GO FLY A KITE

For some time now Chris Finlayson has been flying kites for the crown amongst the iwi of Te Hiku o Te Ika, gauging how much he can get away with and who will support him against Ngāti Kahu.

In August he wrote instructing Ngāti Kahu to comply with Crown deadlines about providing information relating to the settlement of the other four iwi. Last month he wrote again saying he has now decided how to extinguish (not settle) Ngāti Kahu’s claims.

He intends to vest a lot of Ngāti Kahu lands in other iwi; Rangiāniwaniwa (kura kaupapa and airport), Te Make (the Sweetwater farm), Te Hiku forest lands as far north as Hukatere, and several properties in Kaitāia and Takahue. On top of that, he has withdrawn more than 60 other properties altogether that were in the Ngāti Kahu and Te Rarawa agreements in principle, saying the Crown wants to keep them (presumably to sell). In any event they have disappeared off the ever-shortening list of lands the crown is willing to transfer to the other iwi.

With regard to Rangiāniwaniwa, Finlayson instructs that the land will be transferred in a 50:50 split to Ngāi Takoto and Ngāti Kahu. But, until Ngāti Kahu behave like good Mowries, the crown will hang on to the Ngāti Kahu share. And if Ngāti Kahu are still being bad Mowries 36 months later, then the crown will transfer the Ngāti Kahu share to Ngāi Takoto. So, if Ngāi Takoto waits long enough, they can swoop in and take all of Rangiāniwaniwa. Never mind that the two whānau from whom it was taken during WW2 are still living right next to Rangiāniwaniwa; the Erstich and Pōpata whānau of Ngāti Kahu. Fortunately we can rely on the rank and file Ngāi Takoto not to fly that kite.

But wait, there’s more. Finlayson has also decided he must protect Far North District Council’s $1 per annum lease on more than half of Rangiāniwaniwa. Never mind that the lease doesn’t expire until 2013 or that he has no title on the land. Never mind that it still belongs to Patukōraha and Ngāi Tohianga hapū of Ngāti Kahu and Ngāi Takoto. And never mind that the council is lead by a man who, when told in 2008 that the land was going back to Ngāti Kahu and Ngāi Takoto, said there was no way Mowry could ever own an airport.

The legal owners of Rangiāniwaniwa met last Thursday and reaffirmed that they are happy for both the airport and the kura kaupapa to remain on their land. But it is they who will determine the terms of the renewed leases.

As for crown and council, they will get their answers in the Waitangi Tribunal soon enough. Until then, they are invited to take their racist whim, will and purported authority over all iwi including Ngāti Kahu, and go fly a kite.

UP IN SMOKE

On 12th November 1996 the first MMP general election in New Zealand was held. Just five months earlier, on the morning of 17th June, Ruapehu had erupted spectacularly, spewing 7 million tonnes of ash into the air.

Both these events impacted hugely on the land claims of Ngāti Kuri, Te Aupōuri, Ngāitakoto, Te Rarawa and Ngāti Kahu. But of the two, the Ruapehu eruption had the most immediate impact.

How so? Because, apart from contaminating the drinking water for miles around, damaging buildings, vehicles and the Rangipo Power Station, the ash and smoke also brought air travel between Auckland and Wellington to a halt for several days.

That meant a scheduled meeting between then Minister of Treaty Negotiations, Doug Graham, and Te Rūnanga o Muriwhenua didn’t happen. Partly as a result of that missed meeting, the Crown’s plans to quickly settle the five iwi claims before the general election of 1996, and before the Tribunal released its 1997 report on those claims, went up in smoke.
In the fifteen years since, there have been four more general elections, countless meetings between Crown and Iwi negotiators, and Ruapehu has erupted twice.

In 1996, those who supported settling on the Crown’s terms had two catch-cries; “Land the whale first, then cut it up,” and “Settle now, or miss the bus.”

I never beleived either catchcry. Instead I insisted on knowing how fresh the whale was, where the bus was going and who was driving it. I’ve always been picky that way.

In 1996 the whale was said to be worth $120 million. Where that figure came from and what it was based on, is not known. In the end it didn’t matter because both it and the bus it rode into town on were chimera. The original chimera was a monster in Greek mythology with a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a snake’s tail. The word now means a vain or idle fancy.
For hapū rangatira, unless settlement is based on extinguishing the Crown’s false claims to their lands, and until the Crown relinquishes its grip on those lands, the whale will prove to have been a chimera. And if settlement is done under the Crown’s current terms of extinguishing Te Tiriti and Te Whakaputanga, the bus will have delivered them into its hands.

Fast forward to 2011. On November 26th, another general election happens. Before then, in the week of October 10th – 15th, the Crown plans to sign deeds of settlement with four iwi other than Ngāti Kahu. Those deeds will include the gains that Ngāti Kahu won off the Crown. They will also include lands that Ngāti Kahu, through Te Paatu, has a strong interest in; Kaitāia, the airport, the forests, Te Oneroa-a-Tohe, Te Make (Sweetwater), Kaimaumau and Maungataniwha.

Ngāti Kahu has not agreed to any of its lands being included, and will not be present.

Hei aha. Regardless of what Ruapehu might do, someone’s plans are about to go up in smoke.

WAITANGI TRIBUNAL MEMORANDUM AND DIRECTIONS

Thanks to Ngāti Kahu the Muriwhenua Land Claim before the Waitangi Tribunal is alive again.

Last week (12th September), the Tribunal’s Chief Judge released a two page memorandum of directions on Ngāti Kahu’s application for binding recommendations asking that the Crown be ordered to return all State-owned Enterprise and Crown Forest Lands in the Ngāti Kahu rohe, plus pay compensation to Ngāti Kahu. Following is the substance of that memo.

1. On 5 July 2011 the Tribunal received a memorandum of counsel for Ngāti Kahu seeking to revive the application for remedies filed in October 2007 and amended in November 2007.
2. In accordance with my memorandum-directions of 19 July 2011 and 19 August 2011 the Waitangi Tribunal’s Registrar has completed a review of the record of inquiry for the Muriwhenua Land Claim and concluded that despite some inconsistencies in the record there is a reasonable level of docmentation available, both physical and electronic, to enable a new peresiding officer to be appointed.
3. Notwithstanding this conclusion, the review identified missing documents that may be of relevance to the current application, and may be in the possession of the Crown. These documents are as follows:
a) Topographical display map with overlays.
b) J Williams, Claimant Submission in support of Kaimaumau recommendation (22 Oct 91);
c) Submission from Te Runanga o Muriwhenua, “Outline of Te Runanga o Muriwhenua to this and subsequent Tribunal processes”;
d) Letter from Juken Nissho Ltd to OTS, 2 Apr 98, which is attached to Crown submission re pre-remedies hearing, 31 Mar 98; and
e) Submissions of Te Runanga-a-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu, 5 Apr 98
4. If the Crown is in possession of these documents it is to file these documents with the Tribunal no later than midday, Monday 19 September 2011. Alternatively, the Crown should notify the Tribunal if these documents are not available.
5. However, having regard to the report I have received from the Registrar, I am satisfied that there is an adequate record of inquiry that is in a condition to enable a new presiding officer to review and familiarise himself or herself with the relevant documents.
6. Accordingly, pusuant to clause 5AA(1) of the Second Schedule to the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975, I now appoint Judge S J Clark, a judge of the Maori Land Court, as the replacement presiding officer of the Muriwhenua Land Claim inquiry.
For the bush lawyers amongst us, that means the Crown had until yesterday to respond as directed.

Interestingly prior to releasing this memo, the Tribunal had released a much lengthier one on 26th August with regard to the Turanganui a Kiwa inquiry; that’s the consolidated claim which includes Stephen Haronga, the man whose success in the Supreme Court reopened remedies as an option for Ngāti Kahu. In that memo the Tribunal has decided to hold hearings. Its decision to do so is based on a number of determinations it had made in 1998 about binding recommendations in Muriwhenua.

The Crown should be worried.

UNRIGHTEOUS DOMINION

A phenomenon I have only just recently registered, but which really (when I cast my memory back) has been around all my life, is how little conviction and belief the Crown and its supporters have in the language, culture and laws they derived from England.

Take just one word and its legal, linguistic and cultural meanings as an example: “rightfully.”

When I see and hear that word I immediately get that it is a compound of “right” and “fully”.

The first part (right) brings to mind classic English words, phrases and colloquialisms like: “the golden rule”, “courage of one’s convictions”, “a moral compass”, “a sense of responsibility”, “the sword of righteousness”, “defender of truth”, “the ten commandments”. When you use the word “right” you are describing something in the Crown’s language and law that is right – not wrong.

The second part (fully) brings to mind other great English colloquialisms and phrases like “a sense of completeness”, “full as a bull”, “chocker-block”, “pregnant with possibility”, “my cup runneth over”, “total capacity”. When you use the word "fully", you are describing something in the Crown’s law, language and culture that is in a state of fullness – not emptiness.

The compound word “rightfully” not only holds all of the meanings of both its parts, it takes on a number of additional meanings as well. However, none of those meanings adds up to a state of wrong or emptiness.

So, can the word “rightfully” be applied today to the Crown’s assertions in word and deed that it is sovereign with dominion over the country known as New Zealand?

The answer to that question has been evolving for some time now through the kōrero, research and writings coming out of the marae and hui, parliament and select committees, the universities and institutions of this and other lands, the United Nations, the media. But nowhere is it more clearly to be seen taking shape than within the courts and tribunals of this and other lands.

From my long observation of the courts and three decades of working on the interface between the Crown and Māori, the answer is “no”. No, the Crown cannot yet rightfully assert that it holds sovereignty and dominion over this country. No, it cannot continue to get away with breaking its own laws. No, it cannot continue without a written constitution based on Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

The Crown is inching towards doing the “right” thing “fully”. It’s going begrudgingly, even angrily at times; consider Chris Finlayson’s outburst last year telling Ngāti Kahu to go to hell. But it is going.

