Mai i te poo ki te ao maarama

Mai i te poo ki te ao maarama:

From the darkness into the light

Karakia:

Kia tau raa

Ngaa manaakitanga

Aa te runga rawa

Ki teenaa, ki teenaa

Oo taaatou e tau nei

Kia tuuturu oowhiti

Whakamaua

Kia tiina, tiina

Hui ee! Taaiki ee!

1-2 Hana Pera Aoake:

My body is made of many

3-6 Morgan Godfery:

Tiimatanga koorero

7-10 Aroha Novak:

Cultural Workshop

Feedback

IN THE MIDDLE:

Mapping movements

11-20 Jessica Palalagi:

Beginnings

21-38 Arapera Kaa Blank:

The role and status of

Maori women

39-42 Jade Townsend:

Whai Ora (In search of wellness)

43-48 Hemi Hireme:

Tūhoe kaumatua

49-80 Annette Sykes:

The politics of the

brown table

Anna Rankin and Alaa’ Breighith:

Fixed star (2021)

Daniel John Corbett Sanders:

The Risk of Community (2021)

Tessa Williams:

Iterations of my tīpuna (2020)

Contents

Films

My flesh is made of the deep red clay of Kurawaka.

It is the blood of my parents,

the blood is the sacrifice Ranginui and Papatuuaanuku endured,

so that there could be life,

namely my life.

Gifted by Papatuuaanuku,

my bones are the bones of my tupuna.

Papatuuaanuku’s guiding hand vibrates in my blood and through my body,

it is etched in my bones.

The spirit of Ranginui flies through my mind.

My breath is the breath of Tāne

deep in my lungs.

Haa

My breath.

The first breath of life.

Mine to hold.

Mine to release.

My body is made of many.

Hana Pera Aoake: My body is made of many

My body is made of many

Peace is written on the doorstep

In lava

DH Lawerence

In New Zealand, human history begins in or around the 13th century. The same century the Mongol Empire captures Baghdad, defeats Hungary and ends the Song Dynasty, Polynesians – perhaps the most accomplished seafarers in the world – reach New Zealand, the last major landmass humans settle. The country is like nothing else in Polynesia – continental rather than volcanic, temperate rather than tropical, and terribly isolated. Yet the founders, who would go on to become Maaori, thrive. The 13th century East Polynesians who settled Wairau Bay, not far from where the dutchman Abel Tasman made anchorage 400 years later, were tall (taller than the average European at the time) and without debilitating diseases like malaria, yaws or syphilis.

In only 200 years the Polynesian founders spread across the country’s main islands, even reaching the sub-Antarctic islands in the freezing latitudes and the rain-soaked Chatham Islands thousands of kilometres to the east. Here, isolated from their tuaakana in East Polynesia, the founders would go on to become Māori, developing a remarkably distinct culture in only a few centuries. Tupaia, the Ra’iātean ariki travelling aboard Cook’s Endeavour would arrive in 1769 and find a culture unlike the East Polynesian culture he left behind. The languages were similar enough, and their mythos as well, but Māori organised their lives in sometimes entirely different ways.

Until the latter part of last century one question would intrigue researchers and scholars: how did those Polynesians founders get here? In the early part of the 20th century most New Zealanders thought “accidental drift”. Those early Polynesians found their way here, starving after months at sea, near dead and dying, on accident. Paakehaa ethnologists and amaeteur scholars said that “oceans currents” took them here. In some ways, the theory made an intuitive sense to the racist mind – Polynesians were “savages” with basic technology. They weren’t capable of oceangoing on that vast scale. But as the century went on the evidence would mount that, no, the arrival wasn’t accidental. It was planned. And the technology those early Polynesians were using – like the double-hulled sailing vessel, a technological advancement adopted by contemporary America’s Cup teams – was far more advanced than similar ships in Europe.

This isn’t to construct an artificial comparison. Who had the best technology or something like that. Instead it’s to emphasise that Maaori knowledge, what we call Maatauranga Maori, is an empirical knowledge. It took an empirical knowledge of ocean currents, prevailing winds, celestial movements, bird migrations, and more for our Polynesians ancestors to undertake their deliberate voyages from East Polynesian to New Zealand. The peoples of the Pacific – from Kiribati to Hawai’i, from Fiji to New Zealand – were map-makers. Not in the European sense, where grid and gradient lines are put to paper, but in a grander sense: our Polynesian ancestors mapped the skies, committing star charts to memory so that they could read place and direction. They were naturalists, too, observing winds and birds to calculate distance to land.

This empirical knowledge is part of the whakapapa of Maatauranga Maaori – the way that we encode and transmit our knowledge of the world. Maatauranga might take different forms from how Western scientists and scholars encode and transmit their knowledge – for example, a mythic structure like Maaui contains important knowledge about fire starters, a way to encode knowledge that might strike some Western-trained scholars as childish – yet it remains an empirical knowledge despite its mythic structure or its oral transmission. Maatauranga Maaori is a tested knowledge and one that has, over the last millennium, served our ancestors well in these strange, new islands. As our ancestors were adapting to this place they had to develop new Maatauranga for protecting threatened species from overconsumption, for protecting forests and wetlands from disease, and for regulating the iwi, hapuu, and whaanau. Maatauranga was at the heart of Maaori society.

In our modest and humble way, this is one of Kei te pai’s missions – to offer a platform for writers who share our kaupapa to publish their own Maatauranga and knowledge. This is why, in this issue, we’re republishing historic pieces by the legendary lawyer and activist Annette Sykes (“the politics of the brown table”) and the groundbreaking writer and rangatira from the East Coast Arapera Blank (“the role and status of Maori women”). We recognise that the best maatauranga – or rather, ALL maatauranga – draws on the past, recalling and repurposing its lessons. This seems especially important during Matariki when the call is to take stock and renew.

Our other writers take up this challenge as well with Jessica Palalangi looking to tupuna as a means of “remoanafication”, Jade Townsend looking to the future when navigating the role of love in kaupapa Maaori art, and Aroha Novak bringing together a narrative showing the ways we’re made to question our own maatauranga and the things we know as right. Hemi Hireme then takes us back, examining neoliberalism and corporate iwi structures and calling for new forms that maintain balance in mauri and the sacred. The sacred is where all of our maatauranga stems no matter its age (whether old or new) or its purpose (whether spiritual or prosaic). We descend from the sacred union of land and the sky, and so too do all the things we know.

The theme of this issue is mai i te poo ki te ao maarama. From the darkness into the light. This captures, in a phrase, the whakapapa of creation which in many recitations ends with:

Ki te Whai ao (to the glimmer of dawn)

Ki te ao marama (to the bright light of day)

Tihei mauri ora (there is life)

From the darkness into the light. This is, at its essence, a call of hope, an affirmation. It seems fitting that we turn to hope and affirmations given that it is Matariki, the time to take stock on what were twelve unsettling, world-upending months. I do not mean this in the cliché sense that hope, a mere state of feeling, is enough to overcome the problems of the world. Instead I would argue that hope is a necessary part of political imagination. Nothing new springs from the political imagination without hope. In this issue, that hope takes different political forms, from Annette Syke’s call for economic empowerment to Jessica Palalangi’s call for new maps of meaning.

But what distinguishes these calls for political hope is that they are underpinned by maatauranga. The recognition that the knowledge and people of the past can teach us, guide us, and that the future makes no sense without them.

Morgan Godfrey: Tiimatanga koorero

I like to start with my pēpeha. That is, where I come from and the land that I

identify with, where my whānau are from, so that you can get to know me as a

facilitator…

She is wearing; those fashionable middle class mum shoes with the white wedge heel and silver leather with zips. A light coloured linen blazer, with shimmery taupe boxy top underneath. Dressy pants in ‘gun metal grey’. Corporate casual all the way, matched in all the right places. Hair is short with fringe favoured to the right, styled just so, a silvery blonde tone. Some silver earrings and necklace, wedding bands, early forties. Nō hea Southland ia, raised on a farm - so you know she is straight up and hard working, eh? Background as a teacher but now working as a cultural facilitator.

Helping corporations homogenise?

Align? Assimilate?

“Helping corporations and institutions to create a positive culture.”

Just try to keep your mind open to this training. Try not to be cynical.

They mean well.

And this is ______. He is the new operations manager for ______, he is also here to help facilitate this session and answer any questions that may arise.

He is wearing; dressy plaid shirt in dark blues. Dress pants in dark grey. Expensive, dark brown pointy-ish leather dress shoes. Large ruddy face with

florid cheeks and nose. Big ears with cauliflowers and wide stature (could

have been a prop?). Dark brown hair slightly receding but still thick, with

sideburns. Wedding band, a watch. Also from Southland (is this a coincidence?). Two months new to the role, has two kids, loves going to the institutions. Manages people. Speaks in gruff, monosyllabic sentences.

Just try to keep your mind open to this training. Try not to be cynical.

They mean well.

So, we’ll start with a few exercises.

In the first exercise, we want you to tell

us in three words what you think

makes a positive, productive work environment – we’ll split you into groups

and you need to come up with three words that describe or help illustrate what

creates this. After the first two exercises, we’ll have a cup of tea and some

excellent scones from our caterers

– they really are delicious!

I offer to write everything down on the giant post-it pad in blue vivid for our

group of six.

_______ whispers beside me in a lilting, Scottish accent ‘Respect. We need

respect from our management and peers.’

- Yes! Respect for our roles and that we know what we are doing,

general politeness goes a long way too eh?

Funding! Says ______. I can’t do my job without enough resources – they

expect me to make a certain amount of events happen throughout the year

but I have nothing there! None of this stuff works without actually paying for

more staff, which is what we need to do so we’re not so stressed out and will

therefore create a positive work environment!! But that’s not going to happen anytime soon eh?!

Yeah, that’s tough. It looks as though they are tightening belts even more at at

the moment…it’s almost like the chicken before the egg conundrum…

- It’s just really stressful…but I guess we’re lucky to have jobs, right?

‘Yea, I guess…’

What about communication?

- Communication for sure! Good communication is key!

Yep, definitely.

-Yea, from the top down, and back the other way.

So, easy forms of communication – like having someone you feel you can talk

to, rather than being scared of saying anything that might rock the boat so to

speak?

- Yep, reciprocation? Reciprocity?? How do you

say that word?

Okay, respect, and communication, definitely agree. What about autonomy?

‘Yep – I agree with that – great word to pull out by the way!’

Thanks :)

_______ looks blankly through her glasses with shiny, beady eyes. ‘What

does that mean?’

Autonomy is when you have the ability to think and do things for yourself –

you know? You don’t have to be micro managed, you can make decisions for

yourself without having to ask someone for permission all the time…

- Oh, okay. Yeah, sure.

Maybe its easier not having to think??

Just try to keep your mind open to this training. Try not to be cynical.

They mean well.

Heres a scenario we would like you to think about:

A customer comes in and complains about the use of Te Reo in the institution,

and goes on a diatribe about his family being one of the first settlers to come

over on the ‘four ships’. How would you deal with this situation?

*eye roll* probably not very well to be honest.

I’m sick of justifying my existence, my whakapapa to customers, patrons,

visitors, peers. Foreign people are better at pronouncing my name.

I’m tired of it. I have a lifetime of casual racism cloaked upon my back,

enough to make a korowai of the smallest feathers. This is my first day back

after being on maternity leave. I’m too old for this shit.

Also reminds me of a mural I did and someone felt so incensed about it, they

wrote a complaint letter to the council. They felt it was too deeply rooted in Te

Ao Māori, too spiritual, too dark. It was offensive for Christian members of the

community. It was also a site specific work relating to Māori history, and

honouring the tangata who occupied the whenua. When will we stop having to

justify our existence?

What I really say is ‘I would have to leave because I probably wouldn’t be very

nice to that person. It’s ridiculous that we have to deal with this kind of thing in

2020.’

Just try to keep your mind open to this training. Try not to be cynical.

They mean well.

Let’s have a look at some slides relating to the governance structure of your

institutions. Is there anything we are missing from these slides in terms of

legality or privacy?

There’s actually no reference to Te Tiriti at all… you know, The Treaty of

Waitangi?

Oh gosh *looks embarrased* thank you for that feedback, we will add that in…

uh, I’m not sure how we managed to miss that…

Also, our core values are in Māori but does anyone actually know what those

kupu mean?

Kotahitanga –

Meaning unity, but I think it’s called lip service in corporate jargon, a farce,

empty slogans dressed up as policy. Fancy fonts, glossing over the true

meanings, put them in the elevator, stairwell, offices. If we see it enough, we

might become it, right…the medium is the message and all that.

Am I the only one questioning this?

Just try to keep your mind open to this training. Try not to be cynical.

They mean well.

*silence*

Uh well, yes, that’s a very good point you make and to be honest I can’t

answer that question but probably not many people know what these words

mean… and we take this feedback very seriously so we will be, uh, adding

these comments to the overall recommendations at the end of all the

sessions…

*clears throat*

Unfortunately that’s all we have time for folks, thank you for your cooperation,

energy and open mindedness, you will receive a feedback form via email and

hopefully in a few weeks time we can share the results of these training

sessions and make a plan going forward.

We really appreciate your time!

Just try to keep your mind open to this training. Try not to be cynical.

They mean well.

Aroha Novak: Cultural Workshop Feedback

Ancestors. I stare at the word and the word stares defiantly back. I know what it means. I feel its power and I use it more frequently as time marks me. The tuli bird footprint in the A[1] grounds me like strong thighs standing spread and I begin to ruminate about the maluāpapa of the word “ancestor” in my first language - English.

I am surprised to know that when the word is stripped to its Latin roots it means ‘ante’ – before - and ‘cedere’ - go. It emanates action, movement. “Beforego”. Fuluhi ki tua ke kitia mitaki a mua. The concept of facing the future backwards.

Now this Latin inherited word of “beforego” makes me wonder how I ever thought

I was facing into the future with my back turned to my ancestors - the hubris (that’s

a Greek one for you).

Tupuna. Often when I write I have to google most of my Niuean. I am always cheered when I see words I recognise in other languages across the Moana in vagahau Niue, a language my tongue tries to wrap itself around but my brain still thinks in English, French, a bit of Spanish and Greek, and since I have been home a lot more Te Reo. In vagahau Niue, tupuna is also the word ‘to register, to title (land)’ and ‘to repeat history (negative or positive), grandchild, grandparents, and ancestor. Our tupuna are so smart. Here we are (or maybe just me) fumbling about trying to understand concepts of non-linear time and ancestral futures and then they are like ‘hey, we will make it easy for you tupuna - we will use the same word so you know that your grandchild can also be your grandparent’ [insert mind blown emoji here].

What is my relationship to my whakapapa and tupuna?

I have the privilege of being able to recite them - by name but only knowing parts of them for a part of time. To know, in a way in which I can live on with their memories and teachings. I think sometimes it’s too painful to think about them - a deeper excavation of our tethers is needed. I buried them so deep in the pain of their transition from this time. Other tupuna I was destined not to meet through circumstance, and there is nothing I can do to alter that.

Memories are not forgotten just harder to access. But the echo of them remains somewhere, buried deep, attached to external stimuli - smells, songs, seasons - and then they wash over us again, not consciously perhaps but in an abstract way. Is this how we acquire ancestral knowledge too? Will I suddenly remember how to do things, how to make things, is this what I feel when I hear the moana?

Blood memories.

Two sets of my tupuna are island people. Vastly different but similarly located in isolated islands… travellers, seeking, moving people, shedding skins.

