly trace their faces on computer screens in a parody of human touch. And we get to watch homesteads fall into disrepair, marae struggle to manāki manuhiri, taumata manned by boys, and young girls conduct the karanga. But, you’ve gotta laugh.
When those who have been privileged by our dispossession and marginalisation accuse us of being privileged and lazy, you’ve gotta laugh. Especially when they take it upon themselve to tell us our history based on how someone from another culture saw or sees it. Can you imagine if we rewrote their hakapapa and history the way they do ours? It’s too funny for words, so best just laugh.
Back to that rangatira Mark Twain. “The human race,” he wrote, “ has only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.” I struggle with that. I love laughing, but my problem is that I stopped seeing the pignorant proper gander of degreased racists giving themselves harder tacks as funny a long time ago.
Still, you’ve gotta laugh ay. Because if you don’t ...
On a recent flight to Kerikeri, my seat mate was a Ngāpuhi woman coming home from Perth for time with whānau, particularly the mokopuna. She’d been away for a year, and had at least two new descendants to meet for the first time. Like many grandparents who live on either side of Te Moana Tāpokapoka a Tāwhaki, she relies heavily on the internet to keep in touch with her mokopuna.
As the Māori diaspora continues, one of its saddest and yet most appreciated outcomes is that it’s given rise to the facebook whānau. It’s a phenomenon that social commentators and historians will have a field day with in the future. But here, in the present, it’s just about whānau doing what we must to communicate our love and longing for home, and for each other.
And that has given rise to an emerging vocabulary of facebookisms; new words for old meanings, as well as old words with new spellings and meanings. These, in turn, have given rise to a new wave of that unique brand of Māori humour; the kind that keeps us sane in the face of insanity.
The hallmarks of a really good facebookism are that it’s got to make you laugh, it has to be slightly off the mark and yet be oddly appropriate.
A six year old in Perth to her recuperating nanna, “We love you nanna. No more harder tacks ay.” A newly politicised youth in Melbourne commenting on Osama bin Laden’s death, “It’s disgusting to see americans celebrating OBL’s death, nothing but proper gander!” A middle-aged man describing the climate in Brisbane to his mum in Auckland, “Rain rain rain yet stinkin hot, over 30 degrease.” A young father on white Australian attitudes to Aboriginals, “They’re so pignorant.”
You’ve gotta laugh ay. While more of our whānau succeed in Ozzie rather than here at home, we get to stare at and lovingly trace their faces on computer screens in a parody of human touch. And we get to watch homesteads fall into disrepair, marae struggle to manāki manuhiri, taumata manned by boys, and young girls conduct the karanga. But, you’ve gotta laugh.
When those who have been privileged by our dispossession and marginalisation accuse us of being privileged and lazy, you’ve gotta laugh. Especially when they take it upon themselve to tell us our history based on how someone from another culture saw or sees it. Can you imagine if we rewrote their hakapapa and history the way they do ours? It’s too funny for words, so best just laugh.
Back to that rangatira Mark Twain. “The human race,” he wrote, “ has only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.” I struggle with that. I love laughing, but my problem is that I stopped seeing the pignorant proper gander of degreased racists giving themselves harder tacks as funny a long time ago.
Still, you’ve gotta laugh ay. Because if you don’t ...
Friday, May 06, 2011
HE IWI KOTAHI
For the past twelve months, while critics within and without Ngāti Kahu have been pressuring us to work towards settlement under the Crown’s processes and timetables, we have been writing the Ngāti Kahu Deed of Partial Settlement under the processes and timetables of our hapū. The first draft was delivered to the Crown on April 1st.
A written Deed is critical to any kind of settlement. In the past, and under the process that our critics wanted us to follow, the Crown has written the Deed with some input from the claimant. After that, it has become a take it or leave it proposition for the claimant, and they have had to choose to either settle under the terms and conditions of the Deed, or go to the back of the claimant line and wait.
Tired of waiting, with no substantial fallback plan, and with high hopes of finally being able to take their rightful place in their own land, almost every claimant has signed when presented with this choice. In fact I think the only claimant who has refused to sign such a Deed of Settlement to date has been Whakatōhea.
Most of us in this country have heard the words apparently spoken at Waitangi on 6th February 1840 by Captain William Hobson, the man the Crown sent to negotiate and conclude a Treaty with the Māori nation. As each of the rangatira appended his signature or mark to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Captain Hobson is reputed to have said: He iwi kotahi tatou. We are now one people.
But the very fact that the Treaty exists is testament to the reality that there are two nations in this country who are on sometimes parallel, other times divergent, courses. The Crown’s course is, by and large, known. Now for the first time ever the course of one small part of the Māori nation has been set down in a Deed of Partial Settlement.
In its Deed, Ngāti Kahu have laid out simply and clearly the central precept on which New Zealand was founded; i.e. two nations, one people. This is the very issue our respective tūpuna began to address with Te Hakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni (the Declaration of Independence) in 1835, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi / Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. The Crown recognised Te Hakaputanga and is a signatory to Te Tiriti. The fact that the Crown subsequently chose to try and simply override Māori with superior numbers has delayed the realization of the full potential of both nations for too long. The Ngāti Kahu Deed addresses this fully.
No-one who knows Ngāti Kahu should be surprised that it has ignored the choice of “sign now or wait until later”. We are now waiting for the Crown to respond to our Deed of Settlement by or before 1st June.
Whether or not the Crown agrees at this time to relinquish the lands it has stolen from Ngāti Kahu and to extinguish its claims over them, it has yet to sincerely address this important issue of two nations, one people. It needs to. Urgently.
A written Deed is critical to any kind of settlement. In the past, and under the process that our critics wanted us to follow, the Crown has written the Deed with some input from the claimant. After that, it has become a take it or leave it proposition for the claimant, and they have had to choose to either settle under the terms and conditions of the Deed, or go to the back of the claimant line and wait.
Tired of waiting, with no substantial fallback plan, and with high hopes of finally being able to take their rightful place in their own land, almost every claimant has signed when presented with this choice. In fact I think the only claimant who has refused to sign such a Deed of Settlement to date has been Whakatōhea.
Most of us in this country have heard the words apparently spoken at Waitangi on 6th February 1840 by Captain William Hobson, the man the Crown sent to negotiate and conclude a Treaty with the Māori nation. As each of the rangatira appended his signature or mark to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Captain Hobson is reputed to have said: He iwi kotahi tatou. We are now one people.
But the very fact that the Treaty exists is testament to the reality that there are two nations in this country who are on sometimes parallel, other times divergent, courses. The Crown’s course is, by and large, known. Now for the first time ever the course of one small part of the Māori nation has been set down in a Deed of Partial Settlement.
In its Deed, Ngāti Kahu have laid out simply and clearly the central precept on which New Zealand was founded; i.e. two nations, one people. This is the very issue our respective tūpuna began to address with Te Hakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni (the Declaration of Independence) in 1835, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi / Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. The Crown recognised Te Hakaputanga and is a signatory to Te Tiriti. The fact that the Crown subsequently chose to try and simply override Māori with superior numbers has delayed the realization of the full potential of both nations for too long. The Ngāti Kahu Deed addresses this fully.
No-one who knows Ngāti Kahu should be surprised that it has ignored the choice of “sign now or wait until later”. We are now waiting for the Crown to respond to our Deed of Settlement by or before 1st June.
Whether or not the Crown agrees at this time to relinquish the lands it has stolen from Ngāti Kahu and to extinguish its claims over them, it has yet to sincerely address this important issue of two nations, one people. It needs to. Urgently.
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