It has been prophesied that one day we shall all see eye to eye, and that which is wrong shall be set right. That day is coming.

Until then the trend is clear. Māori and others who have strong conviction and belief in both the Māori and English cultures, languages and laws will continue to fight for and win well-argued and legal outcomes against the Crown’s unrighteous dominion.

THE CROWN'S CROWBAR

How can you tell when the Crown is lying? Who decides how and when your people's claims are settled?

If you know the answers to those questions, congratulations; you have just passed the minimum entry requirement to a tough course in the school of hard knocks titled, ‘Direct Treaty Negotiations With The Crown 101'. 

Work hard and you might one day be qualified to be given the mandate to negotiate for your people who lodged, researched and presented their claims to the Waitangi Tribunal.

But you will first have to reach a much higher level of knowledge, even wisdom.

Paper one is titled, What Does Settlement Mean? You will need to answer that question correctly with regard to the different perspectives of at least four distinct groups; the Crown, the public, your people and you. Here is your cram sheet.

• With regard to your people, only they can tell you what settlement means for them, because only they know what they have lost since their tūpuna signed Te Tiriti o Waitangi. You must take the time to be instructed by their ahikāroa, kaumātua kuia and historians because it is they who know what and how settlement will be reached, not the individual iwi and hapū members scattered throughout the world. It is their mandate you must first seek, and the best place to hear their kōrero is in the preparation and presentation of their claims to the Waitangi Tribunal.

• With regard to the public, you can take it as a given that settlement means little to most of them. That is sad. But you don’t have time to educate them and it is not your job to do so.

• With regard to the Crown, settlement means ‘extinguishment’ of Te Tiriti and amen to the mana whenua, rangatiratiratanga and kaitiakitanga of your people. Having finally and irrevocably crowbarred your people away from their lands and everything that made them and you rangatira, the Crown will make itself your sovereign.  

• In exchange the Crown will not pay a cent of compensation. Instead it will, with one hand, give you no more (probably a lot less) than three cents in the dollar on the current value of the land it stole from your people. Then with the other hand it will force you to give back more than 90% in ransom before it will partially relinquish control over perhaps 5% of that land. Those calculations are based on the largest ‘settlements’ to date.

For you, based on those same settlements, it means the Crown will write a deed into which it will slip clauses that beef up its false claims to own everything under the land of your people, and its control over everything above it.

If you are the negotiator that lets all this happen, you will have successfully swapped the rangatiratanga of your people for a position as advisors to Crown agents like DoC and FNDC. Instead of revitalising your people, you will have gutted them.

Finally, you will be remembered forever as the Crown’s crowbar; the one who let the Crown decide when and how your people’s claims were settled; the one who never learnt that the Crown is lying whenever its many lips are moving.

Q & A

At the hui-a-iwi held last Thursday in Kareponia marae a good cross-section of people from across Te Hiku got their questions answered about Ngāti Kahu’s application to the Waitangi Tribunal. For everyone’s enlightenment, I’ve summarized the kōrero in a question and answer format.

Why have Ngāti Kahu gone back to the Tribunal? Because negotiations reached an impasse, so the claimants told the negotiators to go back for binding recommendations.

Why did negotiations between Ngāti Kahu and the Crown fail? Because of ongoing Crown bad faith.

Will this hold up the other iwi? Potentially. They can settle their own claims where they have exclusive interests any time they and the Crown agree. But if they attempt to settle claims on lands and resources in which Ngāti Kahu hold an interest, this process may hold that up.

Who are we acting for? For all the claims which have already been investigated and reported on by the Waitangi Tribunal. Additionally we act for several claims lodged after the Tribunal report was released in 1997.

What redress comes from binding recommendations? We get a percentage of the lands under the Te Hiku (formerly Aupōuri) and Ōtangaroa forests, a percentage of the forest value, plus a percentage of the annual rentals paid by JNL. Additionally we get Rangiputa and Kohumaru stations, other SoE and education properties, and properties that have 27B Memorials on their titles.

However, we don’t get any pūtea to ransom back our lands from the thief, or the interest on those funds as per the 2008 AiP. Nor do we get our wāhi tapu sites or reserve lands, the social revitalisation funds or the Ngāti Kahu Statutory Board over DoC administered lands. In short we don’t get settlement. But seeing as the Crown uses settlement to extinguish the Treaty rights and status of those settling, that’s not as great a loss as some might make it out to be.

Who holds the redress from binding recommendations? The Tribunal decides, so the options will be part of legal argument presented to the Tribunal.

What happens to negotiations? After the Tribunal makes a binding recommendation, the Crown has 90 days to negotiate an acceptable settlement, otherwise the recommendations become binding. The negotiators will return to Ngāti Kahu during this time for instructions on any Crown offer.

Can hapu negotiate their own claims? They have been able to elsewhere. But for some unknown reason the Crown refuses to negotiate with hapū or individual claimants in Te Hiku o Te Ika.

What happens next? The Crown has to file its response to the Ngāti Kahu application this month. The Tribunal will complete its review of the Muriwhenua record of inquiry and readiness for hearing next month. There may be additional interlocutory steps required before the end of 2011. Appointment of a new presiding officer and panel will then happen, followed by the setting of dates and issues for hearings, hearings themselves-, consideration of arguments from all parties and a Tribunal decision, all hopefully in 2012.

Then, dependent on the outcomes of any negotiations during the 90 day period following binding recommendations, either a negotiated settlement will be processed for ratification by the Crown and Ngāti Kahu, or the recommendations will become final.

THE IK FACTOR

As I prepare to vote in the general elections later this year, I’m looking at the environment and carefully measuring every candidate and party for what I call the Ik factor.

I coined the phrase from the late Lewis Thomas who had the knack of writing about all sorts of things in a way I could understand. In one of his best known essays he considered the case of the Iks, an indigenous tribe of Uganda who had two disasters befall them in the 1960s. First they were displaced from their land to create a national park and consequently suffered extreme famine. Second they had a British-American anthropologist come live with and study them for two years, by the end of which he seems to have thoroughly despised them.

He recorded that they lived solitary and unloved lives, snatched food from their weakest members. defecated on each other’s doorsteps, and shouted derision at each other’s misfortunes. Even worse, they treated him as one of the family, meaning they showed him no love at all.

As a result he concluded that not only were they the grabbiest bunch of misery-guts imaginable, they were also proof that at heart humans are naturally inclined to be brutish and anti-social.

When I read that I felt sick because, although my experience said it wasn’t true, it reminded me of something. What? I go with Lewis who suggested that the Iks, in their despair, had gone mad and devolved into singular municipalities, even nation states of one, with no sense of familiness or social bonding to each other or their environment.

Yes, that was it. To illustrate, while such nastiness is still relatively rare between neighbouring whānau, we see Ikness between district and regional authorities every time there’s another spill of raw tiko into our waterways. It’s even worse between sovereign nations where warfare is widespread and whole oceans are polluted. Iks the most of them.

In this, as in every election year, the current government has made sure that any issue that might anger voters is either out of sight, or sopped into silence. Asset sales? Not this year. Protesting Māori? Leave them to mainstream media. Shoddy health and safety standards in our mines? Reinstate mine inspectors. Deepsea oil exploration? Off the table.

Will any of these silencers and sops last? Unlikely while parliament is full of Iks who see people as labour units and Papatūānuku as an impersonal resource that can be exposed to risk of pollution and sold to the highest bidder.

Back to Lewis. "Once you have become permanently startled, as I am by the realization that we are a social species,” he wrote in 1976, “you tend to keep an eye out for the pieces of evidence that this is, by and large, good for us." Ever since then, I’ve been keeping my eye out and it’s clear. Being a ‘social species’ is not only good for us it’s good for the environment. But only when we bring the Ik factor way down and treat Earth and each other as known and loved members of the whānau.

REVIEW

As they prepare to return to the Waitangi Tribunal, it is timely to review the Tribunal and its work, as well as that of the Crown, with regard to Ngāti Kahu.

The Waitangi Tribunal is a Crown appointed Commission of Inquiry established in 1975 to inquire into and make recommendations on breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi by the Crown. It is made up of people who have specialist knowledge and expertise in British culture and law as well as in aspects of tikanga Māori. It relies on claimants appearing before it to advise on the tikanga of each hapū and iwi making claims. From 1990 to 1994 Ngāti Kahu, led by McCully Matiu, sent many kaumātua to explain their tikanga to the Tribunal.

The Tribunal inquired into the actions of the British Crown, settlers and settler governments to find out whether they had complied with British law when they made claims to or took over control of Ngāti Kahu lands. The Tribunal found that they had not. Instead they had deliberately ignored and violated Ngāti Kahu tikanga in respect of their lands, repeatedly breached the Treaty of Waitangi, and stolen most of that land. As a result, the Tribunal recommended the Crown transfer substantial property back to Ngāti Kahu.

The fact that the Tribunal made the findings it did is extremely important. This is one part of the Crown telling another part of the Crown that it has acted illegally and that it now has very large and serious liabilities as a result. In terms of both Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and in terms of its own laws, the Crown has little choice but to return what it stole.

All of Ngāti Kahu’s rohe has historical and cultural significance. Many of those places and their associated wāhi tapu have suffered severe degradation physically and/or spiritually when the Crown and its supporters have falsely claimed them, and when Ngāti Kahu have been unable to maintain full association as mana whenua.

Before European contact, Ngāti Kahu exercised its own laws and customs based on values rather than a rigid set of rules. Despite superficial changes after contact with Europeans, the essential nature of Ngāti Kahu social organisation, authority, leadership, tikanga, law, and protocols, has remained unchanged.

In 1840, Te Tiriti o Waitangi set out the conditions under which the Queen of England could exercise authority over her own British people and guaranteed that the rangatira of Ngāti Kahu would continue to exercise the same rangatiratanga that they had always exercised and that had been previously acknowledged in the 1835 Te Hakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni. It also guaranteed that Ngāti Kahu would enjoy all the rights, privileges and responsibilities of British citizens.