SLEEPDREAMS OF A COLLECTIVE

Monday 6th July 2020

Was sleepdreaming

My phone spun google maps

I said “where are you taking me?”

It stopped on the moana

And then zoomed down / I saw the date line (was it Niue?)

(I feel like the date line was on my right // maybe —> outline of NZ)

(And there was no land —> in b/w Tonga & NZ?)

I then felt the splash of the moana

But also the feeling of my duvet

I woke myself up but could feel my eyes

Darting REM style

Fast heartbeat

Strange

Shooketh

Tagaloa?

I included the above excerpt from my journal as it was the only time I recalled and described a dream I had in 2020. I think I dreamt the pandemic dreams we all had during that year, but this was the only one that was so visceral that I was sure that Tagaloa - ultimate tupuna - was trying to speak to me. I felt like my dream was telling me to come closer to the moana. As you can see my dream GPS was off and sent me to a place with no fonua - just moana everywhere. However, I did decide to come “home” and I arrived to Aotearoa on November 19 that year.

Individual dreams are familiar to us. We all know we dream and we all have a specific relationship with our dreams. Dreaming as a collective, however, for me, means reimagining worlds for a different pastfuture. I like joining words together when I think just one won’t provide the gravitas or deeper understanding. Pastfuture for me acknowledges non-linear time a place with no centre (thanks Drew) with a connection to ancestors (past and future) through the physicality of our trunk

/belly/centre.

When I started to ruminate more on this notion of collective dreaming I also started to think that we (whoever that is) are not really a collective. Well, some of us are and a lot of us are not. If I think about my place of birth - Tamaki of a hundred lovers in Aotearoa - I see fractures and fractions. If the collective is not collective - how can it dream together? Do we all have to agree on everything to collectively dream?

I was reading about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Need recently. I was always aware of it and often thought about it whenever I speculate on solving the world’s problems. Usually over many wines. To me, it summarised that we needed to start with the “basics” (food, water, shelter) aka Physiological needs and then work our way up the hierarchy from there. On reflection I am not sure how a pyramid that is so linear in formation, and isolated from the entanglements that it is to be human - e.g. would I really like to be a homeowner before I found love or had a sense of connection? (Have you seen house prices in Tamaki??) - I also wasn’t aware that he had plagiarised the framework from a First Nations perspective, manipulated it to suit and then claimed it (I should have realised… when will I learn?). The Siksika Nation (Blackfoot Confederacy) in Canada see the triangle as a tipi and the self-actualisation at the top of Maslow’s triangle as like “peak-human”. This was actually the starting point for our First Nations friends. You are self-actualised from the beginning and whole in your creation, your place in the mataohi of timespace. Because you are already actualised in self, then you can be actualised in community and then be “peak-human” by achieving cultural perpetuity (which I think is another way of realising “how to be a good ancestor”). Let us dream the collective dreams of being good ancestors. That sounds like a world I would want to create…

It’s our watch now

The time to make dreams come true

Today is a good day to begin

- Witi Ihimaera[2]

MAPPING MOVEMENTS

Populations seem always to be in flux and so too were the dispositions of land, providing much of the flexibility and motion to the operation of Oceanian societies. All of this is recorded in narratives inscribed on the landscape. Our natural landscapes, then, are maps of movements, pauses, and more movements.[3]

Land. Fonua. Whenua. Birth death. Movements in timespace. Albert Wendt once spoke about the importance of maps. I can’t find it again.

From the memory fragments of reading something, somewhere I have thought about mapping how movements have warped the settler colonial narrative and informed the future - how has liberation created in the past future created new iterations as we progress within time?

I have been thinking about time loops and how they overlap and run along each other. I refrain from using time lines because I don’t think time behaves itself by being orderly, sequential and linear. Yes, the years change in number every 1st January according to the Gregorian calendar that dominates our worldview but that’s not always how it was. Whilst this is not the time to deconstruct time the following map is something I have dreamed of in recording how people and places birthed, evolved and moved in timespace.

I chose three decades in the history of my life in Aotearoa, three separate decades that are relevant to my personal story intersecting/overlaying this with sites of resistance and kotahitanga/kaufakalataha. I have named it “Mapping Movements: Sites of Resistance and Remoanfication”. The map is not exhaustive and of course can be much larger and in-depth. The visual nature allows me to see this interconnectedness but even in the making its limited and not expansive enough. It is my attempt to capture the elusiveness of time and the koel poems that accompany are my “in summary” moments. This to me, is ReMoanafication in the tangible…

Resistance begins with word, but also with brown teapots, and caring, and places to imagine the end of capitalism. To imagine the end of the Under.[4]

REMOANAFICATION

As I said at the beginning, I have tried to deal with aspects of our present and future. I propose now to look into our past. I believe that in order for us to gain greater autonomy than we have today and maintain it within the global system, we must in addition to other measures be able to define and construct our pasts and present in our own ways. We cannot continue to rely on others to do it for us because autonomy cannot be attained through dependence.[5]

When I submitted my 250 words, loosely based on concepts of ReMoanafication and what it meant to dream collectively as tagata Moana, I was determined to reflect and

refract philosophers from our moana. I have been educated on the often dizzying concepts of Deleuze, Foucoult, Derrida and Barthes. I can read the words and make connections but then I think to myself - why? Why = respond to some old white French guys - why did I need to reflect their work in mine? Why did I only bloody read Epeli’s works four years ago? (Spoiler alert I left tertiary education in the biggest Polynesian city in the world in the early 00s). I wanted to focus and centre - unapologetically - on the whakaaro/manatu of our people.

This term, ReMoanafication, for me does two things, first, the reclamation of our narrative through the acknowledgement of the trajectory of our tipuna rather than that of c*#*n and the celebration of unity as Moana people.[6]

When thinking about ReMoanafication (and in fact the majority of this writing) I experience a lot of dissonance, feelings of being overwhelmed and generally not knowing where to start, finish or how to bring all my

disparate thoughts together. I read Jaimie Waititi’s post on Instagram in 2020 and was struck by the vitality and honesty in articulating identity not in relation to colonisation. Not even in decolonisation. I had these similar thoughts whilst I lived on the other side of the world ensconced in the ruins of the coloniser (the UK lol), and I saw familiarity in carving out, fostering, and celebrating a moana identity. This was something that we speculated on frequently over many wines/ciders and pizzas within the collective. We, in the diaspora, had fully embraced our moana-ness. I italicise diaspora because I think that timespaceplace - the distance that forces connections and accelerates relations. When thinking of ReMoanafication I immediately thought of Epeli and Albert saying the same(ish) thing in the past - reflecting that Albert had written Toward and New Oceania in the 70s. Lana Lopesi had reframed it again in 2018 in False Divides and so I recognised another iteration here. This iteration refracting the pattern of agency and self-determination. The desire to claim an identity as expansive as the moana - deep, wild, complex, and adaptable. Recentering our connected identity not as an antithesis to the coloniser but in terms of joy, celebration, and resilience. Ever adaptable, traversing time and space. I wanted to untangle this idea of ReMoanafication more and before I knew it I was in a deep decolonisation hole - the exact opposite of what I wanted to do. But I kinda understood that to start somewhere, perhaps I should understand where I didn’t

want to go.

It was in this journeying that I found the work of Hawaiian matua, Poka Laenui, who back in 2006 came up with “Processes of Decolonisation”. I hadn’t come across this before but was grateful someone else could roadmap it for me (I’ve worked in corporates half my life). The framework is the result of conversations about colonisation (and the process of it) so here we are again - the precipice of this duality of one not existing without the other. Anyway, let’s start with phase one - I have been ruminating on all of them and think I can loop them in and out of this piece of writing (I use that term loosely).

Ruminations and Roadmaps on ReMoanafication

1) Rediscovery and Recovery

This is basically what it says - I think of it as an unlearning or undoing. It’s that process of filling in the knowledge gaps, or like me changing where the knowledge comes from. Its prioritising some voices over others and questioning the entire history and worldview you have been fed and understand to be “true”. I understand that this is the first part of the process because if we can’t reposition our frame of mind then how can we navigate a different future? One of the other interesting facets of this stage is the notion of “elevation of form over substance”. This is likened to creating a version of yourself, within your culture, that is from a foreign perspective. Whilst I understand that matua Laenui is calling for there not to be a level of mimicry, there are hints of gatekeeping and authenticity which are problematic for me. It makes me think of my own history - there were no real opportunities for me to learn Niuean (in a home setting). I have never been to Niue, and my Mum is a palagi - how else do I attach, grow and nurture the missing parts of myself if not through the lens of a foreigner?

2) Mourning

I often wonder if we are still at this stage. I know I have mentioned that time is not linear and I don’t for a moment think this a psychological process either. But I understand there needs to be a facing into the trauma to heal… doesn’t there? I think we are still at the rediscovery of what the trauma may be, how divisive it has been between families, iwi, villages, and countries. What would it look like if we really mourned? If we allowed time and space to listen to our tupuna, to share grievances and burdens, to allow for tangible acts towards healing? What if it was more than an enquiry report, with key suggested outcomes that are now the responsibility of a faceless taskforce? A key phrase in this step struck me: “Perhaps when there does not seem to be any alternative to the present condition, the mourning seems to be the only thing to do.”

3) Dreaming

This is listed as the most crucial phase. I can understand why. Where will we go in timespace if we don’t dream it into reality? One of the aspects that this state is not just replacing those in the positions of power or in systems with indigenous people. It’s about dismantling them and creating new ones that may be more aligned to the way in which people move through the world. I think about this a lot. Do we infiltrate systems of power and somehow not become institutionalised and dismantle them from the inside out? Do we continue to resist and create tension from the outside? For me, I don’t think those in power - even the woke AF Paakehaa are willing to give up power. The settlers have settled and in this settling have unsettled tangata whenua - and extended that to Moana people. Sometimes I think that part of New Zealand forgets it’s also an island in the Moananuiākea, part of our large Moana whanau/magafaoa. Anyway, we need to dream vibrant, liberated dreams of a future in which everyone thrives. I have realised that perhaps I will still be dreaming this future into becoming for the rest of my life.

4) Commitment

I see the word commitment but I think the word for me is collective. The dream is dreamed in collective - this is how we can ensure we are all included. The collective needs individuals. We have to agree on fundamentals and then commit to them. At the moment I feel like I am in the realms of speculative fiction as I cannot yet dream a society that is united and has replaced basically the tenets of how we exist in this society today. But. I can still dream and seek out others who want the same.

5) Action

Matua Laenui mentions that all throughout this too tidy list of steps, action is sometimes the thing we do first. Reactive action in retaliation, in resistance - forced upon us to stop a tangible injustice happening and hurting people in our society in the every day. Sometimes it is a necessity. The action in this step though, points to one of proactiveness, of putting into action the committed collective dreamings – moving from the intangible to the tangible. Recreating worlds with our words.

Futurism, for me, is the ultimate inversion and return.[7]

It’s time to remind people of the complexity and not let them try to paint us with a single brush stroke.[8]

[1] The tuli bird footprint in tatau is < > V /\ (like a chevron) and I liken that to the shape in the A.

[2] “Where To Next? Decolonisation and the stories in the land” Moana Jackson (Ngati Kahungunu, Rongomaiwahine, Ngati Porou” in Imagining Decolonisation (2020)

[3] “Pasts to Remember” in We Are The Ocean / Selected Works by Epeli Hau’ofa (2008)

[4] “In The Under” Tulia Thompson in Life on Volcanoes (2019)

[5] “Pasts to Remember” in We Are The Ocean / Selected Works by Epeli Hau’ofa (2008)

[6] “Remoanafication: The D and I’m done with it” by Jaimie (James) Waititi for the Fale-Ship Home Residency (@Tautai Instagram September 2020)

[7] “Island Time: South Pacific Futurism From a Contemporary Aotearoa New Zealand Perspective” by Jessica “Coco “ Hansell in The Funambulist (issue 24, June 2019)

[8] “You can’t paint the Pacific with just one brush stroke” by Teresia Teaiwa (e-tangata, 2015)

Jessica Palalagi: Beginnings

“He Wahine, he tangata,

He Wahine, he tangata,

A woman, a man

A woman, a man.”

In the summer of 1971, my husband, our two children and I, travelled through the Rhine Valley on our way to Switzerland. The view was magic-like. Castles rose into the mists. Vineyards cascaded down to the waters of the Rhine. Tug-boats chugged up river and down, and made me think of stories of the Mississippi, and of man’s obeisance to the demands of an ever-obtruding industrial economy

The sheer splendour of the view, and the knowledge that history was reverberating from the valley slopes made me homesick. I could see Rangitukia, my birthplace, ten miles south of the East Cape; and I could see my parents; and I felt quite sad that they were unable to share with me the excitement of seeing new faces, and new places as sophisticated as Rangitukia was in its simplicity.

Viewed from that distance in time and space, memories of family life, particularly during my childhood days, appeared quite romantic – hilarious, fascinating, sometimes sad.

Like raiding Uncle Turanga’s pear tree orchard and waiting for his notice to appear in the shop window:

PERSONS CAUGHT STEALING IN MY PEA – TREE ORCHARD WILL BE PROSECUTED.

We always laughed at his spelling of the word “pear”. He used the Maori form.

Like waiting until the head-master and his family were at dinner, before we raided his apple orchard without disturbing a branch! Like poking fun at people’s deformities. Like climbing on to the roof of the cow-shed to see whether the cream truck was coming by, in order to get our cream to the road on time. Like trying to out-sing one another’s families from tree-top to tree-top on hot summer afternoons. Like standing in cow-pats on a frosty morning in order to keep warm. Like walking barefooted to school on a gravel road on such a morning. What a life! Filled with all kinds of smells and sounds of cow dung; cows’ udders, buckets clanging, parents and children singing and yelling, or wailing at a tangi, and the school bell ringing.

Ka koingo atu au ki te rohe o te tairawhiti, ki taku kainga e kiia nei ko te ukanga o te ra.

And I yearned for that area known as the “Territory of the Rising Sun”, for that village where, it is said, “the sun first rises.”

During the 1930s, and 1940s, in the Tairawhiti area, and especially in my village, getting a living was far from romantic. There was poverty; there was illness. It was worse during my grandparents’ childhood.

My paternal grandparents, both from the tribe of Ngati-Porou, were born over one hundred years ago – my grandfather in 1872, and my grandmother in 1874. By today’s standards, they were but children when they were married – my grandmother only fourteen and my grandfather sixteen. My grandmother said that she had no choice. She was married to a half-caste because a Maori with Pakeha blood in his veins had brains!

My paternal grandfather was brought up by Maori parents. He had little contact with his Pakeha father. Like most of the male members of his numerous whanau and hapu, he treated my grandmother the way he treated his dogs and horses. She fetched and carried from dawn till dark. Bearing children was a duty, not a privilege. It was the outward or visible expression of a man’s virility. In fact, a woman who could cope with an autocratic husband, household, and marae chores, plus ensuring the survival of ten to sixteen children was regarded as a miracle by other women, and a dutiful wife by the men.

Of my grandmother’s children, only eleven out of sixteen survived by the time I was born. Two daughters died of tuberculosis in adolescence. At that time, this disease was rife in the village, as it was in the thirties and forties.

The only remaining daughter broke the rather common tradition of arranged marriages by refusing to marry a person chosen by my grandfather and his sister. They did not even consult my grandmother. Most marriages were arranged with a view to financial advantage, security, and the enhancement of one’s lineage. To refuse such an offer took courage indeed; for not only did one disgrace one’s immediate family in the eyes of the tribe, but also one’s numerous whanau! She therefore stayed away from the village for some years and took up nursing as

a career.

