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!
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