PRAISE AND PROGRESS

At Waitangi in February this year, the government and Iwi Māori agreed to develop a National Plan of Action to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.  Three months later, Experts from the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous People visited to provide advice to the government and Iwi Māori on how to go about drafting it.

The Advice Note the Experts wrote has now been released on the Expert Mechanism’s website at https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IPeoples/EMRIP/Pages/Session12.aspx and it contains very clear and helpful advice.

Earlier this month, three members of the Independent Monitoring Mechanism, Bill Hamilton, Tracey Whare and Professor Margaret Mutu, along with Jess Ngātai and Hēmi Pirihi from the Human Rights Commission, attended the meeting of the Expert Mechanism in Geneva, Switzerland to present the fifth annual report on the government’s compliance with its obligations under the Declaration.  I covered that report in last week’s column and it can be read on the Ngāti Kahu website at http://www.ngatikahu.iwi.nz/node/16426.  They also reported on the Experts’ visit to this country. 

They were somewhat taken aback by the high level of praise they received from all the members of the Expert Mechanism who expressed strong gratitude to them for having set an historical precedent in monitoring this country’s government each year and in successfully persuading it to start drafting a National Plan of Action to implement the Declaration.

In the formal presentation to a room with about 400 Indigenous Peoples’ and government representatives, the Expert Mechanism asked the Monitoring Mechanism to explain how it had been done?  What were the key elements to its success?  How could other indigenous peoples pick it up?

The answer lies in the fact that the Monitoring Mechanism has its own experts working for it who know the United Nations and its processes really well.  They also have the strong support of our people for what they are doing, as well as the support of the Minister of Māori Development and the backing of the Human Rights Commission.

However, there are still politicians and officials who are obstructive to the Plan of Action and the Declaration; in fact, there was one in Geneva.  Hei aha (whatever).  The Monitoring Mechanism found ways around her, and they were too busy talking with other Indigenous Peoples about how to get all governments to implement the Declaration. 

There is a scripture that says, “No man [generic term], having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the Kingdom.”  A whakataukī that echoes that same message is, “He rangai maomao ka taka ki tua o Nukutaurua, e kore a muri e hokia.” When a shoal of maomao fish has passed to seaward of Nukutaurua rock (off Mangōnui harbour) it will never return

So it is that we are making progress on this mission together, and there is no turning back.

MONITORING THE GOVERNMENT

The Independent Monitoring Mechanism is an independent Māori working group created in 2015 with members selected by their iwi (tribal nation) and endorsed by the National Iwi Chairs Forum to act as independent experts to promote and monitor the implementation of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Aotearoa/New Zealand (the Declaration).

Since 2015, the Mechanism has reported the findings of its monitoring activities annually to the UN Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP).  Last week, it presented its 2019- report.  The full report can be read on this link:  https://www.docdroid.net/mbjaqdl/2019-monitoring-report-16jul19.pdf

Arranged under four headings, the report contains ten recommendations to the government as follows:

ONE:  Prioritise taking concrete steps to progress constitutional conversations and implement the recommendations of the Matike Mai report.

TWO:  Remove laws that impede the exercise of mana motuhake (self-determination) by Iwi and Hapū; and develop any new laws through genuine, equitable partnership.

THREE:  Amend the Local Government Act 2002 to (a) clarify and confirm the Tiriti obligations of local and central government; (b) remove the discriminatory provisions that apply to the creation of Māori wards; and (c) ensure that the obligations of free, prior and informed consent are adequately reflected and upheld.

FOUR:  Amend the Treaty claims and settlement processes to better provide for the return of land in accordance with articles 25, 26, 27 and 28 of the Declaration; and Strengthen Waitangi Tribunal powers to issue binding recommendations and require Crown response and action on its recommendations.

FIVE:  Ensure that climate crisis responses reflect Te Tiriti and the Declaration, and adequately address the urgency of the climate crisis; establish bi-partisan forums where significant environmental decisions can be addressed in partnership with Iwi, Hapū and whānau and independently of party politics.

SIX:  Increase resourcing and support for te reo initiatives, including subsidies and incentives to encourage people to learn and teach te reo Māori.

SEVEN:  Implement the recommendations of the Whānau Ora review; apply indigenous, whanau-centred approaches and frameworks across government.

EIGHT:  Urgently act to ensure (a) a halt to the removal of Māori children from whānau, hapū and iwi; (b) Meaningful Tiriti partnership that upholds self-determination and the exercise of Māori authority for the wellbeing of Māori children; (c) Iwi and Māori involvement in co-designing legislation, policy and in reviewing the current system; (d) That any state child protection system meets Tiriti, Declaration and human rights obligations.

NINE:  Continue to support the work of the Safe and Effective Justice Advisory Group Te Uepū Hāpai i te Ora, and once it has completed its work, ensure that proposals and recommendations are urgently implemented.

TEN:  Implement the recommendations made by the EMRIP in its Advice Note which can be read in its entirety on this link:  https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IPeoples/EMRIP/Session12/EMRIPAdvisroyNoteNZ2019.docx

Next week I will share how the report was received at the EMRIP’s meeting.-

LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND MAORI

Since I started writing these columns 13 years ago, I have covered and commented on four rounds of local government body elections.  This year, there will be another round and the Electoral Commission has already opened its voting enrolment campaign.