Unlike some of the women of her generation, my grandmother was a passive type. She grumbled behind my grandfather’s back, but never to his face. If she had, she would have been beaten quite severely. But she did lament my grandfather’s behaviour towards her, to other women, and to her daughters-in-law.

However, there were some women who refused to succumb to the dictates of the superior male. Not only did they command the respect of their households, but they also controlled the work force at the marae in the villages throughout the Waiapu Valley, of which ours is one.

My paternal grandfather’s sister, for instance, had no children of her own. Nevertheless she worked as hard as my grand-uncle on a sheep-farm, was a capable cook and dressmaker, helped to cater at ceremonial gatherings, and even spoke on the marae! Provided women were capable enough, their decisions were respected. What could enhance their mana was descent from a noble lineage. In terms of noble lineages, my grandaunt was certainly not of impeccable stock, but she had courage enough to hold her own in community work. Since there were three or four women in each village who excelled themselves by having as much right to decision-making as the men, some scholars of my generation think, therefore, that Ngati-Porou men held, and still hold, their women in great esteem. They further support this view by drawing attention to the fact that many of the whanau, the dining –halls, and meeting houses on marae complexes, are named after their ancestresses.

But status on ceremonial occasions is one thing, and respect for a woman’s role in the routine of daily living is quite another. Job sharing was not equal in my grandmother’s time and even till now. Men worked outside the household, while women worked inside as well as out on the farms or in the gardens.

When my mother, who is a member of the Ngati-Kahungunu tribe, came to live in my paternal grandfather’s household, she was appalled at the way women were treated. Coming from a household and a hapu where women were acknowledged as indispensable in quality daily living, and respected for their opinions, it was quite a shock to her to witness my grandmother being treated like a galley-slave. She too was accorded similar status.

Her own mother worked as diligently as my paternal grand-mother. In fact, she was responsible for the vegetable garden and the efficient running of the household. Apparently, she expressed her opinions quite freely, and was seldom reprimanded by her husband. Most of the women in her village behaved similarly.

Unlike my paternal grandmother, my mother was not a passive type. She rebelled against my paternal grandfather’s autocratic authoritarian behaviour. If he walked over the bare scrubbed floor in muddy boots, she fired a scrubbing brush at him. If he and his sons demanded a meal immediately, knowing full well that the two women were burdened with innumerable chores, she told them to wait, or to cook for themselves. My grandfather was shocked at the rebelliousness and called her “Te wahine weriweri o Ngati-Kahungunu” (“That terrible woman from Ngati-Kahungunu”).

In retaliation, therefore, he spoilt those of my brothers and sisters named after his family and ignored those named after my mother’s family. My older sister was favoured because she was named after his mother and I was named after two of my mother’s ancestresses. She did not have to lift a finger to earn her pocket money, whereas I had to catch his horse and harness his cart when he and my grandmother went to the village shops, and even then it was quite a job to squeeze sixpence out of him.

The women of my mother’s generation, in my opinion, followed almost the same pattern of living as my grandmother’s generation. The hard grind of simple economics dominated their lives. Social life as we know it was reduced to a minimum, and comprised visits to relations, community work, and going to church. Patronising the local rugby team, hockey and netball on Saturdays was a real treat.

Except for a slight lull in winter, most of the women worked as hard, if not harder, than the men, from sunrise to sunset. Like their mothers-in-law, they had large families, milked cows, gardened, and supervised household chores and the cooking for Church gatherings or ceremonies at the marae.

Families were far too large by today’s standards. They averaged ten children. Few mothers could afford a rest in the maternity hospital which was only thirty miles away, either in time, or money. Fathers, other mothers, or grandmothers performed the duties of midwifery. As my grandmother became less mobile, and if my mother’s neighbour was preoccupied with the demands of her own family, my father delivered the babies. But on two occasions my mother delivered them herself.

Pakeha headmasters must have viewed the maternity drawbacks of the village with some misgivings. By contrast, their families were small – averaging two children. One headmaster was so concerned that he offered to drive the women in his car to the maternity hospital. On an occasion when he was supposed to drive my mother to the hospital, she did not appear. When he range her she said, “Don’t worry. I’ve just had my baby, so I’m just making myself a cup of tea.”

During my primary school days, speeches were frequently made about babies. The headmaster would say, “Mrs So-and-So has just had another baby. Is not that marvellous?” And those for whom the compliment was intended would shrink down to nothing. The usual joke was “Gee your father must be a bloody ram!”

Big brothers cared for little brothers, and big sisters looked after big brothers, little brothers, and little sisters. Chores were distributed according to sex. Girls cooked, washed, served, and ironed clothes, gardened, and milked cows, and mothered the younger siblings. Boys milked cows and helped with ploughing and fencing.

Girls were an asset to a family, for, as soon as they were able, they assumed the role of mother figure, especially in large families. They became responsible for the training of younger siblings in etiquette, toilet habits and speech and for entry into school education. Mothers trained daughters to cope with the household. Grandmothers also taught the basics such as bread making, cooking a square meal, and weaving mats or kits.

Community activities were our parents’ main form of recreation. Although catering for a ceremonial occasion was, and still is, hard work, it was an opportunity to renew kinship ties, and for social interaction. Even we as children looked forward to such a gathering, and we could feel the excitement build up as the day drew closer.

The last great community project, in my opinion, was the building of our dining hall, Hinepare, in 1945. Rangitukia was thrown into a fever of activity. Every whanau was involved in various projects such as fundraising for building materials, exterior and interior building, and feeding the workers. Kumara and potato harvests had to be stored for the opening day. Each farmer had to supply meat, milk, and cream. Cultural activities occupied the spare time of adults and children.

Primary and High School students assisted with the interior decorating. Boys were taught to carve and paint rafter designs and girls the act of tukutuku panelling. The same students had to learn their genealogy during school time because the building was named after an ancestress of that area. The ancestress’ lineage was linked up with that of Porourangi, the founder ancestor of the Ngati-Porou tribe, and even further back to Toi-Kai-Rakau whose progeny spread right down to the South Island. All students were tested orally just before the official opening ceremony.

Action songs were composed and taught to adults and children, and the classic powhiri and haka were revised for the occasion. Either men or women composed and taught the action song, but the haka was the prerogative of the men.

Looking back, it was a marvellous education in Maoritanga. While the building was in progress, the traditions, customs, and folklore were related to parents and children by the experts of our village and the neighbouring ones. By the time I was thirteen, I was equipped with all this knowledge of genealogy, protocol and tradition which let me know who I was and what I was and therefore gave me an identity.

Any community project highlighted a woman’s capabilities. It was a way of discovering potential in song and dance, in catering, and in art and craft. Status was achieved through a woman’s performance in one or all of these spheres; so although part of status is inherited through descent from important lineages, a woman could only hold her place if she were community oriented. The process was, and still is, a slow one. It is not until a woman is middle-aged and has proved herself that she has the right to decision-making with the men, and the right to speak on the marae in the Ngati-Porou tribal area. This achievement of status is particularly conspicuous when one looks at the ceremonial of the tangi, where women are the chief mourners, the leaders of the waiata, the caterers, and therefore the backbone of the marae.

Two women’s groups gave prominence to our mothers’ activities, and aided greatly in social interaction. These were the Country Women’s Institutes, which functioned in most villages in the Tairawhiti area, and the Maori Women’s Welfare League. The former became an outlet for creative ability in the art and craft sphere, and a school for good housekeeping. But this institution was not as powerful as the Maori Women’s Welfare League, because in my opinion, it was too Pakeha-oriented and attracted mostly those women who had a certain amount of confidence in a Pakeha world anyway. The Institutes therefore tended to comprise the elite of each village. Neither did it reach into every facet of Maori life.

With the advent of the Maori Women’s Welfare League, Maori women really found their potential, and because of this, the Women’s Institutes disappeared. Throughout the forties, the Women’s Institutes had great mana, but by the late fifties the Maori Women’s Welfare Leagues superseded them. It is not surprising that the women of the Tairawhiti and other tribal areas embraced such a movement. For it is through this establishment that Maori women have become a powerful political voice.

At the time of the formation of the Maori Women’s Welfare Leagues in 1952 in the Tairawhiti area, the tribal committees, dominated by men, were the only effective political voice. And although they were responsible for the welfare of a Maori community, in my opinion, their policies did not go far enough. They seemed to concentrate mainly on law and order in the community, whereas the Maori Women’s Welfare League reached into every facet of life concerning Maori people, namely in education, health, social and spiritual welfare, and politics.

While the men still continue today to dabble in politics, land bills, and exoteric explorations through their Komiti Maori – new version of tribal committee – the women concern themselves with the fundamental issue of a better future for their children. This is understandable because the role of the Maori woman in the community is greater than that of the man. She is both mother and father to her children.

More often than not, she will be the one who attends parent-teacher interviews, and is the dominating force in the physical and spiritual well-being of her children. Thus, there develops in Maori women, a wider vision and yet a fundamental approach to the art of daily living.

What I have seen of my mother’s generation moves me to great admiration. They are the equal, if not the superior, of the “Petticoat Pioneers.”

Owing to a subsistence level of existence in the 1940’s, and large families, the women’s health left much to be desired. It was not uncommon for them to contract pleurisy in high summer because they over-worked themselves in their enormous gardens, from dawn till dark. Because they could not afford to go to a dentist, most women were toothless by the time they turned forty. How they managed to digest their food and remain upright in a miracle!

According to a Health Survey conducted by Dr Prior and his team, the Maori women of my area suffered, among other diseases, from anaemia due to too-frequent child-bearing (Prior, 1968, 270-287). Since anaemia contributes to weariness, it must have taken tremendous mental stamina to cope with the demands of the community and those of the family.

My Own Generation:

And what of my generation now we have reached middle age? What have we achieved?

Most of us in the Ngati-Porou area were educated in church boarding schools for Maori girls. Part of the reason was that our parents had loyalties to these schools because they were ex-pupils. Part of it was that district high schools were viewed with some distrust because they were still too new, and therefore unknown. Sir Apirana Ngata’s comment that district high schools were just “Pseudo high schools” also tended to encourage the exodus to boarding schools. Because he was a famous politician, a brilliant student and scholar, and an ex-boarding school pupil, his opinions on the ideal type of education were greatly favoured.

Preparation for leadership, good house-keeping, some academic success, the fulfilment of religious and spiritual needs, and the maintenance of Maoritanga pervaded the curriculum. Any academic success was due not only to a reasonable standard of teaching, but also to the fact that the girls were being nurtured in a constant environment.

In my first year at boarding school, I, like others, suffered the pangs of homesickness. But I enjoyed my four years there on the whole because of the contrast between school and home in my village.

There were no huge gardens to weed, no cows to milk, and I had a bed and a pair of sheets, all to myself. I no longer shared sleeping accommodation with four or five persons. Because of the school regulations, I had a dressing gown for the first time,

at least two nightdresses and a pair of shoes. What bliss, and yet what agony in that first year! Shoes were a problem because I had gone barefooted for most of

my thirteen years.

Despite the rigorous routine of schoolwork and hostel chores, we developed a respect for Maoritanga and Pakehatanga, and had time to sort out our lives and what the future held. That future comprised a career and marriage. To us, marriage was more important than a career, but the latter had to be pursued because of our obligations to our parents.

Coming from relatively large families, the majority of us could only afford a maximum of four years’ secondary education. Some of us were withdrawn after two years if our academic performance was inadequate. Thus, other members of the family could be given the same opportunity.

Whatever the drawbacks of such an education, many of the women leaders in Maori communities were the products of Maori boarding schools. They seemed to acquire confidence from the security which that environment provided.

These boarding schools still provide an important alternative to those schools within the state system. Having Maoritanga as a base appears to have helped these girls to succeed in a Pakeha-oriented world. I appreciate the suggestion from a teacher that there should be at least four more Maoritanga-based schools in the Auckland area, in view of the success of schools such as Hato Petera Maori Boys College, St Stephens School, and Queen Victoria School for Maori girls. These should be open to the Pakeha as well as the Maori, but not necessarily have boarding accommodation. This could be the answer for those Maori children who have a low self image, and for those who are failing in the ordinary state system despite their academic potential.

And where are these women of my generation?

Most of them have become city dwellers since, over the last decade or two, the Maori people have swelled the urban population. Too many of their children reflect the limitations of an urban environment and inadequate family life.

There is a real problem of alienation between parents, children, and kinsfolk – an inevitable result of a new economic situation and of the separation from those kinship ties – confined to rural areas, and defined by tribal boundaries.

Since both parents are forced into occupations outside the home in order to maintain an adequate standard of living, children, on the whole, have to take the responsibility, at an early age, for running a household without the security and advice of kinsfolk in close proximity.

If one is to believe newspaper and other reports via the mass media, most Maori children seem to be lacking parental care. Inadequate diets, ear, nose, and throat trouble, lack of mental stimulation through lack of communication between parents and children and the school, appear in newspaper reports quite frequently. The Auckland Star Weekender has a great deal of information about poor housing, inadequate family life, and the high crime rate among Maori youths. And to one fed solely on the diet dished up by newspapers, radio, and television, the future of the Maori looks excessively bleak.

“According to Professor Schlesinger of Toronto University, twelve percent of New Zealand children or a few more than one in ten under sixteen years of age, experienced solo parenthood in the period 1973 – 1977. Included in this twelve percent were the children of widowed families. This is twelve percent of the total 992,464 children of the country’s population in 1976.”

(Auckland Star, May 1979)

He drew attention to the steeply rising proportion of convicted criminals in the younger age-groups. “The overwhelming proportion is Maori.” Part of his answer to the problem is that “we need more concrete action like childcare centres, school programmes for the have-nots, less child abuse, more caring.”

Part of the answer would be to educate Maori parents in coping with urban living and the preparation of their children for school education. These parents should also be involved in the formulation of the kind of education programme which would meet the needs of their children. And this is where Maori women in an urban environment could be a powerful force; for family life is dependent on the mother. It is therefore on her contribution that the home stands or falls.

Urban parents:

The orientation of parents into urban living is vital, but must focus on the value and functions of Maoritanga. A wealth of physical and moral strength can be gained as a result.

There is the question of identity, of knowing who one’s kin are, and what obligations such ties entail. Parents and children should know that they belong to a group, and that whatever they do affects the group and not just the immediate, nuclear family. There is the problem of the new roles of parents in a nuclear family if both work outside the household. Within the household, this would entail a sharing of chores, which in turn would give both parents more time to interact with their children.

The ultimate success of urban living can only come from a sharing of family responsibilities, and Maori men on the whole are still not fully aware of the contribution they can make. It therefore needs the strength of the women to guide them in the right direction. For the sake of our children, parents need to be re-educated in what makes quality living.

It was one thing to survive as a member of a group in which three or more generations of an extended family nurtured the strong and the weak, as was the custom; it is another and more exacting task to manage as a small unit of mother, father and children, where the sole responsibility of satisfying its physical needs is that of the parents.

(Blank, 1974, (87-191)

In the above article I mentioned that:

Where a Maori mother has had some European education in matters of health and hygiene, and a knowledge of good dietary habits, she has an advantage over those women whose background is almost wholly Maori.

I also maintained that:

All a Maori mother needs to do is to care for her children physically, and other social or academic agencies for developing the mental growth of her children will take care of the rest.