As the Tribunal has already found, the Crown has failed to honour these guarantees to Ngāti Kahu.

GHOSTBUSTERS

Last month, Te Runanga-a-Iwi o Ngāti Kahu lodged an application formally asking the Waitangi Tribunal to order the Crown to return all Crown forest and State-owned Enterprise lands in the Ngāti Kahu rohe. A mere four days after the application had been lodged, the Tribunal issued a memorandum in which it directed the Crown to respond by 5th August.

When the application was lodged I had fully expected a two-pronged attack from the Crown. First, it would claim Ngāti Kahu was holding up other iwi in the region from settling their claims. Second, it would try to delay any hearing so it could sort out the details of settlement with the other iwi this month, before parliament shuts for the general elections.

Sure enough, media reports quickly appeared saying that the other iwi’s settlements would be jeopardised if the Tribunal agreed to hear Ngāti Kahu’s application. These reports are total kaka. There is nothing stopping other iwi settling their claims. What they cannot settle are claims over lands in which Ngāti Kahu has an interest.

But it gets better. By the end of the month the Crown had sent a memo to the Tribunal saying it couldn’t respond to the application until Ngāti Kahu had provided further information. Quite apart from the fact that it is not for the Crown to dictate the Tribunal’s direction, it actually already has all the information it claims it needs.

Then, just four days after that delaying gambit, the New Zealand Herald ran a story saying that, so rarely is the power of binding recommendations used by the Tribunal, ‘that some have likened it to a “kehua" or ghost.’

Such a claim is astonishing. I have been intimately involved with land claims for almost three decades now, and I have never, ever heard anyone refer to the Tribunal’s power to make binding recommendations as a ‘ghost.’ Who are these nameless ‘some’ quoted by the Herald? They can only be Crown stooges. Certainly no self-respecting Māori would ever say such a thing.

However in the same report the Herald does quote another iwi’s leader saying he believed [Ngāti Kahu] was on a "hiding to nothing" with its application, because ‘the Haronga decision applied to land which originally belonged to a Māori incorporation.’

That is such utter gobbledegook that I must assume he has been misquoted. Anyone who has actually read the Haronga decision knows it applies solely to the duty of the Waitangi Tribunal to hold a hearing and make a decision on an application.

What next? Well, I expect the Crown to carry on trying to delay the hearing, to continue painting Ngāti Kahu as ‘bad’ and the other iwi as ‘good’, and to persist in urging those other iwi to settle fully and finally on Ngāti Kahu lands. I also expect the Tribunal to hear Ngāti Kahu’s application and make a decision based on law, not on politics.

Now that the kehua has been well and truly busted, the Crown should just get on with preparing itself for the hearing.

Kei a rātou.

AN EPIC FIGHT

In 1847, in an epic decision that was not appealed to the Privy Council, the Supreme Court declared that aboriginal title "cannot be extinguished (at least in times of peace) otherwise than by the free consent of the Native occupiers."

Instead of developing laws around that decision, the New Zealand Parliament responded with the Maori Lands Act 1862 and the Native Rights Act 1865 which established the Native Land Court (today the Māori Land Court) to hear aboriginal title claims, and—if proven—to convert them into freehold interests that could be sold to Pākehā.

Why did the Crown do that? Because it knew that the key to removing land from Māori hands and getting it into the hands of Pākehā, was to break and replace the hapū system of collective ownership with a system of individual ownership. Having done that, it was then able to ‘legally’ separate hapū from their lands, and vice versa.

Given the suffering caused by individualisation, you’d think Māori would recognise and shun it like the plague if it ever appeared again, wouldn’t you? Well, apparently not.

Earlier this year the hapū of Ngāpuhi, the largest iwi in Aotearoa, finally began to establish before the Waitangi Tribunal the basis of their many grievances against the Crown for its innumerable breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi since 1840. Having completed the first phase of their hearings, they were preparing for the second stage when it became clear that, with the Crown’s support, Tūhoronuku, a sub-committee of Ngāpuhi’s iwi authority, were about to seek a mandate to settle their claims for them.

The hapū are not happy. Under the banner of Te Kotahitanga o Ngāpuhi they are now trying to persuade Tūhoronuku to back off the mandating process so they can focus their energies on second phase hearings of their claims.

Last week I listened to the live broadcast on iwi radio of the hui held in Te Tii between the two groups. With several hundred people present, it was clear that the overwhelming majority favoured the Kotahitanga position. But it was just as clear Tūhoronuku are not going to back off.

That is very bad news for all of us who don’t want them to fight each other.
Their key messages are very similar sounding but are actually quite different. Tūhoronuku says repeatedly, “Let Ngāpuhi speak.” Te Kotahitanga says just as consistently, “Let Ngāpuhi be heard.” The difference hinges on the fact that Tūhoronuku is not seeking its mandate from the hapū, but will instead appeal directly to individuals like myself.

For hapū, the use by their iwi of individualisation will be even more destructive than when the Crown did it to them in 1865.

Hapū are the transformer in the circuit between whānau and iwi, and many Ngāpuhi hapū are bigger than some iwi. So regardless of what I and others want, unless key iwi leaders do what is right by their hapū, an epic fight is inevitable.

Aue! E koutou, e ngā mea ataahua, nā te aha i āhei ai i a koutou te kōtiti ke atu i ngā huarahi a te hapū?

BACK TO THE TRIBUNAL

In 1986 Ngāti Kahu’s hapū leaders agreed to allow our land claims to be consolidated into WAI 45, along with those of Ngāti Kuri, Te Aupōuri, Ngāi Takoto and Te Rarawa.

What followed were thirteen long and arduous weeks of hearings held over five years. It then took a further three years before the Waitangi Tribunal released the Muriwhenua Land Claims Report (1997) in which it comprehensively upheld all of Ngāti Kahu’s claims and found that the Crown had breached Te Tiriti grievously, thereby seriously prejudicing us. The Tribunal also recommended in its report that the Crown make immediate redress for its breaches, starting with a substantial transfer of assets to the claimants.

Ngāti Kahu has been trying to negotiate a settlement for eight years now. But from the start the Crown has shown nothing but bad faith.

First it tried to dictate both the settlement process and the content of our settlement. Then it passed laws to steal the takutaimoana, sold off claim lands to private buyers, sold mineral exploration rights to foreigners, and allowed Landcorp to try and sell parts of Rangiputa station.

More recently it has insisted that Ngāti Kahu and the other iwi must pay it almost $10 million for the Aupōuri forest lands when it has already had a return on that land of $37 million from JNL for the cutting rights. Now it has told every iwi in Te Hiku, except Ngāti Kahu, that it has given up trying to settle with us at the same time as the others because it doesn’t like the terms of our deed of partial settlement.

Instead of settling with Ngāti Kahu at a high level, thereby lifting the other iwi settlements up, the Crown is maneuvering to leave us to the side while using lands in which our hapū share an interest to settle at a lower level with the other iwi.

Ngāti Kahu’s hapū have now instructed our mandated negotiators to file with the Waitangi Tribunal for a resumption of the hearing it adjourned in 2008, and to make binding recommendations that the Crown return to Ngāti Kahu all Crown forest and State-owned Enterprise lands in the rohe, plus pay compensation on the forest lands. Legal counsel for Ngāti Kahu filed last Friday.

The Crown has never acknowledged the findings of its own Tribunal. Nor has it paid a cent or transferred any assets to Ngāti Kahu. For now it will get its way ~ there will be no settlement done on Ngāti Kahu’s terms at this time.

But the Crown also knows that this is only a delay, not a reprieve, because even after our hapū get what they can through the Tribunal, they will still be able to pursue settlement, and it is a dead cert that they will.

But an even greater certainty is that the next generation of Ngāti Kahu hapū leaders will be even stronger than the six generations who preceded them.

This delay will cost the Crown dearly.

FEAR OR FREEDOM

At a recent meeting of Christian women here in Kaitaia, one of our number walked out because two others publicly commented on her perceived shortcomings. In a mere minute the feeling in the meeting went from pleasant to poisoned. I actually envied those amongst us who were deaf because they didn’t get to hear the acid tones of the petty and unintelligent exchange.

At another meeting on the same day another group of women, this time Māori in Auckland, openly mocked and ridiculed a Christian woman who they perceived as being wrong for their organisation. Whether Hannah Tamaki should lead the Māori Women’s Welfare League or not is a matter for their ballot box. Certainly the lady doesn’t float my boat, but to belittle her for being a peroxide blonde was nothing but petty and unintelligent.

The presenting problems between these different groups of women are not unique to any gender, race, faith or age group. Instead they are symptomatic of some deeper difficulty. What is it that causes any one of us to act offensively, or react defensively? How can we feel right about hurting or being hurt? I believe that in every case the underlying cause is spiritual and is triggered by fear.

There is an old wisdom that says we are only as sick as our secrets. I would amend that to say that we are only as sick as our secret fears. I know what it is to regret saying something stupid or doing something dumb, and to know that it can’t be unsaid or undone. In those cases I’ve had to watch the reactions of others play out, and know that they are beyond my control. I’ve had to face my own fears and failings, and admit to them. I’ve given and received forgiveness, and have experienced the freedom which comes with that.

As a Christian I’ve gotten used to some of my whānau looking at me sideways and making snide comments like, “The problem with Christianity is that it’s full of Christians.” At one level they’re right, wherever there are people there are problems. But at another level they’re wrong, because as someone wiser then me once said, the church is a hospital for sinners, not a hotel for saints.

Similarly, as a Māori I’ve gotten used to the Crown and its supporters treating me differently and then blaming me for that difference. At one level I’m hoha with them for projecting onto me their fear of losing power and control, especially to Māori. But at another level I feel sorry for them. No matter how much material wealth they garner, they still don’t feel safe from Māori ‘radicals.’ Their fear is poisoning them. They need a hospital.

