WHAT DO THEY KNOW?

“It's Christmas time, there's no need to be afraid.  At Christmas time we let in light and we banish shade.”

These are the opening lines to the song Do They Know It’s Christmas written by Bob Geldof and recorded by the supergroup Band Aid just before Christmas 1984 to raise money for famine hit Ethiopia.  With its saccharine lyrics and stellar lineup (including Geldof, Bono, Sting, Boy George, Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson) it went the 1984 equivalent of viral. 

Since then it’s become a Christmas anthem, and at this time of year you’re guaranteed to hear it many times over. 

Apparently Sir Bob, as he has since become, now says it is the worst song ever written and that it ruined his life.  May all his problems be so small.  Because the gloomy truth is that for a very large number of the world’s children, life is indeed a “world of dreaded fear, where the only water flowing is a bitter sting of tears.”

Here in New Zealand that has just been borne out by a report released on Monday 9^th December 2013 on child poverty in this country.  Written by Childrens Commissioner, Dr Russell Wills, the Child Poverty Monitor confirms that indicators like childhood illnesses are all on the rise, and one in four New Zealand children are now living in poverty.

This should not come as a surprise when read in the context of other recent studies such as the 2010 report, Comparative Child Well-being across the OECD which found that, out of 30 OECD countries, New Zealand was the 21^st lowest when it came to the material wellbeing of our children, and the 29^th lowest in terms of their health and safety.  On the up side, we had the fifth highest teen pregnancy rate and the highest youth suicide rate.  Additionally we were the 24^th highest in terms of risk behaviours, but the 21^st lowest in terms of average incomes.  And finally we had the 20^th highest infant mortality rates.

“And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom.  Well tonight, thank God, it's them instead of you.”

The Child Poverty Monitor confirms these trends have all worsened in our country, and yet John Key was on air immediately after it was released denying its findings and talking up what his government had done to reduce childhood poverty. 

Given that the report comes from his own appointed Childrens Commissioner, his denial is startlingly hollow.  Especially when measured against the reality of our own lived experiences in the Far North, where food banks cannot keep up with demand, and annual Christmas Tree appeals cannot meet the need.

“And in our world of plenty we can spread a smile of joy,
Throw your arms around the world at Christmastime.
But say a prayer to pray for the other ones,
At Christmastime.

Here's to you, raise your glass for everyone. 

Here's to them underneath that burning sun.

Do they know it's Christmas time at all?" 

IWI CHAIRS FORUM

Last week the Iwi Chairs Forum met at Te Poho o Rāwiri marae in Gisborne with a large attendance of iwi chairs and observers.  Ngāti Kahu’s chair, Professor Margaret Mutu, has provided a summary report of proceedings at the two day hui as follows.

The first day was entirely taken up with various presentations from Crown and other agencies.  As a result, reporting back from the Forum’s own Working Groups was restricted to the morning of the second day.  This drew some criticism. 

The Climate Change group reported a major dispute between the government and iwi who have settled claims to forestry lands. Because the government allowed cheap Emissions Trading Units from Europe to flood the market here, their value has dropped from about $30 to about $2. That has created a substantial loss for many iwi. They have referred the argument to the Prime Minister and have put forward a case for the value of Emissions Trading Units to have a minimum value of $15.

The Freshwater group reported that they have made some progress on ensuring the hapū have input into the management of water. However they are experiencing major difficulties with trying to get the government to talk to them about Māori rights and interests (ownership) of water.

The Whānau Ora group reported that Te Puni Kōkiri had rejected the North Island iwi bid to be the commissioning agency for Te Whānau Ora but had accepted the South Island iwi bid. The North Island one appears to have gone to National Urban Māori Authorities. North Island iwi resolved to meet with the Minister of Māori Affairs and the Minister of Whānau Ora to have that decision revisited.

The Housing group reported that Housing New Zealand is looking to iwi to buy up their housing stocks as part of their settlements.

The Mātauranga (Education) group came in for some criticism for laying the blame for Māori children not succeeding in Pākehā schools with the parents and whānau. Research has repeatedly shown that Māori children are marginalized in Pākehā schools and that teacher attitudes are the main cause. The hui identified racism as the main barrier for Māori children succeeding. The group was reminded that making te reo compulsory in all schools was key to improving the position of Māori.