But in view of what is happening to our youth in the city, with the formation of the gangs such as Black Power, Storm Troopers, and the Mongrel Mob, I doubt that the satisfaction of physical needs is sufficient in caring for our children. Parents need to be involved in three spheres – whanaungatanga and its obligations of caring and sharing, home and its obligations of caring and sharing, and school with its obligations of educating our children into becoming good citizens, though not necessarily academic giants.

Many gang members are not coping with city life because they have not been properly weaned into it. Some are barely literate. Some have never known what it is to belong to a close knit family group, and most belong to that group of “have-nots” whose school education was not suited to them.

The setting-up of the Tu Tangata programme by the Maori Affairs Department in 1978 has so far been a wise move. The programme, aimed at improving the academic attainments of our children from pre-school to secondary, and technical to university education, is commendable. The inclusion by most groups of a cultural programme is also commendable because it encourages the parent who is diffident about Pakeha education, to take part in the teaching of the children. But this programme has to go even further into r4eaching out to the “have-nots” – those for whom an academic-type education is not suited. These are the ones who need vocational training programmes.

The Department of Labour has been left with the task of finding employment for our unskilled, and even some skilled Maori youth.

Caring parents are still too few. It is noticeable that the homework study groups are lacking solid parental support. The supervisors of these centres are also the ones who establish them, and they are mainly women. For example, on the North Shore in the Auckland region, five such centres were established by eight people – six women and two overworked men.

Despite the fact that parental support is still inadequate, the number of parents involved in the education of their children has increased. In fact, home-study centres had been established before the Tu Tangata Project, in areas such as Papakura, Henderson, Te Atatu, Otara and Mangere. The organisers of these centres maintain, moreover, that Maori students who attend regularly, have achieved well academically.

The year of 1979 appears to have been better than 1970 with regard to Maori parent involvement in school education. More women are actively involved in Parent-Teacher Associations at primary and secondary schools, and both men and women have been elected to School Committees and Boards of Governors. According to the principal of Te Atatu Intermediate, in the 1977 School Committee elections, five Maoris – one man and four women – were successful. It is a pity, however, that none of them regained their places in this year’s elections. They were voted out by a Pakeha majority. It would therefore be wise to lobby or campaign for votes. In South Auckland, West Auckland, and on the North Shore, disco evenings for the youth are being organised by teenagers, men, and women, in order to keep our youth out of the city of Auckland. The Storm Troopers, for example, are actively engaged in this kind of recreation, as well as in community projects in the Otara area.

And what are some of the opinions voiced by Maori men about their women?

Kara Puketapu, secretary of the Maori Affairs Department, had this to say at a Tu Tangata Wananga in Auckland in May 1979:

My real vision is of women who are cultivated in the intellectual sense, and allowed the power to think. We have to stop this continual addressing by males of women, telling them what they should be doing. It is difficult

to break old habits, but these things that were drummed into us since childhood, may not be good enough today.

Presumably the word ‘us” is a reference to Maori males.

Apirana Mahuika confined his remarks to the role and status of Ngati-Porou women in general to quality living, or how status can be achieved through their own endeavours – by proving themselves good mothers, wives and house-keepers, and by their active roles in the community, and yet I have seen this happen time and again.

And what have the women of my generation to say about themselves?

Many Tu Tangata conferences for women were held in 1979. At all of these, each woman was there to examine her strengths, talents, and resources and then return with a message to other Maori and Pacific Island women in their home areas.

Mira Szazy, a guest speaker at an Auckland Tu Tangata Wananga in May 1979, said that it was her fervent hope that the conference would produce a copy of Maori and Pacific Island women willing to accept responsibility that had hitherto been borne by a few. Like other members present at that conference, she saw the need for women with vitality, idealism, and dedication to bring about community changes. She spoke of Polynesian children and their need for identity, of her concern for the children in the streets and hotel bars, and for those in gangs.

A younger woman, Harriet Hussey, a Grey Lynn (Auckland) community worker, talked of her dream:

I envisage a pre-school centre solely for Pacific Islanders and Maoris, where children are initially taught by their own race, in their own way, so that they can feel confident within and about themselves in a Pakeha society.

As a young Maori woman, I am frightened at the violence, the hostility. At what stage do we say, either as Maori or Pakeha adults, let’s stop and look at our young and discover what is causing it?

Why don’t we ask the young and see what they think is the trouble? I’m annoyed at the organisations that are set up without including children. Why not have young people on school boards?

Another speaker, Hilda Harawira, former foundation member of Nga Tama Toa reported that she and others had formed a group who are determined to improve the living conditions of Maori people within the Auckland area. They have launched a programme which comprises the following: the combating of alcoholism, the preparation of balanced diets, the improvement of childcare and play-centres through the employment of caring and understanding people.

Yet another mother, who lives in Ponsonby, Auckland, spoke about the need for more accommodation and caring for homeless youths. She has sixteen adopted children, many of whom are now married and hold steady jobs. She runs a hostel for thirty young people, many of whom are Black Power members. Once these people find steady jobs, they move into flats so that other homeless youths can take their places. For a while, because of her pre-occupation with distressed youth, her own family rejected her.

Yet another speaker, a widowed mother of twelve children, said after that conference, that she could not wait to get back to her community to guide young people and to teach them to use and not to abuse the best of both worlds.

And is there anything to be gained from looking at countries such as England or Switzerland or Singapore?

In looking at how the English cope with their immigrant “coloureds” in an urban situation, and how these immigrant “coloureds” themselves are coping, we could learn something about the functions of an extended family in an urban situation.

During my sojourn there in 1960 and against in 1971, it was evident that the Indians and Pakistanis survived upheaval into a different cultural situation because of the strong bonds of kinship and family loyalty. Both parents wielded great authority with the nuclear or the extended family to the extent of continuing the custom of arranged marriages. It was noticeable too, in a school situation, that the children were receptive to learning because they wished to achieve academic goals, which to them augured a secure future. In my opinion, receptiveness to learning is dependent not only on the child, but also on the kind of interest a parent takes in family life. A similar attitude prevailed among West Indian children. It seemed to me that they realised quite early that by fostering a close-knit family life, it was inevitable for this attitude to flow into school education – that secureness in the home meant confidence in a situation outside the home.

The nearest New Zealand equivalent to immigrant “coloureds” are the Pacific Islanders. Academically, they appear to be succeeding in greater numbers than the urban Maori. They have direction, leadership, and therefore specific goals.

I have heard Maori elders say that Pacific Islanders succeed because they are united as one people, although they come from different cultural groups. In the face of adversity, they seem to unite as a distinct Polynesian group. One Maori elder looked with envy at the recent achievement of these people – the completion of a million dollar Church complex in the heart of Auckland. The reason for this was their concentration on keeping alive kinship obligations and loyalties to a group.

If we look at Singapore, we see a multi-cultural society functioning as a fact. This concept is propagated at government level, to the extent that the mass media are controlled by the government. News, entertainment, advertising, and cultural programmes are broadcast and telecast in four languages – English, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil and Malay. For an island nation the size of Lake Taupo, with a population the same as that of New Zealand, and a country without natural resources except in terms of human endeavour, this is quite an achievement.

In accommodating those whose incomes are half those of old-age pensioners of New Zealand, Singapore has made some progress. Extended families are encouraged to live together. Parents, grand-parents and grand-children may share the same flat. These flats, in high rise buildings, now straddle Singapore.

Bilingualism is a reality in school education; trilingualism is quite common. With the encouragement of group living, the fostering of cultures as distinct entities, and therefore people as belonging to distinct ethnic groups, these Singaporeans must surely attain the goal of racial harmony as we hope to do in New Zealand.

From the Swiss we can learn about tolerance of different cultural groups also, and how different languages have the right to exist because they are used, even if by

a minority.

But legislation by government is but one avenue towards developing pride in a people and building their confidence. The other avenue is still the prerogative of each

ethnic group.

Here I return to the tangata whenua – the Maori. If we pass on to our children our heritage with some adaptations to cope with an ever-increasing urban situation, their future will not be bleak. If the women nurture their families into a bi-cultural life style, then the multi-cultural nation which some of us dream about will become an acceptable concept. To attain this concept, the lives of our people must be taken care of from the cradle, to the school, to adulthood and so into the community.

Wahine ta, ringa wera,

Whanau ora,

Wahine Moe, wahine kuware,

Whanau mate.

An industrious conscientious woman,

A living family,

A lazy ignorant woman,

A destitute one.

Glossary

Hapu – clan

Pakeha – person of European descent

Tangata Whenua – original people

Tu Tangata Wananga – conference of people with status

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Auckland Star, May 1979

BLANK, ARAPERA: “Where the Manuka Bends”, in Polynesian and Pakeha in New Zealand Education, vol. II, edited by Douglas Bray and Clement Hill, Auckland, 1979.

Patoa, Ian: “Maori Health”, in The Maori People in the Nineteen-Sixties, edited by Erik Schwimmer, Auckland, 1968.

MAHUIKA, APIRANA: “Leadership, Inherited and Achieved”, in ‘Te Ao Hurihuri’ The World Moves On, edited by Michael King, Wellington, 1977.

Arapera Kaa Blank: The role and status of Maori women

The role and status of Maori women

Jade Townsend: Whai Ora (In search of wellness)

Whenever I would write “reindigenising” on my phone or computer it would auto correct it to “merchandising”. Every time. Like a bad colonial joke. It always brought a smile, though, because I do love British humour and the algorithm was right. When I thought slowly about it, my historical patterns would favour the semantics of fashion and retail over cultural restoration because I still have so much work to do, to undo the misplaced priorities I was raised with.

When I work from home on new collages I’ll scrummage through an old Saint Laurent shoe box of teeny, tiny, shiny beads and sequins. I’ll carefully select some and deliberately sew them through found materials - to embellish an environment and explore unity. My toddler always makes a b-line for this treasure box. He wants to make some magic too, like when he invents light by building scaffolding from pukapuka to reach the switch or inventing a waterfall in the lounge with the garden hose. Recently he invented a disco volcano, a spectacle, an attitude that I’m sure Susan Sontag would describe as completely camp when he emptied the box of teeny, tiny, shiny beads and sequins on to the carpet of our rental unit. Before I became exasperated at the thought of cleaning them up, putting them back into their groups of colour and form, I liked what I saw, these superficial surfaces had grit against the backdrop of our real-life environment. And once the sparkling objects moved beyond the intentions of the toddler and his force - it was attraction and chemistry which determined how these entities might connect to the landscape.

Hayes-Anaru Ladley is 3 years old and already he is a decorator, merchandiser, stylist, activist – anti-assimilationist.

Every morning I wake with aching hands from clenching my fists in my sleep. Then I type, sew, and pick up thousands of tiny beads. There are a few beads which I leave because I don’t want to erase his performance entirely.

Speaking of which while I wrote this Hayes-Anaru turned on the toaster and drew on the cupboards with a silver cased biro a famous photographer gave me years ago. Everything is art to me. I left the drawing on cupboards rather than wipe it away a) because it was very good drawing and b) as a protest to my land-lords for not allowing me to paint their unloved rental. I asked to paint kowhaiwhai in Hayes-Anaru’s bedroom and my husband Adam said New Zealanders are funny about painting on walls – he was trying to soften the inevitable blow.

It made me despair that if we, generation debt, are destined to rent for ever as the doomed news tells us – when exactly can I restore the mauri of the walls I live within? When will I be able to display the motifs and symbols that are needed to imbue the spirit and hinengaro of my Māori baby boy?

On the same day the Puarangi plant in the garden that Harry and Emile gave me had three blooms. I took it as a sign of good luck. I felt rich, nurtured, and seen in the presence of these unfamiliar forms that had come from nature. The objects and forms we live amongst have a direct impact on our sense of self and when we encounter the gifts of people we know and love in public spaces it makes us

feel that our world somehow reflects

back at us.

By the evening I was reconsidering whether in fact I had been misusing ‘reindigenising’ and perhaps the algorithm knew my nature better than me – that sometimes merchandising can be the answer and that the two words, in a very specific context, are interchangeable.

What do you choose to display in places of prestige and power?

What do you promote?

What shine do you tidy away that should actually be enjoyed for longer, even celebrated?

What are you selling, exactly?

The concepts we display within our whare, our public spaces and influential platforms become our politics, beliefs and culture in life. It is in these “houses” where aspirational values are sold to our tamariki and to everyone.

While the messages within my art practice and parenting are positive, for though there is anger and frustration, the problems from colonisation fracture even the most reasonable requests, I promote that we must continue to ask questions. And whether one is a sceptic from a lifetime of being misunderstood by non-Māori or hopeful that there is an unexplored unity that will benefit us all in the future - the urgency is the same - we can not continue to put away the aspects of ourselves which shine. It is time to paint this town kowhaiwhai for those who can’t remember how to do it, those who can’t do it at home and for our babies that are leading us into the indigenous future.

Tūhoe Kaumātua Protests – Defending the Sacred

You know something is seriously wrong when Ngāi Tūhoe kaumātua organise to protest in public against their own Rūnanga. It’s unnatural even. Rangatahi can protest. Workers can protest. Activists from across the political, economic, cultural and social divides can protest…. but kaumātua?

The words ‘kaumātua’ and ‘protest’ just don’t go together. Something is out of balance, and those kaumātua can see it.

Today’s kaumātua remember when Iwi entities were small, non-descript Trust Boards. Māori engagement with government was usually done through the Department of Māori Affairs. The Department had large offices located throughout Aotearoa. Māori could receive financial, housing and welfare support and services.

My first job after leaving school in 1975 was working in the housing section of the Department of Māori Affairs in Rotorua.

The welfare support in particular was very effective. Community leaders of high standing were employed to work directly with whānau. These highly-respected welfare officers, together with a network of strong whānau leaders, worked ‘on-the-ground’, seeing and being seen, listening and being listened to.

Whānau, hapū and marae were their central focus. The values and ethics of te ao Māori were kept alive through their focus on building and maintaining relationships.

This all changed with the introduction of Rogernomics in the mid-1980s. The Ministry of Māori Affairs was devolved to make way for Treaty settlements and Rūnanga. Leaders who previously pursued personal careers in education, law or business outside of the iwi, saw the potential of this new development and returned. Iwi now have corporate headquarters, and the Executive Officers have become modern-day paramount chiefs.

This transition in Māori leadership has been taking place quietly, if not surreptitiously, across the country for thirty years. But what began as local ‘in-house’ concerns have now escalated to open confrontation in the Courts, and in the media.

An emphasis on autocratic leadership, economic investment and profit-generation by these Māori corporations, has resulted in the neglect, if not marginalisation, of any hapū who choose to challenge.

What the marginalised and disaffected see being created are feudal fiefdoms with political and economic power, and a willingness to utilise corporate media, influence educational discourse, and leverage political allies to support them in their quest to determine their future for others.

The neoliberalism that introduced Treaty Settlements is now approximating neo-colonialism. Hapū, the traditional social entities of iwi, are being colonised by the new tribal entities of Rūnanga.

Rūnanga are a creation of western imperialism. Their presence has nothing to do with apologising or compensating for colonial injustices and the ongoing dehumanisation of Māori, quaintly referred to as ‘breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi’.