As part of that, the Commission joined with Te Puni Kokiri, the Northland Regional Council and Whangarei District Council, a couple of consultancy firms, NorthTec and an organisation called Te Huinga & Te Tai Tokerau Māori and Council Working Party to call and host the Te Tai Tokerau Māori in Local Government Symposium at Waitangi on Thursday 27^th June.

With a fairly comprehensive range of speakers, beginning with a keynote address from Nanaia Mahuta, Minister of Local Government, and concluding with Andrew Judd, ex-Mayor of New Plymouth and self-described ‘recovering racist’, the symposium focused on getting Māori to engage with the election process, whether as candidates or voters.

I was personally most impressed with the youth speaker, Justice Hetaraka, a law student who spoke on why  Māori rangatahi are disengaged and why many (if not the majority) don’t vote.  She prefaced her kōrero with the statement that tino rangatiratanga was her goal.  BUT until then, she felt Māori should participate in the current system. 

And that, I suspect, was how the majority of those present felt; even speakers like Arapeta Tahana (Councillor of Bay of Plenty Regional Council) and Glenn Wilcox (Deputy Chair of the Auckland Independent Māori Statutory Board), who are already at the decision-making table in some form or other.

There is no doubt that local governments have an impact on Iwi Māori.  But, even when Māori succeed in getting elected, we are inevitably a minority voice and must represent a wider constituency than Māori; one which is often hostile to our rangatiratanga.

Since 2002, when the Local Government Act was passed, I have seen three yearly cycles of discussion around how Councils might meet their statutory obligations to maintain and improve opportunities for Māori to contribute to local government decision-making processes, and to facilitate Māori participation in those processes.  But in between times, there have been no sustained or consistent gains. 

Of the current 39 Councillors from the four Councils located in Te Tai Tokerau, only three have Māori hakapapa.  And, apart from the mixed motivations of the failed 2013 campaign for a separate unitary body in the Far North, we have seen the Northland Regional Council set up a Māori Advisory Board in 2014 and some members of the Northland Mayoral Forum have signed a governance agreement with some members of the Tai Tokerau Iwi Chairs Forum this year.  That’s it.

To a degree, Justice Hetaraka’s position matches my own.  However, the critical questions for my Iwi are, first, where does participating in local government fit in our list of priorities?  And second, how much of our very limited resources, time and energies do we invest in either the Electoral Commission’s enrolment campaign and/or those of any Māori candidates?  

More on this in future columns.

FOR THE ENVIRONMENT'S SAKE

Last week, there was a three day hearing by two Independent Environmental Commissioners for the resource consent application of the Far North District Council (FNDC) relating to discharges from the East Coast Wastewater Treatment Plant (the ECWWTP).

The FNDC has been in breach of its consent there for almost a decade, and those most affected by that are the tangata whenua of Ngāti Kahu. 

Since the ECWWTP was installed almost four decades ago, its ‘treated’ wastewater has flowed into the sea at Aurere.  During that period, we have suffered the total disappearance of kokota and karehu and the shrinking in size of the pipi there.  We have also experienced bouts of sickness from eating the tio which have black spots on them, the kutai which are almost entirely black, and the wetfish caught there which often have cancerous growths on them. 

At the same time, we have witnessed an explosion of sea algae that now regularly wash ashore to rot, and a matching explosion in manawa (mangrove) forests that are a sign of excess nutrients in the water and are nature’s way of trying to clean up.

Understandably, we have become wary of taking kaimoana from or near Aurere.  However, it is still one of the main kapata kai of our iwi, and our staple diet still revolves around kaimoana.  So, depending on what our senses tell us, we do still take from there.

As submitter after submitter noted last week, we have a spiritual connection to our whole environment and a hakapapa relationship to every creation within it.  That is why we have never practiced the discharge of human waste material into our waterways when there have always been sensible landbased alternatives available.

During the past decade, while both FNDC and Northland Regional Council (NRC) have effectively ignored the ongoing problems with the ECWWTP and the rest of FNDC’s inadequate sewage infrastructure throughout the District (except Kerikeri), tangata whenua have worked on providing them with viable land-based alternatives.

After lengthy, in-depth research and testing (none of which was paid for by the FNDC or NRC), the most attractive of these alternatives to date is an electro-coagulation unit. 

Following a two year trial at a local enterprise, which is now investing in a permanent larger unit to deal with all its wastewater, evidence of the unit’s efficacy and its economy (much cheaper than the existing system) has been provided to both Councils via the current hearing process.  And yet I witnessed and heard last week a distinct coolness from both Councils toward it.

The Commissioners were empathetic with us but are constrained by legislation.  So, I think they will likely issue a consent for FNDC to continue discharging to water.  However, I think they will make it a much shorter term consent then the original 45 years sought by FNDC and will also make it conditional on consulting meaningfully with tangata whenua and exploring land-based alternatives.

For the environment’s sake, I hope so.