As one who has to regularly engage with these fearful folk, I can choose to either pass on their poison or to rise above the fears that lie beneath their behaviour.

Every choice has a consequence, but the unique thing about the choice between fear or freedom is that they are also their own consequence. I choose freedom.

KRIS KJELDSEN

When my Pākehā grandmother married my grandfather she probably had no idea that sometime during their long and fiery union she would move from being considered a stranger amongst Māori, to becoming he tau iwi. But that is what happened.

There are other Pākehā who, although their starting point was different, became similarly connected. One such was Kris Kjeldsen, aka Kris Hippy.

Kris came to Pawarenga with his wife Diane in the early 1970s. Us rangatahi were riding home after a day of just being, when this old bomb stopped, a Pākehā hopped out, looked up and drawled, “Which one of you kids wants to swap your horse for my car?” Willie Pirini was the quickest to do the deal. So that’s how he became the first of us to own a car, while Kris and Diane took tenure of a spavined nag named Freepass. As we watched that delicately blonde and very hapū girl ride away with her husband walking in front, I thought they looked like Pākehā versions of Joseph and Mary. Of course, the horse outlasted the car by many years.

California was Kris’ birthplace, but Papatūānuku was his true address and Tangaroa his post-code. He was an ecologist. During his Zuma Beach / Baja surfing days, he’d fought against Chrysler naming its cars after marine creatures like the Barracuda. And, at a time when we Pawarengans were just starting to gain electricity, flush toilets and inside plumbing, he was renouncing them. We thought he was mad, but the energy crises during the mid and late 1970s proved him sane.

Kris' accent enthralled us. We'd talk to him just to hear it. "How are the kūtai?" we asked one day. "Jerst lahk rerber-banz," was the answer. So that became our response to any number of questions. Sister Peters to our confirmation class, "What is faith?" Answer: "Just like rerber-banz."

Kris’ two oldest children were born in Pawarenga and schooled at Hāta Maria. A third child is buried there. He was a founding Trustee of the Pawarenga Community Trust, and tutored our first community garden courses there. He was also one of the people who revived the sport of waka ama in Aotearoa. In fact its national body was founded in Pawarenga in 1987 at a hui in Taiao marae.

For the last twenty years, Kris had dedicated his life to the growth of that sport. He’d built thousands of waka and many more paddles. However it was during his first twenty years amongst the hapū of Te Uri o Tai in Pawarenga that Kris had moved from being ‘that strange hippie’ to becoming our beloved brother and friend – he tau iwi.

Kris lived and worked beside Māori whakawhiti i ngā mōtu for just over forty years, and he loved us just as we are. Kris died last Thursday.

He tohu aroha tēnei ki te whānau pani kua noho mokemoke nei mo tātou hoa, he tangata aroha kua moe nei ki te pō roa. Haere ra e Kris. Haere ra e hoa, haere atu ra. Say hello to Bo and Chris from us.

THE RACE RACE

As the provisional results of the Taitokerau by-election emerged on Saturday night, a question was posted to the yahoo newsfeed site from a chap calling himself Bruce. “As a relative newcomer to these fair islands can someone please explain why in a supposed first world civilised country there is a political party called Mana based on race??!!!” The punctuation is his.

Bruce is confused because he doesn’t know that, as a political party, Te Mana is not race-based. But his confusion is understandable because, while Te Mana is not race-based, the Māori seats are. However the racism that gave rise to them was and is entirely that of the Crown and its supporters who, in 1867, created the original four Māori seats in a parliament of 74 at a time when the majority of the population were clearly Māori.

The relevant Act was passed only after lengthy debate. Most conservative MPs considered Māori "unfit" to participate in government, and opposed Māori representation in Parliament, while some MPs from the other end of the spectrum (such as James FitzGerald, who had proposed allocating a third of Parliament to Māori) regarded the concessions given to Māori as insufficient. In the end the setting up of separate Māori electorates assuaged conservative opposition to the bill; they had previously feared that Māori would gain the right to vote in general electorates, thereby forcing all MPs (rather than just four Māori MPs) to take notice of Māori opinion.

Before this law came into effect, no direct prohibition on Māori voting existed, but other indirect prohibitions, like the property qualification, made it extremely difficult for Māori to exercise their theoretical electoral rights. In order to vote, one needed to possess a certain value of land. Māori owned heaps of land, but held it in common, not under individual title, and under the law that disqualified them from voting. Donald McLean explicitly intended his bill as a temporary measure to give specific representation to Māori until they adopted European customs of land ownership. In effect, the Māori seats were the Crown’s way of dressing up as enlightened and benign, its racist marginalisation of Māori and their customs. The Māori electorates remain in place today, despite the property qualification for voting being removed in 1879.

Racism is illogical and it breeds irrational consequences. Currently Māori refuse to relinquish these race-based seats, not because we see them as the best option for our political representation in the future, but because they are the only option. However there is an opposite (hopefully stronger) force working against the racism behind them, which is currently manifesting in an emerging movement composed of a younger, poorer, hungrier and smarter demographic across all races.

If, as I expect, Hone takes the special votes and reclaims the Taitokerau seat, then that movement will have a place on the front bench of parliament as well as more resources with which to unite its constituency before the general election.

Regardless of the final by-election result, Te Mana had to hit the ground still running the moment the polls closed on Saturday night because, as long as racism remains entrenched in the institutions and systems of government, the race has not ended.

FRANKLY FASCINATING

On Radio Live last Friday morning, Hillary Barry who is arguably the first lady of mainstream news, had a fit of giggles so bad that she had to stop and hand over to the sports reporter. She’d introduced a story in which New York Congressman Anthony Wiener was resigning after having been exposed for sending images of a certain body part to women who weren’t his wife. Cut to Wiener solemnly making his announcement to a handpicked hometown audience. But, instead of politely clapping as one would expect, they cheered loudly and then started chanting, “Leave, you per-vert!” Frankness in politics is as rare as a redneck with all his teeth, so this unexpected frankness completely undid Hillary. Unprofessional? Totally. Forgiveable? Completely.

This time next week we will have a result in the Taitokerau byelection. Like no other, this election is for and about Māori. Its result is also fascinating like never before, not because of the individuals standing, but because of the very different implications that a win for any one of them holds for us.

As a voter in this byelection, my job has been to figure out what each of the candidates’ parties stands for, which one stands closest to where I am, and which is heading where I want to go. It’s become clear to me that although there are three serious contenders in this byelection, there are really only two positions; government by and for the rich and powerful, or government by and for everyone else. So what are the voting options for Māori? I’ve boiled them down to what I call the satellite, the landing craft or the planet.

In my frank opinion, a vote for Kelvin will maintain the Māori satellite that orbits the potential Labour government of the future, while a vote for Solomon involves replacing a crew member on the manned Māori Party landing craft within the current National government. Alternatively a vote for Hone is a stake in the planet itself. As for the other two candidates who are standing, in my opinion a vote for them is a wasted one – pardon the pun.

If my political frankness causes the majority of eligible Māori voters to fall about laughing, then my candidate of choice may be in trouble. But if that same majority share my view, they won’t be clapping politely when the result is announced next week, but will be cheering and shouting, “Go, you bea-u-ty!”

P.S. News has just reached me that Cathy Crene (nee Semenoff) has passed away. She hailed from Te Rarawa, Te Paatu and Ngāti Kahu, and if ever there was a frank lady it was Cath, or Giddy-Gas as some of us affectionately knew her. Moe mai ra e te whaea Cath. I know one thing, if she’d have been in Congressman Wiener’s crowd she wouldn’t have clapped politely either.

AN IMPORTANT RULING

Late last month the Supreme Court released a majority ruling (4 to 1) in favour of a man named Allan Haronga. Mr Haronga had fought his case all the way up from the Waitangi Tribunal, through the Māori Appellate Court, the High Court, and then the Court of Appeal, before finally winning a ruling from the highest Court in New Zealand. And what was that ruling? Simply that the Waitangi Tribunal must do its job and hold an urgent hearing into Mr Haronga’s application for a binding recommendation that the Crown return 8626 acres of the Mangatu State Forest to Mangatu Incorporation.

In 1893 Mangatu Incorporation was established by Te Aitanga a Māhaki, an iwi based in Turanganui a Kiwa (the Bay of Plenty), to protect them and their lands from the pressure to sell to Europeans. It is a matter of great pride to them that they have managed to hold the bulk of their lands since 1893. However in 1961 the Crown acquired some of their land for ‘erosion control purposes.’ Although the Incorporation was reluctant to sell, as it planned to afforest the land, it was prevailed upon to believe that there was no option other than Crown ownership. But it turned out that the Crown had never intended to use their land for erosion control at all. Instead it planted a commercial forest on it from which it has profited ever since.

In 1992 Eric Ruru, a member of the Incorporation, lodged two claims with the Waitangi Tribunal seeking the return of the land from the Crown. Later, his claims were grouped by the Tribunal into a district-wide inquiry. In 2004 the Tribunal ruled his claims were well-founded, but recommended that all claimants within the district enter direct negotiations with the Crown together. In 2008 a draft Agreement in Principle emerged which showed that the key redress item for the entire district was to be the Mangatu lands. In short, Te Aitanga a Māhaki and their claims had been subsumed, and their lands were to be used by the Crown to settle everyone’s claims.

As soon as he saw where negotiations were headed Allan Haronga returned to the Tribunal and asked it to complete its inquiry by ordering the Crown to return the Mangatu lands to the Mangatu Incorporation, but the Tribunal declined to even hold a hearing on the grounds that its power to hear an application for binding orders against the Crown was a discretionary one. Now it has been plainly told by the Supreme Court that it is not a discretionary power and it needs to do its job; i.e. hold a hearing and make a ruling based on law for or against Mr Haronga’s application.