They are the result of this country aligning with an economic fundamentalism that aims to remove all obstacles to global trade; an economic fundamentalism that at its most basic declared, ‘there is no alternative’. John Luxton (Minister of Māori Affairs 1993-1996) stated in a Business Roundtable Working Paper (No.4 Nov, 2008) on Te Puni Kōkiri, that changes to Māori development came about ‘largely because of the opening up of the New Zealand economy… rather than because of specific Māori policy decisions of governments’ (p.17, emphasis added).

Tangata whenua as potential obstacles to global trade soon became willing partners in this new economy, an economy that introduced Aotearoa to billionaires and homeless people.

The Tūhoe kaumātua protestors of course, know that there have always been alternatives. They know that money alone is not the answer. In the world these kaumātua know, there are no ‘either/or’ choices. It is all about balance; the material and the spiritual, the profane and the sacred, the mind and the soul.

‘Either/or’ choices are Pākehā inventions and mechanisms to control and dominate. These choices separate and divide – rich/poor, educated/not educated, Christian/not Christian, heterosexual/not heterosexual, Pākehā/Māori, male/female.

Aotearoa is controlled and dominated by rich, educated, Christian, heterosexual, Pākehā males, who keep telling Māori we are making the wrong choices.

It is not a good sign when corporate Māori begin to offer ‘either/or’ choices as well, and then exclude hapū for making the ‘wrong’ choice.

Balance in Te Ao Māori is not a choice; it is simply how the universe works. We know this from Ranginui and Papatūānuku. When the sky and earth are in balance, all is well. The earth and sky are not in balance; we have environmental crises. Māori corporations are involved in three of the greatest contributors to environmental degradation – fishing, forestry and farming.

We know balance from tapu and noa. When the sacred and profane are in balance, all is well. The sacred and profane are not in balance; we have human crises. Māori people are experiencing unprecedented crises in housing, drug abuse, mental health, incarceration and poverty.

We know balance from te reo me ona tikanga. When the rhetoric and the practice are in balance, all is well. The rhetoric and the practice are not in balance. Māori baby-boomers, who can no longer hide from their cultural obligations, are desperately trying to learn their denied language, but having to attend low-quality, part-time language programmes that cater mostly for those who treat the language as a hobby.

Now, hapū involvement and participation in iwi governance has become an ‘either/or’ choice, and some Tūhoe kaumātua have had enough.

Kaumātua are the cultural and spiritual leaders of hapū. Hapū are the kaitiaki of marae, urupā, wāhi tapu, mōteatea, whaikōrero, karanga, karakia tawhito, whakapapa, awa tipuna, maunga tipuna, and much more. Hapū are the conduits between the physical world and the spiritual world.

In these sacred places, spaces, ceremonies and rituals we see, listen and feel the wairua that replenishes our souls, bodies and minds. This is the wairua that touches our hearts, produces goosebumps on our skin, and causes tears to form that we sometimes try to hide. It is the feeling we all experience when we see our maunga, or awa, or tīpuna whare, after a long absence, or when we are called onto a marae. It is called belonging, and is a birth-right of all indigenous peoples.

This replenishment happens because of a special kind of relationship – one the welfare officers of the Department of Māori Affairs knew well – the power of intimate relationships.

Intimate relationships are more than an association between people, or with nature. Our lives are full of personal, professional and social relationships, but intimate cultural relationships are something else.

Intimate relationships are when two separate entities become one; when you AND me becomes you IN me. It’s when ‘I am the river, and the river is me’. It is when homeless people stop being face-less and become someone’s nephew, aunty, brother or koro. It is when disproportionate negative socio-economic statistics cease being a ‘Māori’ problem that nobody owns, and are seen as cultural genocide.

Whakapapa is the foundation for these kinds of intimate relationships. Whakapapa connects us with each other and with our land. The depth of these relationships mark the sacred. Tūhoe have a word for this – it is matemateaone.

Before Rogernomics, whānau and hapū leaders, supported by Māori welfare officers, were the ‘glue’ that kept our whānau and hapū together. Leaders operated on the basis of matemateaone – relationships were unconditional.

Post-Rogernomics, whānau and hapū leadership has been left unsupported, replaced by a Māori corporate leadership that operates on the basis of Pākehā law – our corridors of iwi power are filled with lawyers, accountants, ex-military and ex-bureaucrats - relationships are conditional on your loyalty to the corporation.

Māori corporations have neither the whakapapa nor the antiquity to replicate the intimacy of matemateaone within iwi. This sacred obligation and responsibility can only lie with hapū.

To colonise hapū by ignoring or not supporting the vital role of whānau leadership and kaumātua is to denigrate the sacred. It is to unbalance the natural energy and frequencies of the universe that manifest as mauri and wairua. Without the sacred there is nothing to restrain the profane.

In a post-neoliberal age of strongman politics, self-appointed ‘leaders-for-life’ are fashionable. Collective wellness defers to individual selfishness. Racism becomes ‘wrong choices’. Billionaires and the homeless cross the ethnic divide.

Tūhoe kaumātua know we are unbalanced; that money is upsetting mauri, and so they protest to defend the sacred.

Dare we follow the lead of the protesting Tūhoe kaumātua and stop for a minute, to think, to talk, to remember what was, and to consider what can still be? There are always alternatives.

Hemi Hireme (Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Raukawa) is a decolonial educator and researcher.

Hemi Hireme: Tūhoe kaumatua

Ki te kore koe e mau puu ana ki o tikanga me toou Mana Motuhake, Kua ngaro koe ki te poouri otira e whai kee ana koe i ngaa tikanga a tetahi noatu

When you fail to sustain your beliefs, sovereignty, freedom

You become lost to yourself as you are subsumed by those whose customs and practices you must now serve

In 1980 following the furore which was engendered by the publication of the Maori Sovereignty articles, Bruce Jesson commented:

“Essentially, Maori sovereignty is about the complete incompatibility of the Maori and Pakeha ways of life, and about how economic and political power has resolved this conflict in favour of the Pakeha.”[1]

At the time there was a strident group of Maori radicals who readily identified with the concept of Maori Sovereignty and with Maori resistance to Pakeha intrusion into

their territories, their values, their mindscapes and their landscapes.[2] The core was drawn from an urban underclass from the communities of South Auckland, Hastings and Wellington. Their message was simple: Pakeha have colonised our hearts and our minds and have substituted our traditional systems and institutions with ones that Awatere described as exploitative, oppressive, dehumanised and spiritually deficient.[3] It was time for the nation to turn the page on an era of greed, irresponsibility and injustice and an era of change was demanded.

The Maori World responded over the ensuing decades with a number of initiatives that were initially resisted by the Crown and, in general, by the Pakeha public. These initiatives included widespread development activity in the revitalisation of Te Reo Maori, autonomous Kura Kaupapa education initiatives, control over Maori health and social services delivery mechanisms, independent Maori media, and demands for redress within the Treaty Settlement arena.

The struggle transformed from one of simple confrontation with the state to one that sought the reclamation of Kaupapa Maori theory, practices and methodologies with the assistance of the State. Whether Labour or National, the apparatus of the state responded with a variety of quangos like the Maori Language Commission, the Maori Broadcasting Agency, the Ministry of Maori Development, the Maori Economic Task Force, the Crown Forest Rental Trust and the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission. The process of corporatisation had begun, with Maori radicals like me complicit in the transformation. Hone Harawira and I were appointed as founding members of Te Mangai Paho, the Maori Broadcasting Agency. I was also appointed as the Deputy Chairperson of Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd, a subsidiary company created by the Maori Fisheries Act 1989.

The same period saw the rise of a Maori elite within the process of litigating, negotiating and then implementing Treaty settlements, many of whom have become active sycophants of the broader neo liberal agenda which transfers a limited subset of publicly owned assets and resources into the private ownership of corporations to

settle the injustices that have been inflicted upon hapu and iwi Maori.

An aura has built up around these Iwi leaders who, in tandem with the Maori Party, are now treated as the authorised voices of all Maori. But I am actively involved in all these issues and even I don’t know who they are and where their mandate comes from on particular issues, let alone who they are accountable to and how.

In the process, the reality of our people has been lost sight of. As many well know, the economic miracle that has allegedly transformed Maori society and propelled this forum into what has been described as the most powerful lobby group in Aotearoa is a myth, a carefully constructed illusion. Maori land holdings, even after Treaty settlements are taken into account, are small, less than three hectares per person, and returns from Maori land are confined to a small section of the Maori population, about one third.[4] Similarly the asset base of some of these large corporations - Te Ohu Kaimoana, which is estimated at $590 million, only equates to approximately $1,000 per person (if we use 523,000 as indicative of the total Maori population).[5] The position is even worse for the most populous iwi like Ngapuhi, whose shareholding per person diminished to about $500 per person upon the terms of the actual allocation model.[6]

Statistics continue to reflect the poor socio-economic state of most Maori. The Maori unemployment rate is twice as high as non-Maori, and one out of four Maori receive a benefit compared to one out of ten non-Maori.[7] Maori are three times more likely to live in an overcrowded household compared to non-Maori.[8] Only two out of five Maori are completing secondary education with a Level Two Certificate, compared to two out of three non-Maori.[9] While Maori currently represent around 13% of the general New Zealand population, we make up 51% of the prison population. In 2006, Maori accounted for 43% of all police apprehensions.[10] Maori life expectancy is 10% lower than non-Maori, and Maori are twice as likely to be obese.[11] Our suicide rate

is 1.6 times higher than non-Maori, and our youth suicide rate is twice that of non-Maori. In 2006 the Maori youth suicide rate was 31.8 per 100,000, compared with the non-Maori rate of 16.8 per 100,000.[12] Almost half of all Maori women smoke cigarettes, which is twice as high as non-Maori women,[13] and we are significantly more likely to have a potentially hazardous drinking pattern.[14]

The process I am describing is not new. Sadly, it mirrors the all-too-familiar colonial pattern where governments have aimed to maintain control of indigenous populations through indirect means; that is, in lieu of direct military-political control, neo-colonialist powers co-opt indigenous elites through privileged relationships with their government and opportunities to profit from their economic, financial and trade policies, at the expense of their people. “Rangatiratanga”, as Moana Jackson reminds, “has in effect been redefined yet again as a neo-liberal right of self management bound by the good faith of the Crown and what the Court of Appeal called in the 1987 Case the ‘right to govern’. Moving on from the past and recognising the special place of tangata whenua has become a journey not of constitutional change but of devolution and the authority of the State to devolve or permit Iwi to manage certain resources and programmes subject to government funding and rules of contract”.

The National Iwi Chairs Forum, in particular the executive who is also in charge of the secretariat of this group, has set themselves up to be first in the queue to sit at the Masters table with the clear desire of exerting economic influence in corporate terms.[15]

It is these observations that have inspired my contribution this evening, coupled with the fact that as someone born and raised in the DPB capital of the world Kawerau, I have been personal witness to the impact of the economic reforms on heartland NewZealand. I have watched a thriving mill-town reduced to a community that is dependent on the generosity of the diminishing welfare state to ensure the well being of its families. Reading the insightful commentary on my hometown by Simon Collins in a series in the New Zealand Herald recently reminded me that the poor and dispossessed who are my family and my closest friends are not being treated with respect or as relevant to these processes and that Maori elites are complicit in

perpetuating this poverty without remorse. The articles raised a serious moment of introspection on my part.

I hope this contribution will enable the Maori who aspire to the ranks of the Iwi Leaders Forum to reflect on whether they are in fact leaders of our people or followers of a New Right process that is designed to disenfranchise tangata whenua and nullify the guarantee of independence of Aotearoa in Te Tiriti o Waitangi. By embracing a modern version of integration that has all the zest, scale, speed and power of the old industrial-era capitalist imperialism, they are ‘leading’ a systematic onslaught on the Maori way of life.

Hikina Te Arai

Lifting the Veil

Who is the Brown Table?

In a recent submission to the UN Special Rapporteur, James Anaya, the National Chairs Iwi Forum (NICF) claims that it represents more than 400,000 Maori, over two-thirds of the Maori population, and is portrayed as the new frontier of Iwi Maori, the global entrepreneurs.[16]

Both Mark Solomon and Tukuroirangi Morgan[17] have suggested that the National Iwi Chairs Forum actually numbers approximately 70 people who convene quarterly to discuss a broad agenda. It is not clear who these people are and upon what right of representation they claim to speak on issues.

Ironically, most of those Maori they represent have to go to the website to find out who their ‘leaders’ are! A search of the website suggests that the National Iwi Chairs Forum is a self-defined group of individuals who meet regularly, and who are chairs of their own iwi runanga, tribal trust boards or other tribal corporate entities, what is commonly referred to as Iwi Authorities.

Attendance at the NICF is ‘restricted’ to elected chairs of hapu/iwi entities of this

kind who are purportedly mandated to represent their constituents in the Forum. Their website names Mark Solomon (Chairperson of Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu), Tuku Morgan (Chairperson of TeArataura), Raniera (Sonny) Tau (Chairperson of Te Runanga o Ngapuhi), Professor Margaret Mutu (Chairperson of Te Runanga o Ngati Kahu), Toko Renata (Chairperson of Hauraki Maori Trust Board), Ngahiwi Tomoana (Chairperson of Ngati Kahungungu Iwi Incorporation) and Api Mahuika (Ngati Porou) as Iwi Chairs who make up the Forum. Apparently, the further 63 or so individuals have not notified the website manager of their details, which makes it difficult to ascertain the Forum’s actual membership. However, the two forums that I have attended certainly suggest a broader group attends these meetings, but that the business of the forum is led by the iwi Chairs profiled on their website.

The seven named individuals seem to perform an executive function for the broader NICF, supported by a secretariat. Various Iwi Leaders Working Groups (ILGs) are formed around specific issues, such as water, climate change, public private partnerships, foreshore and seabed, whanau ora and geothermal, where they ‘consult’ at the kind of invitation-only hui that I describe below. These groups operate in similar ways, in that the ILG on a particular issue engages directly with government, endeavours to hui with Iwi and hapū representatives at hui they organise across the country, and report back to each National Iwi Chairs Forum. What is interesting is that the ILGs seem to rely on mandates effected at the Forum’s own quarterly meetings to suggest that have been confirmed in a representative capacity for

iwi katoa.[18]

A closer examination of the genesis of the NICF shows that it mainly comprises men who are chairpersons or members of the 57 Mandated Iwi Organisations (MIO) that were established to satisfy the criteria to receive fisheries settlement assets following the Sealords Deal. In an interview with Koha reporter Tina Wickliffe, Tukuorangi Morgan noted that approximately 51 of the MIO are or have been represented at the Forum.[19] Most of these organisations have by no means secured mandates from the constituent members beyond the single issue of fisheries settlement management or

management of settlement funds. Debate between iwi on how to share that settlement took years, as did setting up the necessary iwi corporate structures to manage the proceeds.[20] The Maori Fisheries Act 2004 led to the first distribution to iwi of fish quota, cash, and shares in Aotearoa Fisheries Ltd in September 2005.

According to its website, in the five years since its inception the National Iwi Chairs Forum has operated in two main areas: hui convened of national Iwi Chairs to consider strategic issues; and working groups established at the behest of the NICF to prepare discussion papers around strategic matters. Tuku Morgan, Ngahiwi Tomoana, Mark Solomon, the late Sir Archie Taiaroa, Professor Margaret Mutu and Api Mahuika are all said to have been convenors at various times on various matters under consideration by the Forum. The NICF identifies issues of concern to all Maori - or a very broad range of whanau, hapu and iwi - and sets up working groups to address them. Each working group is convened by an Iwi Chair. These working groups may co-opt expertise from amongst their bodies. These are the bodies that have become known as “Iwi Leader Groups” because their membership aims to become that of leaders in the respective issues as identified.

