TOOK YOUR WHENUA

‘Crown grants’ was one of the first flash terms applied by the Crown to its thefts of Ngati Kahu lands.  So what were Crown grants in reality?  To answer that we need to look at the background and the dealings of the Old Land Claims Commissions. 

Set up by the Government under the New Zealand Land Claims Ordinance 1841, the first Commission heard the claims of European immigrants to Ngati Kahu lands which various rangatira had granted for their use in pre-treaty tuku whenua. 

Tuku whenua were not ‘sales’.  Their nearest English equivalent in 1840 and since would be the transaction-based concept of a ‘lease’.  But even that does not fully describe the deeper, relationship-based concept of tuku whenua.

In any event, the main purpose of the New Zealand Land Claims Ordinance was not to protect Ngāti Kahu interests under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.  Instead it was to provide a legal beard to disguise the illegal theft of our lands and their distribution amongst Europeans.

The ordinance stemmed from the racist European presumption of superiority, and the wrong European assumption that pre-treaty tuku whenua were English custom land ‘sales’.    

Based on that flawed ordinance, which breached Te Tiriti, and on the lies told by many of the European claimants that the rangatira had ‘sold’ lands to them, Commissioner Edward Godfrey reported to Governor Robert Fitzroy who then wrote and gave those claimants pieces of paper of different kinds.  That included the mechanisms of theft called ‘scrip’ and ‘Crown grants’.

In reality ‘Crown grants’ were nothing more than pieces of paper on which the Governor of the day endorsed the lies told about certain Ngati Kahu lands and expressed his desire that the Crown had magically become the owner of those lands, so that he could give them to his favoured subjects.

Thus we see that many Europeans of that time were active parties to the initial thefts of our lands, and to the lies told since to make them look legal.

That includes the lie that all tuku whenua in Muriwhenua were fully investigated, first by Godfrey in 1843, and then by Bell in 1856. 

In fact, of the 62 European land claims lodged for pre-treaty tuku whenua in all Muriwhenua, only 14 were ever investigated, and in none of those cases were any Ngati Kahu rangatira present let alone examined. Te Rarawa’s Panakareao was visited by Godfrey, but neither Panakareao nor his Ngapuhi rival Pororua represented Ngati Kahu. 

Yet, even though an examination of the historical record (written and oral) proves them to be fictitious, many Europeans of that time and since have tried to pretend that ‘Crown grants’ were real and to convince Ngāti Kahu that means other people, rather than us, now own our lands.

Ngati Kahu have never believed the lies those thieves seem to like making up.  We know that our 'tuku whenua' generosity never meant the same as their 'took your whenua' greed.

THEFT BY ANY OTHER NAME

To support their theft of almost all of Ngāti Kahu’s lands before 1865, the British Crown and immigrants used sanitised terms like – “pre-Treaty transactions[1]” or “old land claims[2]”, “surplus lands[3]”, “Crown grants[4]”, “scrip[5]”, “waste lands[6]”, and “Crown purchases[7]”. 

But those were all just flash names for theft.  They would only not have been theft if our ancestors had discussed and signed something called the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. 

That document, written in English, stated that the rangatira had ceded their sovereignty to the Queen of England – a notion that is as inconceivable in human behavioural terms as it is wrong in factual terms. 

Our ancestors signed only one treaty, Te Tiriti o Waitangi written in the Māori language. They neither read nor signed an English language document.

Yet certain British immigrants and their successors from that day to this have used the fraudulent Treaty of Waitangi document to justify stealing Ngāti Kahu lands, resources and power.

They even inserted it into Government legislation via the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975 where the Waitangi Tribunal is given the impossible task of trying to reconcile it with the authentic treaty.

Its most recent use is in many Deeds of Settlement drawn up by Government bureaucrats who have inserted the odd phrase “Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi”, as if the two documents were either similar or were translations of each other. They are neither.

