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.