In addition to its website, the NICF claim to have a communications network, largely through email, to exchange information with “iwi katoa”, and there are email streams that develop amongst iwi leadership groups on specific issues. However, when I asked who was part of the email stream, I was advised it is mainly the 50 or so representatives that had been invited to the Coronation meeting in 2007 that had formalised the group, but that it was a very fluid matter.[21] I am still waiting for a copy of the list of individuals who were purported to have mandated the creation of the forum, which Tukuroirangi Morgan promised would be made available to me following a meeting with the Iwi Leaders Working Group on Climate Change in Rotorua in November 2009.

One of the strident criticisms is that a self-selected group of iwi authority

chairpersons and their advisors have sidelined traditional communities and their tikanga Maori processes of engagement, such as regularly convened advertised hui that hapu and iwi leaders have maintained prior to fundamental decisions being made that impact on the lives of the community that they purport to represent. There is no vetting process on those attending this National Iwi Chairs Forum: the chairs who register as attending claim to do so under the mana of their electing body; but there is no clear indication whether in fact the electing bodies or those hapu and whanau they represent, have mandated the participation of these individuals on the broad range of issues under consideration. Their status as ‘leaders’ purports to eliminate, or at least relegate from relevance, other figures of authority that their people might look to for direction, even though there is the often-token attendance of some elders in these meetings.

A New Maori Hegemony

It is no coincidence that the National Iwi Chairs Forum, (NICF) where the Chairs and Convenors and Advisor of Iwi Leaders Groups conduct their consultation with each other and a small extended circle, emerged at a time when the first distribution of capital into Maori communities was anticipated following finalisation of the principles of allocation to be applied to the Sealords deal. Apart from Tainui and Ngai Tahu, and perhaps one or two other iwi groups, this was to be the first allocation of cash to Iwi corporates since the inception of the Treaty Settlement framework and it was eagerly awaited by the brown bureaucracy that had grown in anticipation of this.

This group of Iwi Authority representatives are joined in the NICF by chairpersons from other organisations, like Tribal Trust Boards, and Runanga. There is also emerging representation from the corporate arms of Post Settlement Governance Entities required to be established by the Office of Treaty Settlements to receive settlement assets, so that Tukuorangi Morgan, for example, claims to represent Te Arataua, rather than the Tainui Parliament, the Kauhanganui.

The culture that the new Maori elites have adopted increasingly demands that Maori entities be run on business lines, mirroring the model of the Treasury and the Business Roundtable.

Paepae rangatira are categorised as symbolic, lacking in the requisite expertise to risk allowing them to have even a minimal amount of control of economic concerns. The strident demands for a separation of governance from management have accompanied efforts to diminish the role of governance and inflate that of management in an effort to reverse their hierarchical status. In so doing they have actually advocated a disconnection of tangata from their whenua.

This empowerment of corporatised iwi structures has been driven by two discourses.[22] The first centred around the rationale that the commercial, social and regulatory functions of government departments should be separated, which had commenced during the Rogernomics era. The second was the State’s need for a mechanism to manage settlement of Maori interests that were guaranteed by Te Tiriti o Waitangi and which had threatened to act as a judder bar to the Crown agenda to privatise, and for certainty about who to deal with in the commercial environment. These discourses informed a market view of devolution through a decision-making model that only recognised the authority of those iwi groups who had been approved by the state. As Graham Smith observed: “Who names what constitutes leadership of iwi therefore is determinative of who the experts are”,[23] and therefore from whom one should seek Maori opinion.

The economic agenda of the NICF was legitimised by the outcomes of a Hui Taumata that was convened in Wellington from 1-3 March 2005, which brought together a wide range of perspectives to look at ways to accelerate Maori economic growth. It was the second hui of its kind, the first held in October 1984 before the onslaught of Rogernomics. The 2005 hui was borne from the recognition that Maori had been disproportionately affected by the radical economic reforms of the intervening period and the failed closing the gaps policy. A Maori Economic Taskforce was established following the Maori Economic Summit. Prominent amongst its membership was Rob McLeod of the Business Roundtable, Ngati Kahungungu Runanga Chairperson Ngahiwi Tomoana who was later to assume the Chairperson role of the Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission and Ngai Tahu leader Mark Solomon, who has been a

clear driver behind the National Iwi Chairs Forum and is a convenor of one of the Iwi

Leaders Groups (ILG) relating to Public/Private Partnerships.[24] The other members were Bentham Ohia, June McCabe, John Tamihere and Daphne Luke, as well as Leith Comer, Chief Executive of Te Puni Kokiri and Hon Georgina Te Heuheu, Associate Minister of Maori Affairs.[25]

The potential impacts of such separation seem all the more significant when we remember that the processes of individualisation allow lands and other taonga to be seen as tradeable commodities. These measures are said to be necessary to achieve the oft-quoted mantra of taking Iwi Maori from grievance to development mode. The fact that history shows the method to be dangerously flawed hardly seems to register. Instead, a new type of internecine conflict erupts,[26] as the appetite for power of those who would seek to control the asset base intensifies the covetous desire to obtain more. In the Treaty settlement litigation that has resulted from the process, a central concern has been the repeated bureaucratic inadequacies that resulted in a failure to protect the interests of individuals and groups not (or inadequately) represented at the negotiating table. When the courts have been faced with these challenges they have almost always opted for the view that these are political, as opposed to legal, matters and are therefore not justiciable and have been reluctant to intervene. The difficulty is that the iwi authority structures themselves are without the apparatus to ensure

proper democratic and accountability mechanisms by those who proclaim a mandate at this national level. The claims for Mana Motuhake and Political Independence by hapu are effectively surrendered to the Iwi Leaders quest for greater participation and influence in the New Zealand Economy.

The result is a new Maori hegemony that sits within a national one. This Maori hegemony emerges out of the new iwi leadership’s assumption of a high caste status, because members of the NICF or their delegations are increasingly the only individuals that the Crown sees as relevant on Maori issues. Yet the status of the NICF exists within a framework of authority that has been created or redefined within the settlement process to accommodate the requirements of the Office of Treaty Settlements as part of the Crown’s Settlement Policy. The process of Crown approval and recognition by the Office of Treaty Settlements, prior to the determination of what and how much the Crown will grant in settlement, reflects the old patterns of the Native Land Court and highlights the broader and more obvious subordination of traditional Maori processes of decision-making. The compliant acceptance of this state of affairs, by the few for the many,[27] illustrates the continuing subjugation of Maori to a neo liberal economic hegemony to protect the stability of the construct of Crown unitary sovereignty.

It is unsurprising that the coalescence of the Iwi Chairs leadership into a national body called the National Iwi Chairs Forum has brought with it a desire by the Crown to entertain national settlements on key resources like climate change, freshwater, geothermal, foreshore and seabed and public private partnerships. Rather than dealing with these issues in accordance with Te Tiriti o Waitangi guarantees, the Forum seems to be promoted and accepted as a Maori issue one- stop shop.

This upper layer of Maori society, created to engage with the Crown, provides a convenient interface that makes it unnecessary for the Crown or the anointed leaders to communicate directly with those intransigents who refuse to relinquish their identities. When it is seen in this context, the newly constructed layer of Maori leadership seems to be a quango which the Crown then resources as part of its specific consultation requirements in the expectation it will generate an acceptable Maori view.

Not only is this obstructive of the direct relationship foreshadowed and guaranteed by Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which is one between Nga Rangatira o Nga Hapu and the Crown; it is indicative of a more fundamental fact that the group’s accountability is not to our own kaupapa. It is not unreasonable to assert that the Crown is seeking to engineer a Treaty partner in its own image that is subordinate to it.

The Complicity of the Maori Party

These developments require consideration within the context of the Maori Party’s willingness to relinquish its responsibilities to an elite group of Iwi Chairs whose ‘Maori view’ enables its coalition partner to achieve what it needs, while claiming it has clean hands.

When the Maori Party stormed into Parliament on 15 September 2004, securing four seats and upsetting Labour’s safe and complacent hold on the Maori electorates, it set in train a rethink of the way Maori political participation with the mainstream parties would be managed. In the honeymoon period following the Maori Party’s entry into Parliament they were courted by a range of Maori interests, not the least of which were many who later became prime movers in the National Iwi Chairs Forum. Hui were called at venues like Pukawa, Waitangi and Ngaruawahia, the Kingitanga stronghold, with Tuku Morgan taking a prominent role that built on relationships with the Maori Party leadership he had nurtured during its years in opposition.

The relationship has been cemented over time with meetings being convened at these gatherings by Iwi leaders, ostensibly to brief the Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues about business that the National Iwi Chairs Forum has discussed, with Maori Party leaders Sharples and Turia invited to attend. According to Tuku Morgan, it was one such gathering, which happened to coincide with the coronation commemorations in 2007, at which the National Iwi Chairs Forum was formalised to

promote Maori-Crown relationships.[28] The relationship has no doubt assumed greater prominence in this latest Parliamentary term since the Maori Party cut a deal with National, who had already achieved a coalition agreement with ACT.

In a Parliamentary debate on the Foreshore and Seabed Hone Harawira put it

this way:

“Te Ururoa’s line was basically that the Maori Party is happy to allow this matter to be settled by the Iwi Leaders Forum as the best group to represent Maori in negotiations, given that every member is an elected member of their own iwi.

And there is undoubtedly considerable support for that point of view, but if I can be so bold, I suggest that that is not necessarily the view held by the tens of thousands of people who have voted for the Maori Party over the past 5 years.

In fact, going back to when the Maori Party was still just a twinkle in somebody’s eye, I bet that if I’d asked the 40,000 people who marched on parliament back in 2004 whether they thought the Foreshore and Seabed debate should be settled by the Iwi Leaders, I reckon 39,500 of them would have probably said no”.[29]

This summarises the difficulty which these undemocratic processes present and how the Maori Party has positioned itself in the process.

Lessons from History

To demonstrate the inappropriateness of such a remedy, let me juxtapose it against the practices of the colonial institution that is perhaps most consistently seen as one of the major causes of grievance, the Native Land Court. The Waitangi Tribunal has found that the Native Land Court was designed to ‘nail home’ British ascendency following conflict by picking apart the communities that Maori had historically looked to for protection. It was “designed openly to destroy tribal titles ... [and] flatten out the network of rights”.[30] In this way, the interests of hapu were transformed into an individualised form of private ownership to be held by a select group on behalf of the collective. The collective size of the asset conveniently masked

the miniscule and paltry fragments of individual interest, and “whether by reason of debt, greed, or unfamiliarity with the new system, ... [the select elite] started to act as individuals and not as kaitiaki on behalf of their people”.[31] As the people were cut out, so too was their ability to enforce the accountability of the leadership in accordance with tikanga.[32] It was within this imposed reality that a Maori vulnerability was created and exploited.

History is repeating itself. The process that is now being adopted to remedy prejudices that flow from injustices inflicted upon Maori is a process of transferring assets from collective Maori ownership to control by an elite - a process that has been repeatedly criticised for the intergenerational impoverishment that it imposed upon Maori in the past.

The destruction of Maori communities and the subordination of their interests to achieve economic imperatives appears to be so fundamentally ingrained into the political psyche that it is as much a part of New Zealand Culture as Buzzy Bees and Picture Tea Towels.

Riding the Tide of Discontent

To put these developments in a broader context, the Fisheries Act was passed when Don Brash and the National Party had whipped-up anti-Maori, anti-Treaty sentiment into a frenzy - the Iwi versus Kiwi dichotomy. One commentator suggests it was these events, coupled with the widespread protests by Maori following the Ngati Apa decision and the Labour Party’s entrenchment of the Foreshore and Seabed Act, that became a call to arms for Ngai Tahu Chief Executive Mark Solomon to organise corporate opposition.[33] It is claimed because of this he went to see the late Queen Dame Te Atairangi Kaahu to get the royal seal of approval for a pan-tribal coalition to drive Maori interests and concerns.

But there is a major element missing in this explanation of the genesis of the National Iwi Chairs Forum. What is clear to me was that like the protest movements of the 1980s, the Foreshore and Seabed debacle of 2004, which saw the creation of the Maori Party, had mobilised Maori back onto the streets in numbers that had not been

seen for a decade or more. It is estimated that over 60,000 Maori participated in the Hikoi that followed the clamour for direct action after the Labour Party’s leadership, the Prime Minister and Attorney-General, rejected the Ngati Apa decision.

In the thirteen day journey from the Far North to Wellington, Maori organised protests in Whangarei, Auckland, Hamilton, Rotorua, Taupo, Whanganui, Wairoa, Napier, Waipukurau, Palmerston North and New Plymouth in outrage at the largest confiscation of lands to have occurred since the early colonial period. Networks that had long lain dormant since the 1980s were reactivated. The initial call came from Ngati Kahungungu elders to Hikoi in the spirit of Mana Motuhake and Kotahitanga. Then the leadership and former organisers of WAC, (Waitangi Action Committee), Te Kawariki, Te Kotahitanga o Waiariki and the Peace Movement Aotearoa called for a national co-ordination of direct action.

Old heads were joined by a new vanguard of energetic young women leaders of the Tino Rangatiratanga Movement. Kura Kaupapa networks were tapped into and hapu and marae committees were approached in the style of the Great Land March to take responsibility for various legs of the journey to Parliament when it became clear that the Labour Party was to entrench the ownership of these remnants of the coastline which sit outside general title (some 30 per cent of the total land mass involved) into Crown hands. The huge inequity which still subsists in the recently introduced Mark II version of this law, is that Maori were to be conferred the opportunity to negotiate limited rights to these lands as proscribed by statute, while vast stretches of the coastline which are already in private ownership, remained untouched and outside the confiscation and regulatory regime.

The NICF have capitalised on that momentum for change. Surfing on the tide of discontent they have assumed the space that grass roots activists created and promoted neo liberal goals, such as the right to exploit the vast natural resources under the sea, that are more in keeping with capitalism than with the tino rangatiratanga that was being called for. Significantly, they have moved also to assume the role that had previously been occupied by the earlier Crown construct, the New Zealand Maori Council, in this regard.

Te raukawa a Rerenoa

Piri ki te Punui

He kaioraora

Like the parasite of Rerenoa

That clings to the Punui

Devouring its essence alive

Separating Tangata from Whenua

Ironically, many groups who had argued that it is for iwi to determine what constitutes an iwi and who also represents iwi, became legally incorporated to take advantage of the opportunity offered by Labour’s Iwi Runanga Act. It is apposite to remind ourselves that this Iwi Runanga legislation did not survive because the proposal was considered to be a “monoculutral document which undermined the tribal base of Te Ao Maori, misinterpreted cultural values, cultures and beliefs of the Iwi and sought to regulate tribal affairs in a manner that was inconsistent with customary beliefs”. [34]

One cannot under-estimate the influence of the Fisheries Commission ideologues, Shane Jones and Whaimutu Dewes, in this reorganisation of Maori communities into iwi corporates either. [35] Both had been prominent advocates in the Iwi Corporatism debates generated by the Iwi Runanga Bill, with Shane Jones being part of a later attempt in the 1990s to develop what he termed an elite paepae, a taumata to be created as the authoritative voice comprised of representatives of four organisations - the Maori Women’s Welfare League, Maori Congress, the Maori Council and the Federation of Maori Authorities. But this idea foundered, as has the visibility of many of these organisations, with only FoMA maintaining any prominence in the national Maori political scene today and the New Zealand Maori Council under review.