Te Tiriti o Waitangi is a treaty of peace and friendship between two sovereign nations and a solemn agreement between our rangatira and the Queen of England. The Treaty of Waitangi reflects the desire of certain immigrants and their Governments to take control of a country that is not theirs.

Immigrants whom we welcomed into our territories and who then stole from us, also tried to drive us out and reduce us to perpetual servitude, slavery, poverty, deprivation and marginalisation in our own country.

As just one example of this, in 1843 their Godfrey Commission awarded 16,199 acres of our lands to just six Europeans, and a further 15,966 acres as “surplus lands” to the Crown.  That same Commission “gave” several hundred unnamed Maori title over just 446 acres.

 

More than 32,000 acres stolen in one move[8]; Whakaangi, Taemaro, Mangonui, Mangatete, Ohotu, Waiokai, Okiore, Kaitaia, Kerekere, Awanui, Pukepoto, Otararau (including Tangonge), Parapara, Tapuirau, Te Mata, Wharo, Matako, Kaimaumau, most of the Oruru Valley, and parts of the Karikari Peninsula.   

Further thefts followed and many of our whānau were forced to leave[9] their ancestral homes in order to survive.  But a number braved hostile conditions to keep a constant Ngāti Kahu presence[10] in our territories and to keep alive our tikanga and the kaupapa laid down by our ancestors.

Five generations of Ngāti Kahu have now sought to stop the lawlessness of those immigrants and their successors, drawing on both our legal system and theirs. 

My generation have already trained our successors.  They know that whatever the thieves call it, theft by any other name is still theft.

---

[1] Beyond Biculturalism: The Politics of an Indigenous Minority, by Dominic O’Sullivan, p.63

[2] Invisible Sight, by Angela Wanhalla, ch. 5 pp. 94 – 106

[3] O’Sullivan, p. 63

[4] Ibid. ch1, pp. 23 – 24

[5] The Legacy of Guilt: A Life of Thomas Kendall, by Judith Binney and Thomas Kendall, Appendix 3, p. 190

[6] Buying the Land, Selling the Land: Governments and Maori Land in the North, by Richard Boast, ch 1, pp 25 – 26

[7] O’Sullivan, p.63

[8] Muriwhenua Land Report, 1997 by the Waitangi Tribunal, ch. 5, pp. 141 – 178.

[9] Muriwhenua Land Report, ch. 10, pp.327 – 383.

[10]The Muriwhenua Land Claims Post 1865, by Dame Evelyn Stokes.

FACTS, NOT FANTASIES

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

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

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

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

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

This is my brief analysis of those facts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE PATTERN OF CORRUPTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HISTORY DOES REPEAT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FLEECING THE SHORN SHEEP

A US couple were recently found guilty of fraud.  Over a period of six years Alan and Reena Slominski made 132 successful applications for wool loans from their government.  The problem was that the sheep they claimed to have shorn simply did not exist.  So not only had they not shorn the sheep, they had instead fleeced the US government.

As scams go this was small-scale, nickel and dime stuff.  A true scammer would have not only managed to shear the non-existent sheep, they would have then been able to fleece those shorn sheep over and over again.  To learn how to do that the Slominskis should come and take lessons from the New Zealand government.

Last week it took the next step towards extinguishing the mana whenua and rangatiratanga of Te Aupouri, Ngati Kuri, Ngai Takoto and Te Rarawa when it introduced the Te Hiku Claims Settlement Bill into its House. 

This Bill contains the standard fleecing clauses contained in every land claim settlement Act since 1995.  Under it, less than 3.5% of the four iwi’s original land base will be returned, and most of that will be “sold” to them and has to be paid for (ransomed) before the Crown will release it.  The remainder will be “given” to them with encumbrances on it that ensure the Crown keeps control of it.

In exchange for less than 3.5% of their land and some cash, the four iwi will give up their native title over the remaining 96.5% that even the Waitangi Tribunal said they still have, and Crown sovereignty will replace their hapū rangatiratanga.   

