DIVIDE AND RULE

Every time I fly out of Kaitāia airport I always look at how the land has been divided up by the Crown and I have George Erstich and his sister Katie Evans in my mind.  You see the land at Rangiāniwaniwa was actually confiscated by the Crown off their mother Kataraina Mātenga during the Second World War.  At 84 and 81 years old respectively, they are her last surviving children and they belong to the Ngāti Kahu hapū of Patukōraha.

The Crown still has no title over that land, but it has benefited time and time again from its theft.  Now the Crown is about to benefit again because, unfortunately for Kataraina’s uri, it has gotten some of their Ngāi Takoto cousins to agree to buy their land from it. 

Last month Katie Evans (Kataraina Matenga’s daughter) and Yvonne Pūriri (Kataraina’s mokopuna) presented evidence on their own marae Kareponia about how Rangiāniwaniwa was stolen from them by the Crown and that they want it returned to them via Ngāti Kahu.  But the Tribunal has since ruled that the Crown gets to determine who it allocates lands to under its settlement processes.  So the only way the descendants of Kataraina Matenga will be able to get their land back is if Ngāti Kahu settles with and cedes the sovereignty of its hapū to the Crown.  That is not going to happen.

On Saturday 27^th October the overwhelming majority of Ngāti Kahu hapū directed that a judicial review be sought in the High Court against the Tribunal’s decision to deny Ngāti Kahu a hearing over the Crown’s deeds of settlement with Te Aupōuri, Te Rarawa and Ngāi Takoto. 

If left as they are those deeds will settle thousands of acres of Te Paatu, Tahaawai, Ngāi Tohianga and Patukōraha hapū lands in iwi corporate bodies that don’t represent them and have never benefited them.  As one of the kaumātua at the hui said, it’s not about what the hapū, particularly Te Paatu, stand to gain so much as what they stand to lose.

Sadly the Crown has not only divided the land, it’s done it to the people as well.  On Saturday, two marae voted against the funding of the judicial review from their share of any annual grant, even though their particular marae stand to gain the most from it.  Is it possible that they would prefer to be ruled by the Crown then be united with the rūnanga?  

All of this surely is stark evidence of how the Crown’s settlement processes add to the grievances and the prejudice rather than remove or fix them.

BEING A WOMAN

My sister recently told me she dines out on my reputation as the second most-hated woman in the north.  Guess who is apparently number one on her informant’s list?  My initial response was to ask her to tell him to get it right, my gender has nothing to do with it, but then I corrected myself.  Certainly my gender shouldn’t have anything to do with it.  Engari, the record does indicate otherwise. 

In the 1990s when I lead Te Rarawa’s land claims, the messages ranged from mild to malevolent.  I got told, “The problem with your iwi is that it’s lead by a woman,” and had all the usual animal labels hurled my way; and that was just on iwi talkback.  The late night calls to my home number were nowhere near as nice and revealed very unhealthy male attitudes towards sex and sexuality.  Although I never responded in kind, I felt soiled by those callers.  It was as if they’d reached through the phone line and left dirty fingerprints on my spirit. 

Not a lot has changed since.  In fact in some ways the situation has gotten worse because the violators are now often as not actively supported by their women. 

I have a mate who leads her iwi.  Throughout 2009 she used to regularly get phone calls on her home phone from a male counterpart of another iwi who held a high position on an iwi forum.  When she refused to bow to his directions, which ran counter to those of her people, the content of those calls became unprintable and often targeted her gender.  When a complaint was laid with the forum by her people, apart from the few women leaders on there, the uniform response from the men was to keep him in his high position.  In fact it wasn’t until he upset one of her male iwi members that they finally removed him.  But the worse thing was that his partner, a woman who had intimate experience of his violence, defended him ferociously and blamed my mate. 

Now that we’re both married, neither she nor I get those kinds of calls at our homes any longer.  But we still get the messages outside hui, in car parks, on facebook and anywhere anonymous or opaque, that what is most offensive to a number of our detractors is our womanhood. 