In 2008 Ngāti Kahu also applied to the Tribunal for binding orders against the Crown and also got rebuffed, but we didn’t have the wherewithal to appeal. Combined with the fact that Supreme Court rulings set case law that can be used by others in the future, this makes Haronga v Waitangi Tribunal and Others a very important ruling for us. We are now considering our options very carefully.

I AM

I was asked recently how I can work year in and year out on the fault line between Māori and the Crown without getting bitter and twisted. Some years ago, during the worse series of tragedies I have ever experienced, I received a great yet simple insight – the knowledge that whatever happens to me, I am always OK. At the time I thought I was desperately unhappy, exhausted, frightened, and furious. But today I know that, while all those feelings have been felt by me at different times, none of them actually defines who I am. Neither do their opposites for that matter.

The late Anthony de Mello describes this knowledge in his book “Awareness.” Using the sky as a metaphor for who “I am” and the clouds as a metaphor for the things that happen to “me,” he explains how when a cloud appears and then disappears it may affect the look of the sky, but the sky itself remains essentially unchanged by the cloud’s coming or going, or by what type of cloud it is. In the same way, he continues, I am essentially unchanged by whatever happens to me or whoever comes and goes in my life. They may appear to make me look or feel sad, but in reality I am neither.

However, knowing who I am (or am not) does not automatically exempt me from suffering. De Mello defines suffering as what happens when my will comes up against immutable reality. Although reality does not cause suffering in itself, any more than it causes joy, it’s clear that if I try to bend it to my will, then that will cause me to suffer alright.

But if I am not visibly suffering will those who did me wrong ever be held accountable? Am I supposed to just forgive and do nothing to them? Surprisingly the answers are yes and yes. Other people and their actions are not mine to control. If I have an expectancy that they will be honest but they turn out to be lying thieves, I either accept that fact and work to resolve any hurt caused, or I try to force them to be honest and suffer when that inevitably doesn’t happen. There is nothing wrong with having expectancy, but I don’t need to get bitter and twisted when or if it doesn’t match with reality. As for wrongdoers being held accountable, there is a God to take care of that. And guess what? It’s not me. Thank God!

In the past I would crack a fit over the fact that the Crown has yet to right any of the wrongs it has done to me and my people. Now, I simply observe and accept the reality that the Crown currently remains without honour or integrity. Then I cheerfully carry on seeking after a day when that changes.

And the key to doing that year in and year out is to simply know I am.

SOUNDS OF SILENCE

On Saturday just gone Chris Finlayson and his officials were in Te Hiku meeting with different iwi in the region, starting with Ngāti Kahu. By Sunday we were hearing very muddled reports of the hui with Ngāti Kahu. There was this from TVNZ: “Ngati Kahu broke away from the four other iwi about a month ago, and asked to be allowed to come up with its own draft deed of settlement.”

That would have been news to everyone up here alright. Especially to those who know that, in order to write the deed, Ngāti Kahu made a planned and well-signalled withdrawal in January 2010 from the now-defunct Te Hiku Forum. But even if you didn’t know this background, hands up those who believe Ngāti Kahu ever asked anyone for permission to write its own deed.

Even more interesting than TVNZ’s piece, was the pollie-speak coming from Chris Finlayson himself about the meeting with Ngāti Kahu and our deed. He was reported on stuff.co.nz as saying the draft deed would be a ''partial settlement'' that would ''allow grievances to linger”, that ''full and final settlements are the cornerstone of the historical settlement process”, and that “finality allows the Crown and iwi to draw a line under the grievances of the past and focus on developing a positive future together.''

Translation: “If Ngāti Kahu wants to settle, they have to first let the Crown put the words ‘full and final’ on their deed, second stop acting like they own their lands and other estates, and third start pretending the Crown does.” As you can imagine, Ngāti Kahu’s response needs no translation.

Finlayson and the Crown have had the deed for two months now. The deadline for them to make submissions to it closes at 12 noon today. They hadn’t asked for an extension at time of this column being written.

If the Crown is still not ready to make full redress for all its wrongdoing and lawlessness, Ngāti Kahu will allow it to make a partial settlement at this time. We would prefer to sign a final deed of settlement, on the simple condition that it does actually contain full settlement redress.

It’s worrying for the future wellbeing of this country that the Crown still seems unable to see or portray Ngāti Kahu as anything but breakaways from the other iwi and beggars to the Crown. But even more worrying is the unnatural silence from the other iwi to whom I tātai. Just last month their leaders all sat unmurmuring, except for one of their number who told Ngāti Kahu off to a standstill for having finished our deed and then come expecting to sort out the finer details of our shared interests with them, when some of them hadn’t even started writing their deeds yet. But on Saturday Finlayson announced the other four iwi were all ready to sign their deeds of settlement.

What deeds of settlement are those? Who wrote them and when? Be interesting to hear something more than the sounds of silence from the other iwi.

A LEGACY

As a youngster I’d get hoha hearing my dad say things like, “Our family name is a good one. Don’t blinkin’ stuff it up.” Over the years since, I’ve come to understand that what dad was talking about was the importance of respecting our relationship to each other. What one did impacted on others in our whānau.

For Ngāti Kahu the relationship we agreed we would have with the British Crown was that between two sovereign nations as was set out clearly in the 1835 Te Hakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni (referred to in English as the Declaration of Independence) and Te Tiriti o Waitangi 1840. The British Crown recognized Te Hakaputanga and is a signatory to Te Tiriti.

More recently the United Nations has set out the minimum requirements to uphold basic human rights of indigenous peoples, including the Tangata Whenua of Aotearoa/New Zealand, in its Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Ngāti Kahu expects and will ensure that these minimum standards of human rights and mutual respect form the basis of our future relationship with the Crown. There is a great deal to be done before we can claim to have achieved those standards.

Due to the historical Crown breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi documented in the Waitangi Tribunal’s Muriwhenua Land Claims Report (1997) the Ngāti Kahu / Crown relationship is in very poor shape. The many ways in which the Crown has lied to, stolen from, discriminated against and oppressed Ngāti Kahu at every opportunity, are matters of public record.

Ngāti Kahu have now written “Te Hakapūmautanga o te Mana o Ngāti Kahu: the Ngāti Kahu deed of partial settlement towards extinguishment of all Crown claims to Ngāti Kahu lands.” We did this to show how and why the relationship is so bad and to outline a pathway to improving it. We have recorded for those coming after us the work undertaken by six generations of Ngāti Kahu to halt and then repair the damage wrought by Crown lawlessness in our territories since 1840. We have laid out what it will take to fully, fairly and finally settle our claims against the Crown for its numerous breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi since 1840, and to extinguish all Crown claims to our lands. We have written down what has actually been achieved towards that ideal. And we have recorded an agreement to commence those extinguishments through the Crown’s relinquishment of its claims to approximately 10% of our inland territories.

Over the years I have seen time and time again how the mere mention of my parents’ names has opened many doors for their uri. It’s a pretty cool legacy. On the other hand what the Crown has done to Ngāti Kahu has created a legacy of prejudice, poverty, deprivation and marginalization that are still being experienced by us up to and at the present time.

It’s a pathetic legacy. But as long as the relationship between us remains the way it is, it will not change.

THEM AND US

"Mana May Miss By-election" was the headline in last Friday's Herald, pretty much the same line we were fed by TV1 and TV3 the previous night. As a headline it at least had alliteration going for it, but as important news or even as mundane information, it held little merit. The headline might just as well have read, "Mainstream Media May have Missed the Point.”

Perhaps it’s not fair to expect the mainstream to get it, even 171 years after they began publishing in this country. After all, very few within it have either the chops or the insight to know what is politically important to Māori in general, let alone to Māori who will vote in the upcoming Taitokerau by-election. So let me spell out to them what is and isn’t important to us.

Iwi Chairs have very little influence on how we vote. In fact the support of certain Chairs will almost certainly lose a candidate more votes than it will gain; especially if that Chair is seen by us as a Crown puppet or, worse still, a Crown employee. However, anyone within our iwi who has a long record of standing apart from the Crown and standing up for us can swing a lot of votes.

Political parties don’t have the same clout with us that they held, say twenty or even ten years ago. Add that to the fact that there is no party vote in a by-election, and party branding just doesn’t have a lot of relevancy for us today. Not unless it’s tagged to someone who does.

Planks of policies and platforms of promises; even though most of the razzamatazz of campaigning is based around such things, they don’t impress us much. No matter who the government is, we’ve seen most policies and promises aimed at addressing issues of concern to us come to nothing.

What is important and does impress us is the candidate and his history amongst us. We want to know, does his public campaign match his private character? Is he known to tell his party what we want it to do? Or does he sell us what it wants to do? Does he equate his ambitions with our needs? Do we see him at our hui, laughing and crying over the same things we do? Has he got an honest mouth instead of a smooth tongue? Does he live clean or dirty? If he’s got skeletons, are they closeted or are they out in the middle of the floor dancing for all to see? When we watch him do we sense his strength and mana, or does he feel just like a big puff of emptiness?

We did not create the Māori seats, and if Don Brash has his way we won’t be there when they’re uncreated. But while they exist we do take an interest in who sits in them based on the answers to all the above, and not on whether they have money to run their campaign. In the end, if we like the candidate and what they stand for, we’ll raise the necessary funds. We may even vote for them.

As for mainstream media, they do a fair to middling job analysing the Dons and the Keys of politics. But they still don’t get us.

YOU'VE GOTTA LAUGH

That great Māori writer, Mark Twain, once wrote, “Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”

On a recent flight to Kerikeri, my seat mate was a Ngāpuhi woman coming home from Perth for time with whānau, particularly the mokopuna. She’d been away for a year, and had at least two new descendants to meet for the first time. Like many grandparents who live on either side of Te Moana Tāpokapoka a Tāwhaki, she relies heavily on the internet to keep in touch with her mokopuna.

