FACTS, NOT FANTASIES

Over the years I’ve seen repeatedly how some people prefer to sink clinging to an elegant fantasy of their own making rather than float with an ugly fact. 

Those who ignore the ugly facts of historical and contemporary crown thefts from whanau hapu iwi provide a case in point when they talk or write about fantasies like “the Ngapuhi settlement”, “the Ngati Kahu settlement,” or other events that don’t exist outside of their own imaginations. 

Fantasy has its place, but as a means to excuse crown criminals or abuse those who fight them – it doesn’t float. 

Here are the plain facts without any analysis or opinion.  Neither Ngapuhi nor Ngati Kahu have settled with the thieves. 

Ngati Kahu has laid out what it will take to fully and finally settle, and anything less will be a partial settlement.  The thieves have made an offer, and Ngati Kahu will respond to them in due course.  Ngapuhi, on the other hand, are still debating whether to engage in the mandating stage of the thieves’ process, or to continue engaging in the claim stage of that process.

This is my brief analysis of those facts.

Under current National and Labour leadership, Ngati Kahu are highly unlikely to settle with the thieves, and even less likely to let them dictate the terms of any future settlement.  Nor is it likely that Ngati Kahu will let the thieves and their allies forget their crimes, however long it takes them to admit and make reparation for them. 

In the meantime the demographics of the country and of the world in general are providing a number of partnership and development options with groups other than the thieves.  At the same time, the strategic application of tikanga is ongoing in Ngati Kahu.  Tenei te hakapumautanga o nga hapu.

As for what the thieves are doing in Ngapuhi, I am reminded of a very ugly historical fact from the Irish side of my whakapapa in which two brothers got into a debate and then a punch up over how to deal with a common enemy. 

It had happened before, and normally both the fight and the debate would have been settled without bloodshed.  Except this time their common enemy stepped forward and held a knife between them.  What an evil thing to do. 

That is what the crown has done with Ngapuhi and Ngati Hine in offering an inducement that guarantees one will be buried by the other while their common enemy remains in control of everything it has stolen from them.  Tena te pānekenekeana o nga hapu.

In closing I note that the thieves kept meticulous records which, along with numerous oral histories, are laid out in great detail in the Muriwhenua Land Report of the Waitangi Tribunal.  

As a result, unlike the claim that Ngapuhi and Ngati Kahu have settled, the claim that the Crown are thieves is proven fact, not fantasy.

THE PATTERN OF CORRUPTION

If kauri could talk about possums and phytophthora they’d remind us that invading colonists have always been bad news for invaded natives. 

For trees, that is a bald fact with no ethical, moral or legal karma attached.  But unlike plants, colonising humans cannot simply remove the rights, responsibilities and resources of native peoples, and replace them with their own, without creating some seriously bad history. 

Regardless of generations of intermarriage, notwithstanding integration, in spite of the force of numbers, and irrespective of settlement attempts, why is it that human colonisation continues to attract loathing and resistance around the globe?

The answer to that can be found close to home in the remorseless pattern the Crown follows to strip hapu of every right, responsibility and resource possible. 

In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the Crown stole more than 70% of the resources held by hapu and marginalised many of them to near extinction.  Throughout that period the Crown never stopped robbing them of as much of the remaining 30% of their resources as it could.

In the 20^th century, growing anger against Crown depredations lead to the 1975 Land March and other direct actions.  In response the Crown created a toothless Tribunal with no powers other than to make non-binding recommendations to it on how it might remedy its many breaches of its own Treaty. 

Then it carried on its robbing until its proposed asset sales in the 1980s lead to successful legal action against it.  In response the Crown created the Office of Treaty Settlements and the Crown Forestry Rental Trust.  It also gave one tooth to the Waitangi Tribunal, i.e. the power to make binding recommendations for the return of lands under former Crown forests and State-owned Enterprises and for the payment of compensation for Crown forest lands. 