The Constitutional group reported that they have completed 200 hui and will be presenting a draft model for a constitution to the February hui of the Forum (and at the Forum tent at Te Tii marae, Waitangi on 6 February).

The Iwi Collective is looking at purchasing as many of the properties landbanked for settlements prior to settlements. Ngāti Kahu has asked that properties in our area be excluded until we have pursued legal avenues in respect of our claims.

HOW COME?

Now that the truth of Allan Titford’s nasty life has come out, the Minister of Local Government is asking how come he was able to stand for election while facing serious criminal charges. 

But there are far more important questions to answer than that, not least being how come he ever came to prominence in this country in the first place? 

It started in 1992 when the Waitangi Tribunal recommended that the Crown return to Te Roroa all the land which it should have set aside for them from purchases it made in the 1870s at Maunganui, Waipoua, Waimamaku and Wairau.  Included in those lands were two reserves totalling 36 hectares on a farm owned by Allan Titford. 

What Titford did next almost beggars belief, until you read the evidence and hear the broken-hearted testimony of the wife and children he enslaved, isolated and terrorised for more than two decades. 

Having burnt down his own home and damaged his own property, Titford lied and blamed Te Roroa for that arson and damage, as well as for ‘rustling his stock.’ 

The resultant outcry from the anti-Treaty brigade saw the Crown pay him $3.25 million compensation for the $600,000 farm he’d bought nine years earlier.  

Fast forward to 2010 when Titford, minus his millions and plus a new wife, turned up in Te Hiku o Te Ika claiming an island in Rangaunu Harbour.  However both he and his claim seemed to vanish without discernible trace other than a few local mutterings.  In fact little more was heard of Titford until his name appeared as a Mayoral candidate on the voting papers for this year’s Far North District elections. 

Now here are the important questions: Titford never turned up at a single public meeting, didn’t put out one flyer, didn’t put up any hoardings, and never produced a skerrick of policy throughout the election period.  And yet he got more than 400 votes.  How come?

Meanwhile, Rueben Taipari (a loving husband and doting father) tirelessly turned up at every public meeting going, ran his tiny budget ragged, and consistently walked his policy talk.  And yet he got just over 800 votes.  How come?

What is it about this country that sees a wife raping, child beating bully like Titford rewarded with almost half as many votes as a good man like Taipari? 

Even though the facts of Titford’s brutishness were not publicly known until after the election, in this country where voter apathy is the norm, he did extraordinarily well as a first time candidate. 

So please, if you are amongst the 414 who bothered to vote for him, sight unseen and unheard, enlighten me; how come?

I also note that the websites for the One New Zealand Foundation, and the Centre for Political Research still uncritically promote Titford’s lies.  How come?

TO BE FREE

During the recent hui on oil exploration at Ahipara we heard several speakers use the terms the strawman and the freeman.  These terms are key concepts in various international movements such as sovereign citizen, tax protestor, freeman on the land, and the redemption movement.

Here in Aotearoa, particularly in Tai Tokerau since the 1990s, an increasing number of whānau and hapū have embraced and used these concepts to reclaim, strengthen and practice their rangatiratanga and mana whenua.

 

Central to the beliefs and practices of these whānau and hapū are the thesis of rangatiratanga, and the antithesis of colonisation.  But, unlike those who have either given up or genuinely accepted the Crown as their sovereign, these whānau and hapū hold to the synthesis that they remain sovereign. 

I have been a spectator to this movement for some time and, because some of its followers were definitely crackpots and scammers, I was initially inclined to dismiss it out of hand.  However, a number of respected, reputable kaumātua and kuia are also part of it, and their participation has motivated me to explore it more.  But even more compelling a motivation is my personal belief that we are always on the verge of a significant paradigm shift in governing systems.

Currently all nations operate under manmade, fear-based governing systems that claim to be lawful, logical and enlightened.  But they aren’t the most of them.  Meanwhile, at heart every human longs for higher, love-based governing systems that are genuinely full of law, logic and light.  Even though we may doubt it could happen in our lifetime, we still hope for it.  But our hope also holds a dilemma.

Unless we are personally transformed to being full of law, logic, light and love ourselves, we will not be able to experience or enjoy any higher system of government, and for us all things will rapidly revert to being fear-based. 