Given this history, it is not surprising that one of the strongest criticisms of the National Iwi Chairs Forum is that it is not democratic and is made up of a very small sector of the Maori community who has little, if any, direct accountability to the whanau and hapu it serves.

The people at the grass roots, and until recently Maori women, were practically invisible in the delegations that have met with various government Ministers of the Crown on the issues of the Foreshore and Seabed replacement legislation, Emissions

Trading Scheme and Public Private Partnerships. More disconcerting is that those most directly affected by these policies, Maori communities themselves, seem to be irrelevant in the whole process of reporting and accountability and are forced to rely on media releases and the nightly state-funded television programmes Te Kaea and Te Karere for information on what the ILGs or the NCIF is up to. It has not gone uncommented either that during the Waitangi commemorations the Iwi Chairs Forum prefers to meet in hotel venues at Haruru Falls and the Waitangi Copthorne, away from where the public debates are occurring around Te Tiriti at Te Tii Marae, again denying hapu and iwi the right to have an understanding and input into the matters under consideration. Their style of operation is quite distinct from that which operated during the era of the National Maori Congress, which actively encouraged representation of up to 5 delegates from each of the iwi participants with specific representation for Rangatahi Maori, Women and other sectors of the community.

What is also clear is that over a relatively short period the NCIF Executive has emerged as the key stakeholder group which appears to determine the Maori Party’s position on fundamental issues, and the Maori Party has acted as a doorman to allow them access to the key cabinet strategy committee on Treaty Issues comprising National Party Members of Parliament Bill English, Gerry Brownlee, Chris Finlayson, the Prime Minister, John Key and Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples. I use this metaphor deliberately, because in the words of Tuku Morgan in an interview conducted in Te Reo Maori with Waihoroi Shortland on the Maori Television commissioned programme Te Tepu:[36]

Ko te tokoono nei - ka hoki mai au ki te tokoono nei, a, kia ahua nei, he torutoru ana, he, nga mea o te Ao Maori ka taea te totoro atu te patoto i runga i te kuaha o te Pirimea, ka tuwhera mai, ahakoa he aha te kaupapa.

This six, back to the six. I think there are very few Maori who can knock at the PM’s door and it will open, whatever the issue.

He torutoru ana i nga mea pera ana.

Very few people can do that.

Ka mutu, ahakoa ka whakaturia ko tena ko tena ko te mahi uaua rawa atu ko te patoto i runga i nga kuaha o nga Minita nei, ka tuwhera mai, ka tomo atu tatou ki roto ki te atawherawhera i o tatou kaupapa.

Whilst different people are chosen, what’s really difficult is knocking at these Ministers’ doors, to open up, to let us in, to discuss our issues adroitly.

Na, koira te mahi nui ki ahua nei.

I think that’s the main task.

Na reira, he mama ake, kia tuku ma te tokoono nei, nga kuaha nei e pa -

e patuki atu, e patoto atu, kia tere te puta atu to matou ki roto, ki te ata hamahama i te tepu ki mua i te aroaro o te kawanatanga, ki te mea atu, e, anei e te whakaaro o te iwi Maori puta noa i te motu nei.

You see, its easier, to let this six beat against these doors, knock on these doors, to enter quickly to hammer the table in front of Governmentt to say, hey, here is what Maori around the country think.

As even prominent right wing commentator Matthew Hooten has observed: “The Groups inter relationships with iwi, the Maori Party and the Government are murky. The Group does not claim to speak for all Maori, but behaves as if it does.”[37] I will use the case studies of the ETS, Tree Lords and Whanau Ora to illustrate the point.

The Hijack of the Maori Development Agenda by ILG

The Emissions Trading Scheme

In 2002 the Labour-led government passed the Climate Change Response Act to enable New Zealand to meet its obligations under the Kyoto Protocol. Just prior to Xmas 2006 on 18 December, the Government released further information on NewZealand’s options in responding to the issue of climate change. The Ministry of Environment planned 11 regional consultation hui with Maori to occur between 12 February 2007 and 14 March 2007, with final submissions due on 30March. The process of consultation was prescriptive. At each hui, attendees were required to

discuss the information and to select a single representative to a Climate Change Maori Reference Group[38] for a twelfth consultative hui on 29 March 2007, which had been added as an afterthought. Final submissions on ETS were due the next day, on 30 March 2007.[39]

At all of the 12 consultation hui, the principal concerns of the participants fell into four broad categories: the focus of the emissions trading scheme was too strongly on economics at the expense of the environment (with environmental benefits unclear); the need to ensure the obligations of Te Tiriti were provided for; the need to give paramouncy to a Maori world view and a broad Tikanga Maori approach; and that there appeared no obvious way for Maori to have meaningful and ongoing input in the scheme. Moreover, the largest and richest industries were being protected from the cost of their polluting with the burden being shared across all other sectors. Major criticisms of the consultation process included the lack of any analysis of the effects on Maori.

On 24 July 2007, the Maori Reference Group (MRG) had met with Ministers of the Crown David Parker, Michael Cullen and Parekura Horomia to hear the Government response to their submission.[40] What is clear is that right up to this point the Crown representatives had also maintained strategic relationships with the Federation of Maori Authorities (FoMA), who claimed to be acting in a representative capacity not only for their members but also for and on behalf of all Maori who own land or were Crown Forest License (CFL) claimants to pre-1990 forest lands and substantial post-1989 forests. [41] There was no sign of formal recognition of the NewZealand Maori Council in this process of engagement, which is highly unusual given their joint role in cementing obligations via the courts with respect to the proposed sell down of the New Zealand State Forests and the consequent passing of the Crown Forest Assets Act some 20 years earlier and the statutory function that is the preserve of the New Zealand Maori Council to act in a representative capacity for all Maori.[42]

The very next day, Ministers Cullen, Horomia and Jim Anderton met with “a collective of iwi leaders”[43] to outline the Government’s preferred response to the question of climate change. From this collective, an Iwi leadership group was then established, which included Apirana Mahuika, Timi Te Heuheu and Mark Solomon for the ILG and Paul Morgan for FOMA. Interestingly the NCIF background paper

confirms that the ILG working party was established in October 2007 but does not note at which meeting of the NCIF that this was confirmed. None of these individuals had been selected from the 12 regional hui to represent the Maori opinion on ETS. Their leadership of the process was assumed following the meeting with the Crown Ministers. They were initially called the Climate Change Maori Leadership Group, but has since been changed to the Climate Change Iwi Leadership Group, and is usually now referred to as simply the Iwi Leadership Group (ILG) speaking on issues less directly related to climate change.

In October 2007, the government conducted a further 12 consultation hui specifically on the ETS and engaged new technocrats, the Maori Reference Group Executive (MRGE) of Roger Pikia, Jamie Tuuta and Lisa Kanawa to facilitate a process of engagement with Maori assisted by consultancy group Iwi Corporate Solutions l

ead by Willie Te Aho.[44] In addition, a report was commissioned on the Maori

impacts from the ETS – Interim High Level Findings by Chris Karamea Insley

and Richard Meade.[45]

The Maori Reference Group organised a National Maori Climate Change Hui in Rotorua in October 2007, with three subsequent hui in November, December and February 2008 held in Hamilton and Wellington. A statement in a letter dated 13 December 2007 from the Iwi Leadership Group to Ministers Cullen, Anderton, Horomia, Nanaia Mahuta, Trevor Mallard and Parker in response to an Officials’ Report is telling: “... we have advocated on two platforms. The first platform is the Treaty of Waitangi and the second is the Maori Economy. Due to the tight timeframes

and the economic nature of the ETS, we have focused on the economic impacts.”[46]

The Iwi Leadership Group (ILG) and Maori Reference Group Executive (MRGE) gave a joint submission on the Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill to the Finance and Expenditure Committee on 29 February 2008 claiming that their position had been unanimously supported by Iwi leaders that met at Waitangi on 4February 2008 (and again on 20 February 2008 at Pukawa).[47]

Parallel to this process, the Maori Party had been developing its own policy approach to the question. The Maori Party Minority report on the Bill, which was eventually released early in 2009, very much reflected the matters that had been promoted by Maori during the consultation hui. The report stated that: “the nation needs to grapple with the notion of sustainability and the increasing challenge posed by a changing climate system and pending peak oil to think and live differently, to live sustainably”,[48] and opted to oppose the ETS in favour of the imposition of a carbon tax. The gravamen for this position was expressed this way: “an ETS allows sectors to pollute and trade up to the Kyoto target, but ... does not include incremental emissions reduction targets in its design. With the emphasis on trading - establishing and maintaining the conditions for it - the overarching problem of unsustainable economic growth remains unaddressed.”[49]

Labour’s law was passed. Prior to the finalisation of the scheme in late 2009 the Iwi Leaders Group (ILG) and Maori Reference Group (MRG) convened a further 6 hui over a period of 12 days called between 28 October 2009 and 10 November 2009.[50] Despite the short time period, the ILG claim over 170 attended the hui with

the highest turnout being 92 people at the National Hui in Rotorua and the smallest turnout 2 people at the Nelson hui. That is, 170 people out of the 500,000 estimated Maori population. The ILG claimed in their report of these meetings that the “caliber” of the attendees at each of the hui meant the group had a significant level of support from Maoridom for their proposal.

As one who attended the hui in Rotorua in this round of consultation on this matter, it needs to be emphasised that these meetings are by no means well advertised, open and transparent in their purpose and objectives. There is little material distributed prior to hui and the hui themselves are conducted not by the Iwi Leaders Group, (ILG), but by the technocrat advisers that are in their travelling road shows. In the instance of the ETS, the ILG secretariat comprised a group aptly named Iwi Corporate Solutions, Willie Te Aho, his wife, Linda Te Aho and employees Gina Rangi and Mahinarangi Maika with Mr Te Aho being the main interface between hui participants and the group.[51] Much of the advice that was proffered in support of the ILG’s position on the ETS was not available for distribution on the basis of the commercial sensitivity of the matters. Even more worrying was that the ILG’s position had by October 2009 departed from the Maori Party minority view that had opposed the government’s scheme because of its relative ineffectiveness and inequalities, including the subsidisation of the nation’s largest polluters at the cost of households and small-medium businesses.[52]

Although the Maori Party were not willing to talk about its relationship with, or the effect of lobbying by, the Iwi Leadership Group or the wider NICF for that matter their positions on an emissions trading scheme by this time were closely aligned. Newspaper reports at the time suggested that individuals amongst the ranks of the Maori Party National Council tried a last ditch effort to seek commitment to the earlier minority report position on the basis of the burden the scheme would place on low income households.[53] The party’s co-vice president, Te Orohi Paul, issued a

statement to make it clear the party was not about to “welch” on the deal with the government, although this specific matter had not been part of the Maori Party-National Party relationship agreement.

Tree Lords

These developments cannot be understood in isolation from the commercial forestry interests in the Treelords settlement. On 25 September 2008 the largest ever Treaty of Waitangi deal, since the 1992 Sealords fisheries arrangement, passed into law. The Central North Island Forests Land Collective Settlement Act legislated the so-called Treelords deal which involved $195.7 million of Crown forest land covering 176,000 hectares, plus about $223 million in land rentals that had accumulated in the Crown Forest Rental Trust since 1989 and an annual income stream of $13 million. It was also a significant new step in that it was a treaty settlement across several tribes, rather than a pan-tribal or individual tribe-Crown disposition.

Crown Forestry Rental Trust (CFRT) annual reports show $57 million was paid out in costs to effect the deal since 1990, with $30 million of that allocation directly attributed to the five year period in which the Treelords Agreement in Principle was negotiated and then signed. Almost $20 million went on expenses for iwi representatives to meet and negotiate among themselves regularly. Part of the $57 million was spent also on lawyers (in the processes of litigation and lobbying over the period), consultants and those paid to implement the deal. Significantly this expenditure did not include the further allocation from Treasury that was allocated as part of the expenses to conclude the deal in 2008. What is known is that individual iwi facilitators who were initially engaged to facilitate information flow between the Crown and those iwi engaged benefitted significantly from the arrangement. George Asher, was reported to have earned $88,000 during May and June 2008 from Crown Forestry Rental Trust alone. Two other iwi facilitators, Matt Te Pou and Graham Pryor, earned $67,500 each over the same period. The Treasury increased the spending on the deal’s iwi facilitators by $90,000, although it refused to confirm each person’s cut. Mr Asher confirmed in an interview with the New Zealand Herald that the negotiations component of the settlement cost about $5 million, including administrative support.[54]

Provided the Government was able to pass its emissions trading legislation, the Central North Island (CNI) collective of iwi covered by the settlement reportedly stood to gain it about $40 million in carbon credits as part of the Treelords deal. National opted to carry over these elements of Labour’s ETS scheme. It is not insignificant that the Climate Change Leadership Group relied heavily on the CNI Iwi Holdings Limited meeting of 5 November 2009, held at the Te Puni Kokiri Offices, Rotorua, to provide evidence of support for its position. The Maori Party

abandoned its earlier opposition to the scheme and supported the Bill. In response to a question about what it wanted in return, Turia replied: “in the end, it’s not so much particularly what the Maori Party want, it is what the Iwi Leadership want, and they are the ones who have been leading the dialogue, they have been asking us to definitely sign up for it.”[55]

What the ILG and the Maori Party did not point out was that the scheme would entitle Maori to less than half the compensation that is being paid to other classes of owners. Pre-1990 forestland owners will receive compensation of up to 60 emissions units per hectare, if the land was acquired before 31 October 2002. Owners of land sold after 31 October 2002 receive only 39 units per hectare. But successful claimants to CFL land transferred after 1 January 2008, most likely to be Maori beneficiaries of Treaty settlements, would receive only 18 units per hectare. In return, as highlighted in the Ngai Tahu and FOMA Submissions to the Select Committee examining the National government’s revised ETS scheme, the ETS would encumber property rights, and impose real and heavy costs on using and developing assets, with a particularly prejudicial effect on those transferred under Treaty settlements. At the end of November 2009, a deal was reached with ETS which provided an extra $24 million for the home insulation scheme, targeted specifically at low income homes, a specific requirement to consult on fisheries, forestry and agricultural allocations; on future targets and on any complementary measures. A side deal with Ngai Tahu and four other iwi in which they get a 70-year lease on 35,000 hectares of DoC lands and 100 per cent of any carbon credits earned for the period of the lease and an all expenses paid junket to Copenhagen for two members of the Iwi Leadership group, Roger Pikia of CNI Holdings Ltd and Chris Insley of Ngati Porou Forests Ltd.

The New Restructuring

This process has not been an isolated one. Parallel to this process of policy development, regional consultation and then intervention by an elite group of men in the name of the Iwi Leaders Group has occurred on a number of key issues since the Maori Party/National Party cooperation agreement. Private Prisons, Public Private Partnerships and most recently the Water Forum have followed the same process of engagement almost exactly. Perhaps most disconcerting is that the Whanau Ora policy initiative has now been hi-jacked by the same interventionist approach, so that the Iwi Chairs are active voices in the privatisation of social services and demanding the right of veto over providers who have expressed interest in delivering whanau ora programmes.

Whanau Ora

A report was prepared by the Taskforce on Whanau-Centred Initiatives for Tariana Turia, Minister for the Community and Voluntary Sector. Bill English joined Maori Party co-leader and proposed Whanau Ora minister Tariana Turia at Te Puni Kokiri for the public launch of the taskforce report in April 2010.