By the beginning of the 21^st century the Crown had ignored every non-binding recommendation ever made by the Waitangi Tribunal and had threatened it with abolition if it ever used its power of binding recommendations to the fullest.  It had also corralled hapu into iwi, and has since mustered most of them into settling on its terms. 

The pattern is one of corruption.  The Crown commits an offence, denies it until it becomes undeniable, defends it until it becomes indefensible, bribes and threatens those it can to turn a blind eye, and changes the law to punish those who won’t.

In the Te Hiku Claims Settlement Bill the Crown is using that pattern to give control of Ngati Kahu hapu resources at Rangianiwaniwa, Hukatere, Te Make, Kaimaumau, Kaitaia and Takahue solely to others who are willing to settle on its terms.  

However, like the kauri, those resources haven't actually disappeared, and the hapu with mana whenua remain deep-rooted on their lands.  

In the long-term it will be interesting to see when and how they apply tikanga to their situation.  But in the short-term it will be even more interesting to see who does or doesn't turn a blind eye to the historical and current Crown pattern of corruption.

HISTORY DOES REPEAT

In the Split Enz’ song “History Never Repeats” it’s clear the singer is learning through bitter experience that the one he is singing about has already been unfaithful.  Poor boy.  He ought to learn and live the whakatauki, “Me hoki whakamuri, kia ahu whakamua, ka neke,” because in order to have foresight you do need hindsight. 

That is why, when dealing with the Crown, Ngati Kahu rightfully hope for the best but always prepare for the worst.  When you consider the Crown’s history with them, they’d be unwise not to do so.

Briefly that history is one in which the Crown has lied to and stolen from Ngati Kahu’s hapu and then bullied and punished them for refusing to kowtow to it.  In fact, after stealing more than 215,000 acres of their land, the Crown has consistently refused to return those lands on anything but its own terms.  As for compensating them for the lost opportunities caused by its thievery, the Crown steadfastly refuses to even consider doing that.

There is not enough space in this post to cover its entire history, but it is plain to see the special vindictiveness of the Crown towards Ngati Kahu’s hapu as displayed by its Minister of Treaty Negotiations in 2010 when he told one of those hapu via state television they could “Go to hell.” 

What had they done to earn his thin-spirited, ferret-faced ferocity?  After 170 years of waiting for the Crown to do the right thing, they had repossessed a minute portion of their lands and invited him to come and talk about its return to them. 

Now, in its recently released Te Hiku Claims Settlement Bill, the Crown has signalled that it not only intends to settle the claims of the other four iwi in the region, it also intends to give them as much of the lands it stole from Ngati Kahu as it can, thus making sure those lands can never be returned to the hapu who still rightfully own them.

And in a clause never seen before in any settlement legislation, the Crown will write new legislation that allows it to steal Ngati Kahu’s share of the accumulated forest rentals currently held by the Crown Forestry Rental Trust, and then transfer it to the Public Trust until Ngāti Kahu agrees to fully and finally settle all its claims.  

Given the terrible reputation of the Public Trust for charging huge fees and costs just to hold the moneys vested in it, you should watch this space.  And while you are doing so, remember the question asked in another Split Enz song, “What more can a poor boy do?”  Once again Ngati Kahu’s hapu could very well provide the answer in another of their whakatauki, this time from their tupuna Kakaitawhiti who said,

Ka patua ko au ko te tito ko te porangi.  Ko te anganga i Titi iho i te rangi.  Ko nga rakau tu patapata o te hauauru ki te tonga, ko nga toko kopuni o te hau raro, ko Kai Tawhiti te tangata, te uri o te tangata. 

Death to the liar, the insane.  Hail the chosen Chief from heaven.  Through the gentle rain forest of the west, southward, held upright with a cloak against the north wind, comes a Chief from afar, a descendant of another.

Indeed, as Ngati Kahu already know and the poor boy is still learning, history does repeat – often.