In one of her last interviews, Saana Murray sang a brief pao then recited her poem, My Identity.  She captured both the dilemma and solution so beautifully.

Te pūtake, hoe i tere, i herea i te aroha.  He puawai korari, kaki te wai te maringi. Huri ana te moana te haerenga te wairua.

What will become of me if my rivals claim the victory?

Laws with claws like parasites, devouring my human rights.

Anyway, who wants authority and eternal conflict?

I’ll regain my own identity,

though I’m landless in my own country.

The open skies and glimmering seas are still mine and, they’re all free.

Free.  Free.

THE FLICKING TAIL

Pākau ki uta, pākau ki tai, pākau ki te whenua.  The stingray moves ashore, moves out to sea, moves to the land. 

This whakataukī holds within it the moral that, in order to sustain ourselves, we must move around and know our environment in its entirety. 

Amongst Māori the pākaurua are metaphors for various human characteristics. Their undulating wings and flicking tail illustrate flexibility and mobility.  But the barbed and venomous sting beneath that flicking tail represents destruction. 

 

I was reminded of this whakataukī at last Friday’s hui in Ahipara on oil exploration, when the real radicals, otherwise known as kuia, supported one of their rangatahi’s call for the Crown to leave the hui so that the whānau hapū gathered could talk amongst themselves.  Wikātana may have been the flicking tail, but it was the kuia who delivered the sting.  As a result the Crown did leave, if somewhat involuntarily, accompanied by a few volunteers from amongst the locals.

 

The kōrero that followed showed the very high level of understanding amongst the remaining kuia kaumātua about the issues arising out of the Crown’s process of carving up our offshore whenua and selling the rights to explore and exploit its resources to multinational oil companies.  In fact the hui was called in large part as a result of the Crown’s 2013 block offer in which Anadarko Petroleum Corporation bought the rights to explore the Taranaki Basin, 110 nautical miles off Raglan. 

Anadarko, is the same company that  owned 25% of the Deepwater Horizon site which exploded in April 2010 causing a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that is still polluting the region to this day.  Anadarko has never accepted any responsibility for that spill and has not contributed a cent to the ongoing cleanup attempts.  It has however abandoned the Gulf of Mexico site and turned its attention on New Zealand. 

 

To carry out its exploration in New Zealand waters the Texan oil giant is using the previously untested Noble Bob Douglas as its drill ship.  As of 11^th November, that ship had just cleared the strait between South Korea and Japan.  

 

In response, last Friday the Oil Free Seas flotilla began leaving New Zealand shores to confront Anadarko and to highlight the inherent dangers that deep-sea oil exploration brings to New Zealand oceans and coastlines.  They had success in 2010 against Petrobas in the Raukumara Basin with one fishing boat.  This year they have a few more boats, all crewed by volunteers, many from the Raglan area. 

Next year it will be the turn of Tai Tokerau when the Crown’s 2014 block offer closes and the successful bidders head for the Te Reinga – Northland Basin. 

 

 

Taking all those factors, and many others, into consideration, last Friday the Ahipara hui unanimously resolved on the motion of two kuia that there will be no mining.  The tail is flicking, but the sting remains concealed. 

Pakau ki uta, pākau ki tai, pākau ki te whenua.

HOW DARE THEY

Daily Blog [Martyn Bradbury] was threatened by Campbell Moore of NZ Police Public Affairs with a large fine and prison time for posting this parody police recruitment poster.  

 

I've shared the image far and wide and invited Mr Moore of NZPPA to contact me if he needs help to understand that this is black humour used to convey the serious message to the police hierarchy that they and their public affairs division have lost their minds if they think threatening bloggers is going to get them anywhere. 

 

How dare Campbell Moore threaten any of us who he is supposedly sworn to protect for parodying the Police's increasing failures to provide that protection. How dare they.

MĀORI THOUGHTS, PAKEHĀ RULES

In the early 1970s my grandfather, Andrew Rollo, was a board member on both the Parengarenga A Incorporation and the Aupōuri Māori Trust Board when the return of the Wairahi farms was being negotiated.  The question was asked, in which entity should the farms be vested? 

Now, both boards were largely made up of the same people, and yet both boards resolved unanimously that they should each be the vested entity.  After arguing with themselves a bit, they eventually allowed the farms to be vested in the Trust Board.