Pākehā label this dis-ease with women “sexism” and respond with “feminism”.  I call it colonialised cowardice and respond with laughter.  I have recently started advising such men to grow themselves a female reproductive part because, in the words of the great Betty White, unlike its male counterpart, it can take a pounding. 

Really, I have no problems with being the second most hated person in the rohe.  But be prepared to debate why, and let it be for reasons other than my being a woman.

WIN SOME, LOSE SOME

Ngāti Kahu have had their first loss in the Waitangi Tribunal for some time.  The last time was when they were refused a hearing of their remedies application back in 2008.  But they never gave up then or since, and eventually got their hearing.  Engari before they can get a ruling on their remedies, this Tribunal has first had to rule on their urgency applications, and it’s turned them down. 

They’d asked the Tribunal to give them an urgent hearing and rule that the three deeds of settlement for Te Aupōuri, Te Rarawa and Ngāitakoto gave rise to significant and irreversible prejudice to Ngāti Kahu on several grounds.  The Tribunal focused mainly on three of those grounds; the proposed Crown allocation of forest lands in those deeds, the proposed redress over Te Oneroa-a-Tohe, and the proposed redress over conservation lands. 

In its decision, the Tribunal noted that it has concerns about the forest land allocations in those deeds which cut Ngāti Kahu completely out of the Takahue and peninsula blocks of the Aupōuri forest.  It also accepts that the beach and conservation land redress in those deeds falls well short of Ngāti Kahu’s aspirations.  But in the end it has ruled that Ngāti Kahu still have reasonable alternatives available to offset any potential prejudice to them. 

This decision is not entirely surprising but it is disappointing for Ngāti Kahu.  Urgencies have always been very hard to get, but this means that Te Paatu’s hapū mana whenua in the bulk of Te Make (Sweetwater), the peninsula forest blocks, Te Oneroa-a-Tohe and Kaimaumau are not able to be specifically provided for at this time through the Tribunal.

Still, as the Tribunal said, Ngāti Kahu have some reasonable alternatives before them, including waiting for its decision over the properties in the Ngāti Kahu remedies claim area.  There are other alternatives as well, like the fact that the people of Ngāti Kahu live on or near those lands, they are Ngāti Kahu lands, and they’ll be treated as such whether the Crown transfers ownership to Ngāti Kahu by way of paper exchange or not.  Kahore rānei koe i mohio ki tēnei i mua noa atu, i te wa ra ano i whakanohoia ai te tangata ki runga ki te whenua; He poto te wa e whakamanamana ai te tangata kino, a ko te hari o te tangata atuakore he wheriko kau?

The Tribunal’s next job will be to rule on Te Rarawa’s and Ngāti Tara’s separate remedies applications over some of the same lands in Ngāti Kahu’s remedies application.  Once it has dealt with those matters, it will finally be able to rule on Ngāti Kahu’s remedies.

This week Ngāti Kahu have had a loss, but they are not at a loss.  Wins and losses in themselves don’t last forever.  What does endure are lessons learnt, experience earned, hope tested, faith tried and character built.  These distinguish Ngāti Kahu as a winner, not a loser. 

SPRING AND SCHOOL HOLIDAYS

Driving out of the Kaitāia Court House yesterday, I almost wiped out a young man going by at full tilt on his skateboard.  Gave me a hell of a fright.  Two of his mates were still standing at the top of Redan holding their boards and looking a bit nervous.  Straight away I thought, ‘Mā te tuakana ka tōtika te teina, mā te teina ka tōtika te tuakana; from the older sibling the younger one learns the right way to do things, and from the younger sibling the older one learns to be tolerant.’ 

So as I passed him I slowed, wound my window down and said sweetly, ‘E tama, you’re lucky that today I feel tolerant.  But if you’re really lucky you’ll live long enough to learn not to give old ladies like me a heart attack.’  He just grinned, waved, and headed back up the hill for another go.  I’m not sure he understood. 

