TALKING WITH OUR WAI

The brewing brouhaha and blame shifting going on between various governing agencies over the shortage of water available to whānau living in Kaitāia, and elsewhere around the motu, has got me wondering: if the water could talk, what would it say to us? and if it could hear, what would we say to it?

So, I went down to the water closest to me here in Kaitāia and here is what it told me.

On my surface lie otaota (weeds) that do not have hakapapa (genealogical links) to this whenua (land).  As they flourish, die and rot they entangle he para (other rubbish and litter) thrown into me – plastic, paper, food and a shopping trolley that used to glitter but is now flaking rust. 

My view of Ranginui (the Sky Parent) is clouded by all these and other parakino (pollutants) coming from upstream.  Over the years I have received avalanches of slipped whenua, been coated by sewage spills, and have had farm and factory runoff, truck washes and stormwater emptied into me; I have even held the dead and the discarded.

I have had karakia and waerea intoned over me, pipes and drains inserted into my banks and rāhui laid on me.  I have seen my tangata whenua (people of this land) marginalised by foreign powers and prevented from exercising their kaitiakitanga (care) of me and their whaunangatanga (relationship) with me.

Each winter, every drop of water that drains from Maungataniwha, Raetea and all the awa between, passes through me.  But, with each passing summer, I have become more and more dirty and diminished.  Aue!  I am tired.  When shall I rest and be cleaned? 

In response, this is what we have to say to our wai.  Ko wai mātou?  (Who are we?)  Ko wai mātou.  (We are water.)  We are here still and, although we have yet to fully recover from our own long marginalisation, we are increasingly carrying out our kaitiakitanga and whanaungatanga with you. So, hold on, help is at hand.

It is true that hapū and iwi Māori are still doing the mahi of kaitiakitanga of their wai.  In the case of Kaitāia, the kaitiaki of Ngāi Tohianga at Ōturu Marae are working hard with everyone, including those foreign authorities that still like to think they have some power and authority over our wai.  

They are wrong about that, but they will have a role to play under the correct power and authority of the mana whenua.

In the meantime, we will continue to talk with our wai.

THE PRICE IS PAID

Last Wednesday, our roopu of kuia, mokopuna and rangatahi arose, readied ourselves and made our way to Waitangi in time to join the throngs who came to open the 28 Māori Battalion Museum which is built opposite the ‘treaty house’ there.

In the stygian darkness, Wahoroi Shortland of Ngāti Hine prepared us for the ritual to come, beginning at 5am with the drawn out urgency of the pūtatara, continuing through the rhythmic revelation of the waerea, and culminating in our thrice repeated responses to two questions, “Ko wai te ingoa o tēnei pou?” (what is the name of this pou?) and “Ko wai te ingoa o tēnei whare?” (what is the name of this house?).

Then, as we began the long, slow hikoi past the pou and into the whare, one of my mokopuna became suddenly nauseous.  So, we moved out of the throng and took seats beneath the flagpole to allow him to recover in the warm womb of darkness.

Sitting there, I pondered what had happened and wondered why.  

I thought about how the Battalion’s four Companies had been organised along hakapapa lines and had nicknames reflective of them and / or their rohe. 

A Company, drawn from Ngāti Whātua, Ngāpuhi and other northern iwi were Ngā Keri Kāpia (the Gum Diggers).  B Company, centred on Te Arawa and the Mataatua tribes, were Ngā Ruku Kapa (the Penny Divers).  C Company drawn from the the Tairawhiti/East Coast region were Ngā Kaupoi (the Cowboys) and D Company, which covered the whole of the South Island and the remainder of the North Island were the Foreign Legion or Ngāti Walkabout.

I thought about how the location of the museum was based on Sir Apirana Ngata’s famous 1940 speech at Waitangi where he said Māori serving in World War 2 was “the price of citizenship”.  And I thought about how there had not been unanimous support from the descendants of the Battalion’s other Companies for it to be located in Waitangi.

Then I thought about the men of our whānau who had served.  Two brothers, Arani Pirika Herepete (A Company) and Timoti Herepete (B Company), two cousins Rawiri Te Paa (A Company) and Robert Kara Rollo (B Company).  I thought about how they all came home alive but changed and how not one of them lived beyond 50.  Maringi noa nga roimata and as my tears fell in the darkness, I understood. 

For the next few hours, I told my mokopuna about each of their tūpuna.  Then the sun came up, and as we surveyed the crowds still thronging through the doors we quietly left. 

While Te Rau Aroha (the name of the museum) contains mementos and artefacts of our tūpuna and their compatriots, their essence is contained within us, their uri.  And when we return, to properly honour them all I hope my mokopuna will understand that not only has the price of their and our citizenship been paid, it should never have been charged.

THE WHITE WORRIER

In December 2009, the New Zealand Parliament recognised the tino rangatiratanga (sovereignty) flag as the national Māori flag and announced its decision to hoist it alongside the New Zealand flag on all government buildings on Waitangi Day.

This decision, described at the time as a symbolic recognition of partnership and unity between Māori and the Crown, proved polarising.  While some saw it as a mere token gesture to Māori, others saw it as yet another step towards Māori separatism.

Sandra Koster, a Pākehā resident of the small South Island town of Timaru was amongst the latter when she ripped up a Māori flag in protest, arguing that Māori aspirations for greater self-determination posed a threat to the nation and to present and future generations of Pākehā.

Calls for separate institutions in particular led Koster to feel “really quite frightened for my grandchildren because I can see us becoming just like South Africa”. Koster stressed that her actions were not racist and were justified by her desire for “harmony” between Māori and Pākehā in order to re-make Aotearoa/New Zealand “a wonderful, beautiful country to live in”. 

In her 2011 thesis, “Being Pākehā: White Settler Narratives of Politics, Identity, and Belonging in Aotearoa/New Zealand”, Jennifer Terruhn opened with this story as an example of the growing public unease amongst some of the white settler majority of Pākehā about ‘the self-determinative politics of aboriginality’ and, more specifically, the ‘persistent presence’ of indigeneity.‘

In Aotearoa/New Zealand, that unease is reflected in phrases such as ‘Treaty fatigue’ and what conservative politician Don Brash referred to in his incendiary Nationhood speech as the “Treaty grievance industry.”

These phrases match a growing sense of resentment amongst white majorities internationally over the rights claimed by indigenous, ethnic and immigrant minorities.   As Wulf D. Hund and Alana Lentin noted in their 2014 study on international racism, “in just a few decades following the generalised, if at times begrudging, acceptance that racism is unjust, we have hit ‘racism fatigue’.”  

Here in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the critical whiteness theories and theories of settler colonialism which framed Terruhn’s study of Pākehā identities and imaginaries, indicate that the resentment of some Pākehā often aligns with attempts to “recuperate, reconstitute and restore white identities and the supremacy of whiteness in post-apartheid, post-industrial, post-imperial, post-Civil Rights societies.”

In his 2003 analysis of ‘paranoid nationalism’, Ghassan Hage coined the figure of the ‘white worrier’ to identify how white Australians, particularly males, marginalized by the inequalities of economic rationalism and globalization, had displaced their anxieties onto even weaker ‘others’ – Aboriginals and migrants, particularly refugees.

Throughout this year, I will occasionally revisit this phenomenon of the resentful ‘white worrier’; not to ridicule it (it is a genuine condition) nor to reverse it (only those with it can do anything about it), but, rather, to understand why it exists and why it cannot stop the persistence of indigeneity.

And with that thought, I wish us all a safe and serene Waitangi week 2020,