After the Bill becomes law, the four iwi will become advisors to the Crown, Northland Regional Council and Far North District Council on the management of Te Oneroa-a-Tohe (90 mile beach); the Crown refuses to acknowledge the beach is still owned by the five iwi.  Their hapū will get to nominate advisors to the Minister of Conservation on the remaining conservation lands in their rohe.  But it’s the Minister who will decide whether the iwi advisors will be appointed and when they will be removed.  The department, Minister and New Zealand Conservation Authority can then amend any plans made by the iwi advisors; the Crown refuses to acknowledge the lands belong to hapū.

The Crown has reserved the right to allow prospecting and mining anywhere it sees fit in the rohe of the four iwi – including in the Warawara forest.  It has also reserved the right in the future to sell any land it retains control over, and the four iwi will have right of first refusal.  They will then become advisors to various government departments on matters of social welfare; the Crown refuses to allow the iwi to control their own social welfare.

Those are the standard tricks contained in the Bill.  Next week we will consider the new tricks the Crown has devised to fleece the shorn sheep.

OUT OF THE DEPTHS

One of my earliest childhood memories is of sitting on the floor of our marae in Pawarenga with the angelic harmonies of the de profundis being woven in the air above me.    

As soon as the cantor began the two note opening call (Nō te hōhonutanga o ōku hara i karanga ai ahau ki a Koe e te – out of the depths I have cried to thee), my soul would soar in anticipation of the three note response (A-ri-ki – O Lord.)

As a child it was the sound of the chant which enchanted me.  But now, as an adult who has experienced many things, it is the meaning within the sound by which I am uplifted.  (E te Ariki kia rongo koe ki tōku reo – Lord hear my voice.)    

As a child I loved this time of year because it meant a four day holiday from school (Kia whakarongo ōu taringa – let thine ears be attentive), but now I know that for many families it also means death and grief (ki te reo o tāku inoinga – to the voice of my supplication).

As a child I understood that there were bad things, like adults getting drunk or angry, over which I had little or no control (ki te mea e titiro koe ki ngā hara e te Ariki – if thou O Lord shalt observe iniquities); now I know that I can choose whether or not to let those bad things into my life and the lives of my uri (e te Ariki ko wai e tū ki tōu aroaro? – Lord who shall endure it?)

As a child I learned that wrong actions could hurt and that the words “I’m sorry” could heal (Nā te mea he atawhai kei a koe – For with thee); now I understand why that is so (nā te mea hoki hei aroha kei āu ture, koia ahau i whakawhirinaki ai a koe e te Ariki – there is merciful forgiveness, and by reason of thy Law I have waited for Thee O Lord). 

Who is this Lord?

He is the immortal God who consented to become mortal.  The one who lived a perfect life before submitting to the agonies of Gethsemane and Golgotha.  The one who willingly died and descended below all things for three days before rising triumphant as the resurrected, glorified and living God.  The one who took the sting out of death and won victory over the grave for everyone, whether they believe in Him or not.  The one whose work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

He is hated and reviled by many and ignored by most, but through the Wairua Tapū I know he loves and watches over us all.  He will never be Prime Minister or President, but I know he does preside and he is prime.  He does not reside in the White House or Beehive, but I know he is right at home in sacred places, including that marae floor on which I sat all those many years ago. 

Kua ora tōku wairua ki tana kupu, kua whakawhirinaki tōku wairua ki te Ariki, from the morning watch even until night.   

LEARN FROM THE PAST

“Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.”  So said the Spanish-American philosopher, essayist and poet, George Santayana.  But long before he coined this piece of wisdom, the whakataukī, e kore te pātiki e hoki ki tōna puehu, warned against making the same mistake twice. 

With just under 24 weeks to go to Saturday 20th September, there are many lessons from the past to consider regards the big election issues that impact on our ability to live well in our own country. 