As the Māori diaspora continues, one of its saddest and yet most appreciated outcomes is that it’s given rise to the facebook whānau. It’s a phenomenon that social commentators and historians will have a field day with in the future. But here, in the present, it’s just about whānau doing what we must to communicate our love and longing for home, and for each other.

And that has given rise to an emerging vocabulary of facebookisms; new words for old meanings, as well as old words with new spellings and meanings. These, in turn, have given rise to a new wave of that unique brand of Māori humour; the kind that keeps us sane in the face of insanity.

The hallmarks of a really good facebookism are that it’s got to make you laugh, it has to be slightly off the mark and yet be oddly appropriate.

A six year old in Perth to her recuperating nanna, “We love you nanna. No more harder tacks ay.” A newly politicised youth in Melbourne commenting on Osama bin Laden’s death, “It’s disgusting to see americans celebrating OBL’s death, nothing but proper gander!” A middle-aged man describing the climate in Brisbane to his mum in Auckland, “Rain rain rain yet stinkin hot, over 30 degrease.” A young father on white Australian attitudes to Aboriginals, “They’re so pignorant.”

You’ve gotta laugh ay. While more of our whānau succeed in Ozzie rather than here at home, we get to stare at and lovingly trace their faces on computer screens in a parody of human touch. And we get to watch homesteads fall into disrepair, marae struggle to manāki manuhiri, taumata manned by boys, and young girls conduct the karanga. But, you’ve gotta laugh.

When those who have been privileged by our dispossession and marginalisation accuse us of being privileged and lazy, you’ve gotta laugh. Especially when they take it upon themselve to tell us our history based on how someone from another culture saw or sees it. Can you imagine if we rewrote their hakapapa and history the way they do ours? It’s too funny for words, so best just laugh.

Back to that rangatira Mark Twain. “The human race,” he wrote, “ has only one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.” I struggle with that. I love laughing, but my problem is that I stopped seeing the pignorant proper gander of degreased racists giving themselves harder tacks as funny a long time ago.

Still, you’ve gotta laugh ay. Because if you don’t ...

HE IWI KOTAHI

For the past twelve months, while critics within and without Ngāti Kahu have been pressuring us to work towards settlement under the Crown’s processes and timetables, we have been writing the Ngāti Kahu Deed of Partial Settlement under the processes and timetables of our hapū. The first draft was delivered to the Crown on April 1st.

A written Deed is critical to any kind of settlement. In the past, and under the process that our critics wanted us to follow, the Crown has written the Deed with some input from the claimant. After that, it has become a take it or leave it proposition for the claimant, and they have had to choose to either settle under the terms and conditions of the Deed, or go to the back of the claimant line and wait.

Tired of waiting, with no substantial fallback plan, and with high hopes of finally being able to take their rightful place in their own land, almost every claimant has signed when presented with this choice. In fact I think the only claimant who has refused to sign such a Deed of Settlement to date has been Whakatōhea.

Most of us in this country have heard the words apparently spoken at Waitangi on 6th February 1840 by Captain William Hobson, the man the Crown sent to negotiate and conclude a Treaty with the Māori nation. As each of the rangatira appended his signature or mark to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, Captain Hobson is reputed to have said: He iwi kotahi tatou. We are now one people.

But the very fact that the Treaty exists is testament to the reality that there are two nations in this country who are on sometimes parallel, other times divergent, courses. The Crown’s course is, by and large, known. Now for the first time ever the course of one small part of the Māori nation has been set down in a Deed of Partial Settlement.

In its Deed, Ngāti Kahu have laid out simply and clearly the central precept on which New Zealand was founded; i.e. two nations, one people. This is the very issue our respective tūpuna began to address with Te Hakaputanga o te Rangatiratanga o Nu Tireni (the Declaration of Independence) in 1835, and Te Tiriti o Waitangi / Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. The Crown recognised Te Hakaputanga and is a signatory to Te Tiriti. The fact that the Crown subsequently chose to try and simply override Māori with superior numbers has delayed the realization of the full potential of both nations for too long. The Ngāti Kahu Deed addresses this fully.

No-one who knows Ngāti Kahu should be surprised that it has ignored the choice of “sign now or wait until later”. We are now waiting for the Crown to respond to our Deed of Settlement by or before 1st June.

Whether or not the Crown agrees at this time to relinquish the lands it has stolen from Ngāti Kahu and to extinguish its claims over them, it has yet to sincerely address this important issue of two nations, one people. It needs to. Urgently.

MAORI LIBERATION THEOLOGY - PART ONE

A generation ago I asked a kaumātua why our tūpuna had almost universally embraced Christ and turned away from ngā Atua Māori in all but form, and if, in his opinion, that had been a good thing?

Māori Marsden was a graduate of the Ngāpuhi wananga as well as of St Johns Theological College, and he knew his stuff, both in terms of Christianity and ngā Atua Māori. His answer to both questions was long, interconnected and somewhat complex, so I apologise to his whānau in advance for any injustice they may perceive I do in this summary of it.

He said the reasons our tūpuna became Christians included the parallels between the Old Testament Jehovah, the New Testament Jesus Christ, and the Polynesian Io; the kinship they felt with the house of Israel; the clearer separation they found in Christianity between ‘good’ and ‘evil’; the similarities between the Christian and Māori stories of the Creation; the clearly defined concepts of the Fall, Incarnation, Atonement and Resurrection; and the written word of the Bible. These were all seen as upholding and enhancing the underlying principles of Mana and Tapu so important to tikanga Māori. So Christianity was embraced and accepted by our tūpuna and by himself as a natural spiritual progression for our hapū to make. But he also said that the form of Christianity brought to these islands by Pākehā was ‘broken-legged’ (divided between warring factions of Europeans). And while liberating us on one level, it had also added to our division which was then seized on by the Crown in its drive to rule us. In short, Christianity was definitely a tool of colonisation.

Being an inveterate questioner I then asked him if personal conviction, as opposed to political considerations, had had any part in the conversion of our tūpuna to Christianity? His answer was instant and his look intent, ‘They were people of deep spirituality and intelligence. Make of that what you will, but never doubt that they were excited by the new religion and were fired to make the leap of faith.’

Today Christianity is being increasingly abandoned by the Pākehā and Māori alike. Even amongt those who still hold to its outward forms, many have become ‘Godless Christians’ who treat its theology like a menu from which to pick and choose, and its head, not as God, but as the maitre’d who delivers the menu.

Disillusioned by the wide gap between Pākehā professions of faith in Christian principles and their lack of principles when dealing with us, many Māori have turned to other faiths. Others seek to reinstate ngā Atua Māori as our primary religion. And some have given up on God totally to embrace materialism wholly. Invariably the result is a far cry from the ‘deep spirituality and intelligence’ of our tūpuna and their ‘fired leap of faith’ as described by Māori Marsden.

For materialists, no God or a maitre’d God may be fine. But for anyone seeking liberation, that will not do at all. In fact, if we don’t address God with deep intelligence, spirituality and faith, will we even be fit for the liberation for which we are striving?

Next week I’ll continue exploring this vexed issue.

LAWLESS MĀORI LEADERS

The closest Pākehā term there is for tikanga is ‘law.’

It’s not necessary to be steeped in tikanga Māori to live by it, anymore than it’s necessary to be steeped in Pākehā law to live by that. In fact, given that there are currently almost 2000 separate Acts in this country, I’d argue that it’s simpler to live by tikanga Māori. However I would also concede that it’s not necessarily easier.

That is a debate I’m happy to have at any time with anyone. However what is not open to debate is that Māori leaders who operate outside of tikanga pose a problem for their whānau, hapū and iwi.

To illustrate; within any whānau, hapū or iwi we have a problem if our leader makes a habit of abusing women or children, has the sexual morals of an alley cat, can barely get through the day without a toke, regularly puts the opinions and needs of others before ours, thinks they know better than us what is good for us, has an ego bigger than our national debt, is prone to doing deals and selling us down the river, and refuses to take our instruction.

We especially have a problem if we do nothing about the problem.

Given our paradigms of collectivism and whakapapa, the impact of such serious tikanga violations by our leaders radiate through and across the generations, and they often take their uri with them.

Tikanga violations may eventually be forgiven, but they can never be tolerated, particularly by our leaders. If we turn a blind eye, we as good as say to the world that their violence, infidelity, addiction, corruption, egotism or whatever, is OK. Worst of all, we condemn that leader to their weakness and become complicit with them in all they do.

To stop the damage, we must apply tikanga to bring an erring leader to account and give them a chance to take corrective action or be removed.

If we want to confuse and diminish our whānau, hapū or iwi, all we need do is appoint, follow and tolerate lawless leaders. If we don’t want those outcomes, then we need to do the opposite.

Tikanga or kaore he tikanga. It’s just as simple as that.

THE PRE-EMINENT UNIT

Inside a hapū the whānau have always been, and still remain, the pre-eminent unit.

Inside an iwi, the hapū have always been, and still remain, the pre-eminent unit.

With grateful acknowledgement to Tepania Kingi of Ngāti Whātua who first articulated it on paper, I have adapted his words to show how that works in Ngāti Kahu under the following tikanga:

• Whānau aggregate to form hapū which in turn aggregate to form iwi.


• The authority that resides at each level of this social order is conveyed to the next via a leadership representative.


• Hence, whānau leaders engaging with other whānau leaders is a hapū level engagement; hapū leaders engaging with other hapū leaders is an iwi level engagement; iwi leaders engaging with other iwi leaders is a waka level engagement. Up here in Te Hiku, unlike Tainui and Te Arawa, we have a lot of different waka. So we don’t do the waka level thing often, and if we do, it’s only under our own iwi waka.


• For engagement to be effective, it must be level to level i.e. iwi to iwi; hapū to hapū; whānau to whānau. The only exception to this is when engagement occurs as part of the aggregation process i.e. own whānau to own hapū to own iwi and vice versa.