I laughed when I first heard this story.  But I now understand why my grampa and his contemporaries contradicted themselves; they were thinking as Māori but acting under Pākehā rules, and this kind of confusion still happens today for the same reasons.

To illustrate, in the past week I have received and read three different but connected reports on mining in Taitokerau.  They are different in style and some of their content, but connected in other parts of their content and in their target audience; i.e. Māori.

Māori and Mining is a paper out of Ōtago University authored by a multidisciplinary team of nine.  It brings together information on the involvement of Māori in mining, the process of mining, the values Māori bring to mining, Māori and mineral law, the economics of mining, and the environmental impacts of mining.  This report is what one would expect from academics; a largely neutral and somewhat dry analysis of the pros and cons of mining. 

Home-Land-Sea is a paper written by well-known environmental activists.  It presents mining in the context of a government agenda that includes – rushing to conclude Treaty settlements, aggressively transferring ownership of mineral resources to multinational companies, allowing those same companies to influence the re-writing of New Zealand’s environmental laws while at the same time issuing prospecting and exploration permits to them, and secretly negotiating a trade deal that gives them the right to sue future governments if they pass improved environmental laws.   As can be expected from activists, this paper is a full-blooded guard dog of a read.

The Extractive Industry Discussion Paper was written in response to a direction from some members of the Te Tai Tokerau Iwi Chairs Forum to explore and report on the pros and cons of mineral extraction as an activity with implications for Iwi roles and responsibilities.  Made up of four parts plus appendices, this paper is confusing because it clearly leaves the door open to mining, but its appendices clearly oppose mining.  It turns out the reason for this confusion is that the appendices are actually the Home-Land-Sea paper. 

This Friday there’s a hui in Korou Kore marae when NZPAM and EPA come to ‘consult’ on oil exploration. 

In preparation for it I’m grateful to have read all three reports, especially Home-Land-Sea.  But I’m more grateful for the reminder that Māori thought cannot be defined by Pākehā rules.

STATE TERRORISTS

On the 15th of October 2007, a gang of masked, gun-wielding, booted, black-clad state terrorists drove into Ruatoki and took its people hostage. 

They opened their raid by smashing into houses where people were either just beginning their daily routines, or had yet to even get out of bed.

It was about 5.30 in the morning and basically we thought it was the horses running around our whare, so I got up, went out the sliding door, and all I saw was red dots all over me and police yelling at me telling me to stand still and put my hands up.  [Awhitia Te Whakaturou-Tohu, Ruatoki resident, victim of state terrorism.]

Then a little after dawn, they illegally blockaded the only road, stopped all exiting vehicles (including the local school bus), herded people out of their houses, and held guns to heads to ensure their orders were followed. 

I just started crying and my nan tried to come over to me and asked me if I was OK, and then the policeman behind her said, ‘Shut up, don’t talk to her,’ and walked closer towards me and pointed the gun down at my head.  [Patricia Lambert, 12 years old, victim of state terrorism.]

For the next six hours the state’s terrorists held everyone they’d captured without access to food, water, toilets, communications and (in some cases) their families. 

By midday, although charges had yet to be formally laid and no confessions had been obtained, the state had saturated New Zealand’s media with their spin on what was happening in Ruatoki.  Consequently, instead of being correctly identified as victims of terrorism, the people of Ruatoki were initially cast as its perpetrators. 

 

As we now know, and to their credit, the media dug deeper than the state-sponsored spin about Operation 8 and soon exposed a number of problems with it, including the fact that the warrants on which it was permitted to go ahead, were obtained illegally.

 

Gradually but inexorably the case for terrorism against all those arrested on 15th October 2007 unravelled, and almost four years later all charges of terrorism were quietly dropped by the state.  

 

Although somewhat embarrassing, the failure to convict anyone of terrorism as a result of Operation 8 hasn't fazed those who ordered and masterminded it, because its main purpose was not so much to secure convictions as to send the message that they are ready, willing and able to break the law and to enact terror against the people of this country.  So in that sense, the operation was very successful. 

The state has been and remains a more likely employer of terrorism within the international system than insurgents. [Professor Michael Stohl, researcher and lecturer on organizational and political communication with special focus on terrorism, human rights and global relations.]

Indeed, the audience of the act or threat of terrorist violence is always more important than the immediate victims.  That holds true for all terrorism, including that sponsored by the state.