In 1971, double Victoria Cross winner, Charles Upham, said to the British people, “Your politicians have made money into their God, but what they are buying is disaster.”  Nine years earlier Britain had joined the then European Economic Community, a fore-runner to the European Union. 

As we prepare to go to the polls in September, keep his words in mind with regard to the current Trans-Pacific partnership negotiations, and remember what has happened to British sovereignty since 1962. 

During a radio 1ZB interview in July 2003 of Māori lawyer and activist, Annette Sykes, the late Paul Holmes asked her why Māori so vehemently opposed the government’s moves to pass the Foreshore and Seabed Bill.  

“Māori belong to the foreshore, the foreshore belong to Māori, and we are not mean-spirited,” was her reply. 

In the lead up to the election, there are clear lessons in these words, as well as in what has happened to our foreshore and seabed, particularly with regard to our  water and food sovereignty.  

In 1988, Ngāti Te Ata claimant, Nganeko Minhinnick, made this statement to the 6th session of the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations: “The government claims that setting up the Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal to hear the people’s grievances is a way of honouring the Treaty.  In fact, it is simply recognition that the Treaty has not been honoured.”

Keep that in mind as Treaty settlements continue being signed at a great rate in the lead up to election 2014.

At the end of the first programme of the ground-breaking 1974 documentary series, Tangata Whenua, the late Eva Rickard said in that strident and strong voice of hers, “The spirits and the times will teach.  Not men; not the books; but the times and the spirits of the past.”

As you prepare to vote in September, keep those words in mind and watch out for politicians who continue to use education reform as a battleground, Treaty settlements as a means of extinguishing sovereignty, and free trade agreements as an inducement to to let them cede New Zealand's sovereignty.  

Above all else, instead of making the same mistakes twice, learn from the past.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

A computer was programmed to translate languages and given the English phrase “Out of sight, out of mind” to translate into Russian.  Then its programmer asked it to translate the Russian translation back into English and was surprised when the result came out as “Invisible idiot.” 

I was reminded of that computer recently when a proud “fifth gen NZ’er” (his own words) with no hapū whakapapa emailed me to say he is offended to be called manuhiri in Aotearoa.  When I asked him why, he replied, “I’m not a guest in my own country.” 

He’s right.  He’s not a guest.  He’s manuhiri of the hapū in whose rohe he resides.  His offense is rooted in his ignorance of what that means.

Using the English concept of guest as a translation for the Māori concept of manuhiri is, like the English-to-Russian-English translation above, technically right but culturally wrong.

A guest has very limited rights which do not last beyond a well-defined endpoint, after which the guest is expected and may even be forced to leave. In fact, if they behave badly, a guest can be booted out even before that endpoint.

Manuhiri, on the other hand, can stay in a hapū rohe forever.   Whether they are good mannered or gross mongrels while they are there doesn’t affect their status as manuhiri, only their standing amongst the hapū who manaaki them.

Manuhiri are those who arrive after or marry into the hapū with mana whenua. Māori of other hapū are manuhiri when they are living in an area where they have no whakapapa as mana whenua. Everyone who is not mana whenua is manuhiri.

Manuhiri have very real rights and responsibilities over the resources and assets allocated to them, either via tuku whenua by the hapū or through purchase under the Crown. They can live according to their protocols, laws and cultures. They can trade, transact, exchange, export, import, travel overseas, play, live, die, be buried.  In fact they can do almost anything they want to do.

They do not however have the right to deprive the mana whenua hapū of what rightfully belongs to them.

After I explained all this to the offended ‘fifth gen NZ’er’ he went on to deny he lived in a hapū rohe and reckoned such a world view was archaic and unhelpful.  I was again reminded of the language-translating computer. 

When its programmer gave it another English phrase to translate into Russian then back into English, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak” came out as, “The booze is OK, but the meat is rotten.” 

Something is clearly getting lost in translation.