• For the structure to maintain its integrity, the ‘chain of authority’ must be followed i.e. whānau to hapū; hapū to iwi – iwi to hapū; hapū to whānau. • At all levels of engagement there must be authority to engage. At the waka level, iwi leaders engage with other iwi leaders by virtue of the authority vested in them by their hapū leaders. At the iwi level, hapū leaders engage with other hapū leaders by virtue of the authority vested in them by their whānau leaders.


• The authority that each representative brings to their level of engagement is non-transferable. Hence no hapū leader could purport to represent another hapū leader, likewise with the whānau leaders, likewise with the iwi leaders. This often creates a conundrum for external parties seeking to engage with the largest collective possible, preferably of iwi. Generally, external parties tend to presume that engagement is with a collective whole rather than a collective of independent participants. While this may appear to be a subtle difference, it can become a significant hindrance to engagement if it is not made clear that the collective incorporates a number of independent authorities rather than maintaining a ‘single’ overarching authority.


• Any information shared with the collective must also be shared with the individual members of the collective – particularly those not participating in the collective.


• Anything produced by the collective can only be described as ‘collective’ if it has 100% support of all of the individual participants. And, even then, it can only represent the collective participants i.e. the iwi, hapū or whānau leaders, not the actual iwi, hapū or whānau which, by virtue of tikanga, retain the authority to represent only themselves and no others.

Next week I’ll continue this theme by looking at what happens within the whānau, hapū and iwi when leaders presume to speak for others without a clear mandate.

SWISS CHEESE LOGIC, SMORGASBORD ETHICS

I like swiss cheese and smorgasbords because they’re generally tasty and light to eat. But as metaphors for logic and ethics, they stink. Whenever I see or hear swiss cheese logic and smorgasbord ethics at play along racial grounds, the stench is particularly strong.

A case in point is the use of myths about Moriori to prove that Māori are not indigenous to Aotearoa, and to support the Crown’s confiscation of the takutaimoana.

Moriori are genetically and lingusitically Māori. In 1835/36 when their rohe was invaded by Ngāti Mutunga and Ngāti Tama, all three iwi had a shared language and common laws, except in one respect – Moriori weren’t permitted to kill, while their invaders were. You may shudder at the ferocity of Ngāti Mutunga / Ngāti Tama, but you can’t logically accuse them of breaking their laws.

However, the swiss cheese logicians and smorgasbord ethicists can and do, and here’s how they roll. They first ignore the Crown’s utter disregard for its own law against theft. Then they apply that law retrospectively to Māori who had no such concept. Next they recall that Māori were cannibals, and follow that up with claims that Māori were not the first race here, and massacred their predecessors. Finally they say that all this proves Māori are not the indigenous people of this land, and therefore the Crown is justified in seizing the takutaimoana for the general public.

Strip away their holey logic and carefully selected ethics, and the guts of their message to Māori is, “There are now more of our type of people in these lands than your type, so we can get away with pretty much anything we do to you, and you may as well shut up about it.”

But the problem with relying on being the majority as your moral compass is that, unlike true ethics and logic, the numbers can and do change often and unpredictably. And they don’t travel well.

Try transporting our majority into Japan or China and how do you think they’d fare claiming ethical ownership of those nations’ foreshores and seabeds? Reckon they’d dare to apply their law and logic to the cultures and histories of India or Indonesia while trying to claim the resources of those lands?

The facts are that their predecessors tried those tricks in those very countries throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and they all got booted out after the numbers swung against them. I’ll bet you anything they complained about the “poor me” attitude of the indigenes they’d oppressed, mourned the loss of multi-culturalism, and wept into their nightcaps over the natives’ failure to appreciate that, at heart, they were all one people.

You know I feel kind of sorry for those whose logic is full of holes and whose ethics are based only on their dwindling majority. It can’t be comfortable for them.
Oh well, they can always comfort themselves temporarily with a slice of swiss cheese and the occasional smorgasbord.

NĀ TE WHANAU, TANGATA ORA E

Every columnist and commentator seems to have an opinion about where they think Hone Harawira should go from here and what he should do. All of them have one thing in common; they expect him to remain in Parliament. I don’t. There’s far more important work to be done outside Parliament than in, so I say he should finish this term representing Te Taitokerau then turn his back on the place.

The conventional wisdom is that central government represents the height of power in a country and is the only way for a modern state to be run. But there is another school of thought that views it as little more than a mutated and monstrous committee into which all good ideas are lured and either ruined or quietly strangled. I can picture that. I actually believe the highest human power is that found in the smallest unit of society, the whanau.

Māori society is based on whānau, hapū and iwi. So why are we sending our best into a system that bears no resemblance to our society? Our whānau, hapū and iwi are the launching pads for all our physical, emotional and spiritual aspirations. Why have we replaced them with parties and movements when it comes to our political aspirations? The wellspring of tino-rangatiratanga is found solely within the whanau. Does it not make more sense to come back and work within that rather then stay within Parliament?

Although our tikanga provides all we need to be self-governing at every level of our society, it’s no longer true that every whānau knows how to live or teach it. So there’s work to be done showing them how to organise, govern and provide for themselves.

There are also hapū who no longer function well. There’s more work to be done there to ensure that, when whānau come up against something that’s beyond their skill and knowledge, they can combine with their related whānau and act as a hapū to push their cause. Then, if they can’t get what they want as a hapū, they need to have the confidence that they can combine with other hapū and work as an iwi to progress it. Should they still fail, they may need to aggregate further and combine with their waka grouping to finish it off. But most of all, each smaller unit has to be confident that their take won’t get hijacked by the bigger units, and each bigger unit has to be willing to accept the smaller units’ right to accept or reject what they achieve. More work to be done.

Why am I shoulder-tapping Hone for the job? Because it’s all preparatory for an idea whose time is surely coming; the national Māori political forum. The current constitutional review being lead by Moana Jackson is bound to progress its development. Before it’s established though, we must ready the whānau, hapū, iwi and waka to instruct it. What better preparation then to reinforce in them the tikanga of self-government? And who better to lead that mahi then the guy with the most political nouse and experience outside Parliament?

Whina Cooper said it in her karanga on the Herbs album – “Na te whanau, tangata ora e.’ How’s that for a post-political manifesto Hone?

Might be easier to stay in Parliament ne?

CHARITY IS NOT EASY

I had a couple of lessons in charity this weekend.

The first came from one of my church leaders, a quietly unassuming but brilliant man, who said, “We find it easy to show charity towards others in their times of need. Can we also show charity to them in their times of weakness?”

They reckon one of the sure signs you’ve given a good kauhau is when the congregation is left wondering how you knew so much about their peccadillos. That was a good sermon President.

The second lesson came from my dad who said, “I see you gave poor old Mate hell.” He was referring to a letter I wrote to the editor of this paper last week over the way Council had mishandled (or more accurately, not handled) my complaint of misconduct against Councillor Radich.

Anyway, it struck me that what Dad wasn’t saying was that I may have been uncharitable in some of the things I’d written.

The truth is that that there is a fine line between turning the other cheek and being a doormat. The first is charitable, the second is merely masochistic. However, upon personal introspection, I can see that some of what I wrote was not necessary. I should not have used the word ‘Nazi’ in reference to Mr Radich. That was uncharitable.

That got me thinking about the balance between charity and masochism in recent events on the national scene.

A protest Hikoi against the Crown’s latest planned theft from Maori of the takutaimona left Te Rerenga Wairua 5a.m. yesterday. Originally scheduled to leave last Thursday, it was delayed because the kaumatua of Te Hiku o Te Ika had asked the rangatahi organisers to be sensitive to the Crown’s need to deal with the aftermath of the earthquake in Otautahi. Charitable of them.

They also wrote to the Prime Minister asking for the readings of the Marine and Coastal Bill to cease while grieving families mourned, and while Ngai Tahu, who are strongly opposed to the Bill, were preoccupied with taking care of its own people as well as nga iwi ke within its rohe. Charitable again.

Their letter was ignored, and on Tuesday 8th March the second reading of the Bill was passed by 62 votes to 56. Instead of hanging their heads in shame, the Crown and its supporters in and out of the House, puffed up their chests, stretched their throats and crowed that Hone had failed to vote against it. Gee, call Hone dumb, but his vote wouldn’t have defeated the second reading anyway, right? What price charity huh?

Clearly it was not good form of Hone to have messed with the protocols of Parliament like that. However keeping Parliamentary rules is not why Taitokerau sent him into that den in the first place. Rather it was to accurately and strongly represent what his constituents think, say and feel. He did that when he stood up, faced the thieves, bullies and cowards in the House and said in effect, “My constituents are never going to be doormats for you lot on this one.” To do otherwise would have been merely masochistic.

Indeed there is a charitable balance to be struck when dealing with the bully, the thief, the abuser or anyone who has let us down and shown weakness. The time will come when, unless they repent and humble themselves, they will get dealt to. But until then, we have to struggle as best we can to turn the other cheek without being doormats. Not easy.

TECTONIC TALES

One of the most enduring relationships I know of is that between my 83 year old dad and his 85 year old sister. For years she used to come home every holiday and set up camp on our lawn until dad built her a bach right where she used to put up her tent. No legal paperwork was signed, and no cash exchanged.

Things went well until aunty stopped coming and her mokopuna started turning up instead with their Pakeha mates and their different ways. That was OK too, until the Pakeha mates arrived one day by themselves and began treating the whole place, not just the bach, like it was theirs.

The time had come to cancel the gift. Aunty understood but didn’t want the hassle of dismantling camp that one last time. So to satisfy any claims her mokopuna or their Pakeha mates might make, dad paid her for the bach and its contents, and that was that. Gift cancelled.

It all went smoothly because both dad and his sister understood that the gift and its cancellation were expressions of Tuku Whenua under Tikanga Maori. The only right attached to the gift was that of use. When the use ended, so did the gift; but not the relationship which continues happily to this day.

I thought of this Tuku Whenua Tikanga while reading two recently released publications. The first is the report by United Nations Special Rapporteur, Dr James Anaya, titled “The Situation of Maori People in New Zealand.”