Actually skateboarding taitamatane are the least of our problems at this time of year when spring coincides with school holidays and the sap is rising at the same time that adult supervision has been scaled down.  For that reason I have the greatest respect and gratitude for all those ones who run holiday programmes, sport camps, wānanga and other activities that keep our tamariki gainfully occupied during the daylight holiday hours.

But I also have real aroha for those who, for whatever reason, can’t put their kids into these activities and are struggling to keep them off the street, out of trouble and engaged in something worthwhile.  Without meaning to go all Muriel on you I feel to share some of the things that worked for us with our teens at this time of year.

Spring is for planting.  Whether it’s fun or not is up to you and your taitamariki.  As someone once said, “Of course you have a choice. You can do it happily, or you can do it miserably.”  It helps if they get to decide everything about their part of the garden from shape to content.  Bite your tongue now and munch out on the fruits of their labour later.

Spring is for cleaning.  My daughter would have the rare urge to clean her room so we’d beg, borrow or hire a skip or trailer and share it with the cuzzies next door so their taitamariki could use it too.  Then we’d give them free range.  Some stuff got recycled, some got biffed.  At the end they’d look at their new room with satisfaction at its temporary tidiness.  Of course it didn’t last, but that wasn’t the point.

Finally, school holidays are for whānau.  With one more week of holidays to go I hope we all get to enjoy each other.  And if we don’t, I at least hope we get to enjoy spring.  Hei kona.  

KA WHAWHAI TŌNŪ MĀTOU

Ka whawhai tōnū mātou mo ake! ake! ake! (we will fight forever and ever).  These words of Rewi Maniapoto have become a universal rallying call for truth and justice.

Along those lines, last month the Waitangi Tribunal sat at Kareponia marae to hear Ngāti Kahu’s opening submissions for remedies against the Crown for stealing our land in breach of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.  Closing submissions were heard two weeks later at the Environment Court in Auckland.  Apart from the Crown and Ngāti Kahu’s mandated leaders, the only group who attended every day without fail were the kuia and kaumātua of Ngāti Kahu.

In many ways theirs is the generation who were most directly and personally traumatised by the persistent, sustained and racist attacks on te reo, mana whenua, tikanga and rangatiratanga which started soon after Pākehā arrived, and intensified as time passed. 

They were punished for speaking their reo rangatira at school as part of an assimilationist programme into Pākehā society, while their own society was being marginalised and deprived of the wherewithal to operate fully with mana. 

They were the generation of children removed from tūpuna whenua which decades before had been declared to be ‘surplus land’ by the Crown who then stole it.  Often as not nothing had changed on the ground, so it wasn’t until the thief came to evict them that they found out it had been pinched. 

They are the ones who watched their nannies trying to fight off the thief and dying from the stress and grief.  Faced with Hobson’s choice they are the ones who migrated in huge numbers along with their surviving elders to the cities.  In those alien surroundings they struggled to raise their own families away from the support of their traditional papakainga, then watched their children struggle with the consequent dislocation and fall prey to drugs, gangs, crime and madness. 

Their fathers had enlisted in World War I and served well but were still treated unwell by some of their officers during the War, and by their government upon their return.  Then they themselves were urged to enlist in World Ward II as “the price of their citizenship” in their own country.  But they too returned to undiminished manifestations of racism.

These are the ones who raised my generation to know the truth that the Crown stole our land, and to unrelentingly pursue its return.  Some of my generation have given up and capitulated because the thief offered them a settlement, or the cause is unpopular, or it’s taken too long to win, or their feelings got hurt.  Hei aha.  Thankfully they don’t instruct me. 

Before his closing karakia on the last day in Auckland, Timoti Flavell the Chair of Te Taumata Kaumātu o Ngāti Kahu shared how he has already been arrested once for standing on his land, and will be again if necessary.  Then he sighed, paused and smiled gently before saying calmly and firmly, “Ka whawhai tōnū mātou mo ake, ake, ake.” Rawe!