Several key issues are addressed by Dr Anaya, but his main focus is the settlement process for historical and contemporary claims based on the Treaty of Waitangi. He reports that, while there has been progress since 2005 when the last UN Special Rapporteur was here, there is still a long way to go “to achieve the increased social and economic parity that is necessary for Māori and non-Māori New Zealanders to move forward as true partners in the future, as contemplated under the Treaty of Waitangi.”

The second publication is a book titled “The State of Maori Rights” by Professor Margaret Mutu which brings together a set of articles she wrote between 1994 and 2009. In it she places on record the Maori view of events and issues that have been more typically reported to the general public from a 'mainstream' media perspective. Having lived through all of the events reviewed and taken part in many of them, even I was astonished at how clearly the threads of racism are there for the world to see. Actually, what with the footnotes and cross-references, they are more like whopping great ropes.

Both these publications stand as stark counterpoints to the Tuku Whenua transaction between my dad and his sister. They reveal the racist rubbishing of most things Maori and the tension arising out of that, while the Tuku Whenua transaction shows Maori unselfconsciously practicing Tikanga, and the relaxed ease of that.

Both Dr Anaya’s report and Professor Mutu’s book have understandably been overshadowed by the most recent tectonic shifts in and around Christchurch and the push to rebuild that city. But it is their messages that will contribute more to shifting the tectonics between races and rebuilding this country.

However the key message for Maori lies in the Tuku Whenua transaction. It shows that while others can either support or oppose Tikanga, Maori must do it. Why? Because, if we don’t, race relationships are going to get a whole lot worse in this country; and Papatuanuku will let us know about it for sure.

PROPHECIES FROM THE EPICENTRE

06/02/11
"A terrible earthquake is going to hit Wellington. I have seen body bags in the streets of Wellington. I have seen houses on the hills of Wellington – seen them disappear. I have seen the roof of the Beehive lying in the debris of the streets of Wellington." (Anglican minister Gray Theodore at Waitangi’s dawn service)

22/02/11
Kia ora whanau, first chance to post on here! Everyone is safe. After shocks still coming! At work and all the cars in the carpark start hopping up and down like an Ice Cube video. He puna hou i puta mai i a Papatuanuku spewing grey silty water into the gutter outside the Greers Rd substation.

“… with great sadness, and after many hours of deliberation …there did not appear to be any way of resolving the complaint besides cancelling Mr Harawira's membership of the Maori Party." (Orohi Paul – Maori Party Disciplinary Committee Chair)

23/02/11
“… the scale of the destruction in Christchurch reminds us all of the value of life and the importance of whanau in all that we do.” (Hone Harawira – Independent MP for Te Taitokerau)

It helps knowing people are thinking of us. Some people’s entire lives are literally turned upside down. Four kids weren't picked up from the kids’ kura yesterday as their parents perished in the CBD.

24/02/11
“... it is best for me and the party to go our separate ways, and to focus on the issues that are crippling Maori people, and indeed Pasifika and Pakeha people living in poverty throughout this country.” (Harawira)

A dude being refused credit because he had no cash and eftpos was unavailable. A mother walking her two young children in circles up and down the street, going nowhere in particular, comforted by the fact they are not alone in the city.

24/02/11
“[I will] go back to my electorate and to supporters around the country over the next month … because it is their energy and support that has sustained me.” (Harawira)

Tried to contact my cousin yesterday. Glad to hear they got out safely. Might accept their invitation yet. Going to check on aunty today.

25/02/11
“… in the best interests of advancing our people’s future, we [should] focus on the issues rather than the personalities, and … not speak disparagingly of one another.” (Harawira)

Aunty is fine. On the way back saw the most random thing, a pure white dove sitting on the roadside? Stopped and got out and was tame as. No olive branch though. First thought was, he tohu tumanako. Second, there’s a magician nearby with a broken aviary.

26/02/11
“A senior National official … gloated they had lanced the boil of Harawira and the Maori Party was now their long-term, docile and trouble-free coalition partner.” (Matt McCarten – NZ Herald columnist)

We have decided to stay in our own bubble for at least a few days to avoid the stresses of what is happening in our city. Unfortunately ugliness is starting to become more common although on the whole most people remain courteous to each other.

06/02/11
“I won’t be taking much away from that last speaker.” (Prime Minister John Key at Waitangi’s dawn ceremony)

THE MISSION BEGINS

This year I have made it my mission to visit a number of online newsfeed sites and see if I can turn around the racists who post their hatred on those sites. My mission statement is simple; stick to the facts, expose the red herrings, be nice.
I’ve boiled the pet issues of the posting racists down to a few essentials and have similarly distilled my responses to the essentials.

ISSUE: Maori are not the indigenous people of this country, instead the Moriori were ... or maybe the Celts. So, because Maori ‘stole’ the land from the Moriori, they can’t and shouldn’t be making claims against white people for stealing it from them. RESPONSE: First, Moriori are Maori, and Maori had no concept of land theft in pre-European times. Second, Maori claims are not about or against a specific racial colour, but about whether or not the Crown has kept or broken its own laws.

ISSUE: Maori are genetically violent thugs and if it weren’t for the “Euros” signing the Treaty with them, they’d still be murdering and eating each other. RESPONSE: “Scratch John Bull and you find the ancient Briton who revels in blood, who loves to dip deep into a murder, and devours the details of a hanging." So said the Pall Mall Gazette in 1887. In any event the Crown’s colonial and contemporary thefts can’t be excused by the amount of blood shed during its own or others’ histories.

ISSUE: Maori are ungrateful wasters who should be thankful for things brought by white people like “Christianity, iron, clothes and education.” RESPONSE: Maori always had clothes and education, so we have never credited anyone else for those things. And the introduction of iron, Christianity or any other thing in no way permitted the Crown to steal from us. In fact Christianity is against theft.

ISSUE: Maori are greedy bludgers, and Treaty settlements are a gravy train that are running the country broke. RESPONSE: To date, it has cost the Crown almost nothing to settle any land claims. It has achieved this through the simple expediency of requiring claimants to use almost every cent of their so-called redress to buy back the lands it stole in the first place. These alleged settlements are almost entirely fiscally neutral for the Crown and the taxpayer. And yet, ironically, Maori are vilified for being greedy.

ISSUE: Pakeha are all honky rapists and should commit an impossible indecency on themselves. RESPONSE: Don’t be a reactionary racist. You can do better than that.

Two months into the mission I’ve turned a couple of posters. They’re still fragile in their new freedom from the fear and ignorance that fed their racism, but they’re getting there.

Other people from many different races, but with similar motives as me, are also posting with compassion and dignity, even humour. None of us are surprised at the levels of ignorance, anger and fear we’ve found.

These things are inevitable when the media delivers headlines rather than facts, political commentators write opinion pieces rather than subjective analyses, and the Crown acts with expediency rather than integrity. If the joint mission of media, commentators and Crown was to keep the population dumb and divided, they’ve been quite successful to date. However they are not going unchallenged.

Inside every racist poster there is an angry, frightened, unhappy human being. The key to turn them is to show love, courage and happiness towards them. It's a mission.

You know, missionaries often get a bad press, but we don’t care. We're on a mission and you’re welcome to join us any time or place.

A STATE OF GRACE

Years ago I and a bunch of mates, all nurses at Kaitaia hospital, were on a night out in Awanui hotel. The large crowd there that night included a small number of out of town gang members – some with local connections, including a cousin of mine. The general mood was sweet.

I’m not sure when that changed, and I have never known what triggered the change, but at some point we heard something was going down outside – so out we went too. There we saw three gangers, including my cousin, punching and booting the publican who was on the ground whimpering. And dozens of locals, men we’d grown up with and knew to be tough sorts, were standing watching it happen.

Without a word we crossed the street, pushed the gangers away, picked the publican up, and helped him back inside past all our local tough guys. Someone called the cops and ambos, while we cleaned the guy up, comforted his distraught wife and berated the few remaining locals. In our eyes their inaction was a disgrace and they knew it. With heads down, none of them could answer our repeated and distressed question, “Why didn’t you stop it?”

Now, years later, and with the perspective of time and experience, I think the answer to their inaction boils down to five basic failings of humanity. Some of them were uncertain (was this a stoush between family, or had the publican started it?), some of them were afraid (they might get a hiding too, or might hurt someone else for the wrong reason), some were weighing up where their best interests lay (a grateful publican later, versus a violent ganger now), some were just too plain drunk to care, and others were a bit of all those things.

Thus it ever has been. When a bad thing unfolds in front of our eyes and we do nothing, it can generally be put down to uncertainty, fear, self-interest, incapacity or callousness.

When the Crown takes money through iniquitous taxes like GST on food – is it uncertainty of what to do that stops you acting? When politicians legislate to allow 10% rises for themselves, while others are legally screwed down to less than 2% – is it self-interest that gags you from speaking out? When government officials intimidate and threaten the very people they are supposed to help – is it fear that freezes you? When the Crown steals land from Maori – is it that you just don’t care?

I pick on the Crown because its government controls most of the institutions and powers of State in the country – police, army, courts, schools, media and infrastructure – and because it’s lead by powerful people who answer to even more powerful people, who are not you and me, and who do not have our interests at heart.

Division is a terrible thing; rich against poor, men against women, young against old, and race against race – yuck! But division amongst us does serve the interests of the powerful because it keeps our eyes off what they are doing and who they are serving.

So here’s the challenge. Can we overcome and master any uncertainty, fear, self-interest, incapacity and callousness in ourselves? Can we get to the point where we ignore the symptoms of that in others and keep our eyes on the real danger? Can we act with grace under fire?

As for those who beat up the Awanui publican all those years ago and those who didn’t move to help – their failing was not one of gender or race, but one of humanity.

Would you cross the road to save another? For sure you would – if you were certain, unafraid, interested, able and caring.