The Taskforce developed a framework based on a review of relevant literature, the experiences of health and social service agencies, an analysis of oral submissions received at 22 hui throughout the country during October and November 2009 where over 600 people attended, and over 100 written submissions from individuals and organisations. Common themes emerged, particularly the need for Whanau Ora to demonstrate a ‘Maori heart’, ensure local representation in decision-making, minimal bureaucracy, sustainability and adequate resourcing, a research and evaluation component and quality relationships between whanau, providers and iwi. Funds were to be diverted from existing state agencies into a new Whanau Ora Trust which would contract out work to service providers to deal with the problems on a whanau basis. In other words, where an individual family member had health, education or justice system problems, the individual would be viewed as part of their whanau and the whole whanau would be engaged in finding solutions. The Taskforce also promoted collaboration and shared infrastructure in the wake of the proliferation of semi-autonomous Maori provider organisations who had emerged within the framework of commercial contestability of Health PHOs and Education PTEs since the 1980s restructuring of delivery of these services.

An Iwi Leaders Working Group was confirmed at Waitangi during the Treaty commemorations in early 2010 to engage with the Crown on the policy. Its mandate was to achieve the following visions for the contributions of Iwi to realising Whanau Ora: a Joint Treaty partner approach to defining Whanau Ora outcomes and supporting the rollout of Whanau Ora; Iwi-led implementation of Whanau Ora in their respective tribal areas; and Whanau Ora pilots.[56]

By May 2010 the idea of the Trust to devolve the services had disappeared and the budget had been slashed to just 4% of the original proposal. As Nanaia Mahuta pointed out in a media release “Tariana Turia must have felt a little short changed after the government decided to allocate a mere $33.5 million dollars a year for 4 years to fund Whanau ora, $800 million dollars short of what she first expected. In the case of the Whanau Ora funding it looks as if Tariana is robbing Paula to pay Pita.”[57]

More significantly, Maori grass roots community workers were starting to describe Whanau Ora as the new restructuring and openly asking Maori Party Members of Parliament to explain why Whanau Ora, which was once a overarching programme designed to overhaul the delivery of social services to Maori with funding of $1 billion, had morphed into a small scale programme for all New Zealanders, being run out of Te Puni Kokiri on a budget less than that of John Key’s cycle way.[58] Questions were also posed around how to qualitatively assess the new project and how much of the allocated budget will be utilized by Te Puni Kokiri to just roll out the project.

In a familiar pattern, Ministers of the Crown (this time Paula Bennett) met with the Iwi leadership Group in August 2010 imploring them “ as respected leaders to go back to hapu, iwi and your whanau ... and say it’s time to face up to the systemic violence in their communities.”[59] Tariana Turia was defending the corporate leaders as those that would best provide the solutions in the industry of misery that Whanau

Ora is directed to alleviate, despite the obvious lack of expertise or even involvement by many of the more prominent members of the ILG in programmes

for the elimination of violence. She complained at the same meeting: “...We receive a daily diet of messages which express sincere concerns about the role of iwi. They use the term ‘corporate iwi’. I tell you what - when you are part of a Government there is nothing more disheartening than to hear such criticism from our own; of people who are trying to move us forward.”[60]

Reflections on where to from here?

In his reflections on Maori Sovereignty, Bruce Jesson reminded Pakeha that Te Tiriti o Waitangi foreshadowed a community that both Maori and Pakeha are part of.[61] He understood the Maori Sovereignty movement as a force of resistancetoacapitalisteconomythatcommodifiednatureandhumanity. Inthe debate on who we are as a nation, we need to re-examine our understanding of national identity and our heritage, and to confront the ongoing process of colonisation that dispossesses Maori of resources for the benefit of others, as if we have no prior right or relationship to this part of the planet. The challenge by its nature requires Pakeha to break apart from the hegemony of State practice to align with Maori, not just to confront injustice, but to also dispense with a constitutional framework from which injustice is a natural product.

To achieve this, Jesson reminded us that we must set serious goals for our nation and ourselves.[62] Facing this challenge will involve a reinterpretation of sustainability and economic development and, in light of the discussion this evening, what the Iwi Leaders would have us believe tino rangatiratanga, Maori Sovereignty to be. There is no magic bullet; yet the challenges that confront us are urgent and require immediate action. That means believing in and articulating the values of a pathway to real alternatives sourced in Kaupapa Maori.

While traditional approaches to development focus on achieving growth, believing that this would “trickle down” and benefit everyone, I believe that people must be

at the centre of the development process. I look to our own conceptual framework around the term tangata whenua to confirm this. Because the present economic growth model is premised on the commodification of taonga for profit and the separation of tangata from whenua to achieve this, it is problematic in a number of ways. Economic growth of this kind is not enough to achieve human development or to maintain the ethic of community well being which lays at the heart of constructs like whanau (family), hapu (community) and iwi (nation), which are the esteemed institutions of society expressly stipulated to be protected in Te Tiriti. As Jesson reminds us, a community depends on continuity. A nation and its institutions depend on continuity too. We as tangata whenua require our tangata to be connected to our homelands in more than a notional way.

In their haste to break away from tight control of the state and poor socio-economic status, the ILG have turned towards forces of globalisation for emancipation, either not recognising that they were being manipulated towards new forms of colonialism and domination or unable to identify any real alternative to achieve their goals. Their behaviour, in part, mirrors the inability of Aotearoa New Zealand as a nation to confront the problems of constructing alternatives when there has been such a systemic failure from our experiment with neo liberalism over the past 25 years.

Notwithstanding this, the Government process has been one of concerted co-option of Maori elites to maintain this particular agenda. Consultation has been organised by successive Governments on their terms. From the beginning, the Government has imposed unrealistic timeframes for Maori to understand all the issues and implications, to discuss widely and form opinions on this, and to communicate these to the Government. At each stage, groups have become smaller and less representative by requiring the consultation hui to elect only one representative each to form a group that was to represent all Maori (without the time to make this possible), or by reducing that group to an executive (presumably because of commitments and time constraints), or by the Iwi Leadership Group becoming the interface with the Crown.

Despite the feedback from the consultation hui that the focus was too economic, for whatever reason at each stage of the consultative input, the technocrats and advisers have focused more on the economics of ETS and devolution of contractual relationships and benefits to Iwi Corporates, and less on the other concerns, such as impacts on the environment and retention of a Maori worldview safeguarding Treaty relationships. This behaviour has culminated in the Maori Party completely changing or adapting its policy and objectives in line with the Iwi Leadership Group’s edicts. There is a huge sense of urgency, created in part by the media hype, to roll out initiatives with very little analysis or understanding of the philosophy of the policy or imperatives on their delivery.

In the current context, Maori are the losers as it is their assets and resources exclusively that are captured within a confiscatory regime. The ire of the general public is inflamed by mis-information campaigns which suggest that the slight possibility that Maori might achieve some small redress is a windfall that they are undeserving of. The Seabed and Foreshore is a classic example. Politicians and the media whipped up a furore about the right of Kiwi to suntan on the beach. Having nationalised these resources, and denied any traditional relationships to the Takutai and Papamoana that Maori may possess, the government is licensing transnational companies like Petrobras to mine the petroleum and other mineral deposits which subsist in the continental shelf.

This highlights the old Marxist notion of a false consciousness: Maori are defined in opposition to what is good for the nation and are told to forgive, forget and move on. We are told we must accept an identity that we are not. Unfortunately the denial of rights and confiscation continues and there is nowhere to move to, so they take to the road. Ostracizing the indigenous in their own lands when they succeed is not a new policy, at least not to this country, obvious examples being the imprisonment of Te Kooti at Wharekauri, Te Whiti and Tohu in Dunedin and Rua Kenana and Mokomoko in Mount Eden. More recent examples include the late Eva Rickard, the late Syd Jackson and the late Niko Tangaroa. It is important to note that none of these people were imprisoned for acts of violence, even though state-sponsored violence was inflicted on them.

The employment of policies of Realpolitik to ‘radicalise’ Maori views serves to legitimise the ongoing intentions of the state to proceed with its agenda and to deny Maori participation in the debate. Issues of justice and policy are reflected instead as issues of racial difference. Once Maori are separated in such a way, the task then turns to creating an elite class that will sycophantically agree to the agreed policy objectives on behalf of those who didn’t elect them to undertake such roles.

But Pakeha New Zealand are losers too. They have been victims of the same process of corporatism that distances decision-making and denies effective participatory democracy.

We need to halt this process. Achieving this requires a mass movement that is dedicated to a sustained struggle, including education, participation, engagement, debate, organisation, action and reflection. It needs to be all-pervasive, with tentacles reaching to the hearts and minds of all of the sectors of our communities and to the pulse of our nation. I have actively campaigned for a Planning Council, democratically elected by Maori responsible for the design of a process of decolonisation where the process of formulating the goals for Aotearoa New Zealand are as important as the goals themselves. Jesson himself saw this kind of strategy as an important step to restore democratic processes to Aotearoa New Zealand, citing the 1984 Economic Summit and Royal Commission on Social Policy as potentially hopeful precedents that have been suppressed and by-passed by the Cabal that imposed their agenda of neo liberalism.[63]

Challenging economic ‘reform’ and trade liberalisation also requires a critical perspective on development. There is almost no one today asking questions that used to be asked in the 1970’s — the decade of independence for some Pacific Island states — such as ‘Development for whom?’ and ‘Who decides?’ Despite the proliferation of Maori Doctoral theses in the last decade there are very few forums of the kind where I was nurtured in the 1980 Sovereignty movement, which looked for solutions from within our communities and consciously set about providing the tools of analysis to dismantle the barriers to debate between and amongst wahine and tane, Urban Maori and Traditional Communities, Maori and Pakeha.

The future Constitutional arrangements of this nation are the key to social, economic and ecological wellbeing of us all. Ironically, a single outstanding issue in the relationship agreement between the National Party and the Maori Party holds the opportunity to develop this kind of debate and for the Maori Party to redeem its claimed commitment to the kaupapa of Te Tiriti. At the Hirangi Hui, which was the last significant attempt by Maori as a nation to grapple with this issue, there was agreement that what matters now is not so much the details of a Treaty-based constitution or the flow-on constitutional arrangements, but a commitment to a constitutional review jointly undertaken by Maori and the Crown for the purpose

of developing a New Zealand constitution based on the Treaty of Waitangi and, among other things, fully recognising the position of Maori as Tangata Whenua. Hui participants discounted the possibility of durable Treaty settlements without fresh constitutional guarantees and a final break with colonial laws and processes.

Any such process must be seen as a truly independent discussion, distinct from and not accountable to Te Puni Kokiri or the Department of Justice or the new quango, the Iwi Leaders forum. It must be accountable to the communities from whom and for whom the programmes of change are being discussed and evolved, and must actively facilitate their participation. For this mechanism to be effective, the Iwi Leaders model must be rejected and an independently resourced secretariat established to convene a series of constitutional hui and forums to discuss the future of our nation that engages meaningfully with all Maori communities and report back to them. The mandate must be grounded in the ongoing entrenchment of the guarantees of the Declaration of Independence 1835 and Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and seek to identify a constitutional framework whose principles and processes can equip us to confront the ecological, social, economic and spiritual challenges of the 21st century, and the crises of food, climate, energy and finance that are the legacy of the failed global market model.

While I am not a Republican, this is another point where my thinking for change converges to a point shared by Jesson. In modern Aotearoa we must move to a model of government which is not focused on just settling the grievances of our colonial past, but on building one where there is trust and respect amongst the communities that co-exist. The Constitutional Taskforce I envisage therefore to assist this process must also include non Maori community leaders working with their communities distinct from state control as part of this process. I am sure just by posing this solution, a whole lot of other questions immediately are raised, like who are these people and how are they selected and to whom are they accountable? New Zealand as a small nation can easily answer this question for themselves. Nominations for community representatives are not unknown in the not for profit sector with processes of engagement and report back part of the range of accountabilities to any successful nominee.

We as a nation need to formally engage in this process of transformation, which must be designed, controlled and implemented with the equal participation of the tangata whenua and other citizens who have made Aotearoa New Zealand their homelands. This plea is not new. What is new is the growing groundswell of voices joining those of the late Bruce Jesson and myself for a process to commence to take on the entrenched power and influence of the finance elite and others who have hijacked our nation. We should not allow the momentum of those pleas to dissipate.

[1] 1 Jesson B, “Waitangi a Pakeha Issue too” p. 108 in Andrew Sharp (ed) To Build a Nation Collected Writings 1975–1999, Penguin, Auckland, 2005.

[2] It is interesting to note that the Oxford Dictionary characterises the term ‘radical’ as the “departure from tradition”. In these regards, the term ‘Maori Radical’ would seem to define people of the ilk of Don Brash, i.e. those who would seek to sever Maori from their traditions. Of course, in our domestic context, the term ‘Maori Radical’ relates to those who have struggled through the ‘Brash Attacks’ in their many guises to maintain Maori connections and their freedoms in this country. The proof of this statement is evidenced most starkly in the fact that the Brash’s have faded, yet the Harawira’s still remain.

[3] Jesson B, “Waitangi a Pakeha Issue too” p.108.

[4] Durie, Mason, Nga Kahui Pou: Launching Maori Futures, Huia Publishers, 2003, p.95.

[5] Ibid.

[6] It should be noted that the ten largest iwi in the 2006 Census are as follows: Nga Puhi 122,211; Ngati Porou 71,910; Ngati Kahungungu 59,946; Ngai Tahu/Kai Tahu 49.185; Te Arawa 42,159; Ngati Tuwharetoa 34,674; Ngati Maniapoto 33,627; Waikato 33,429; Tuhoe 32,670 and Ngati Awa 15,258.

[7] Socioeconomic Indicators at http://www.socialreport.msd.govt.nz/

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Dannette, Marie, “Maori and Criminal Offending: A Critical Appraisal”, 43(2) The Australian And New Zealand Journal Of Criminology, 2010, at p.284.

[11] The Social Report 2009 “Health” http://www.socialreport.msd.govt.nz/ at pp.21 and 29

[12] Ibid, p.25.

[13] Ibid, p.27.

[14] Ibid, p.31.

[15] Te Tepu, Series 6, Episode 15. Transcript from Interview with NICF leader Tukuroirangi Morgan by Waihoroi Shortland.

[16] Background Paper, Iwi Chairs Forum to United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freeds to Professor James Anaya located at http://www.iwichairs.maori.nz/Special-Rapporteur/Iwi-Chairs-Forum-Background-Paper.pdf p1

[17] Questions posed at the Hui – a – Motu Iwi Leaders Working Group on Climate Change 10 November 2009 Rydges Hotel Rotorua.

[18] See discussion for example of the establishment of the Iwi Leaders Working Group (ILG) on Foreshore and Seabed which was formed at the Hopuhopu Iwi Chairs Forum on 20 August 2009 in Background Paper, Iwi Chairs Forum to United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms to Professor James Anaya located at http://www.iwichairs.maori.nz/Special-Rapporteur/Iwi-Chairs-Forum-Background-Paper.pdf

p 9. This group by 26 August 2009 was seeking a number of commitments from the Government.

[19] Wickliffe,; T,; ‘Lifting the Veil of Secrecy’, Koha ,Issue 7, p.5, Published by FOMANA Capital Ltd September 2010.

[20] September 2010.

20 As Lord Goff noted Treaty Tribes Coalition v Urban Maori Authorities [1997] 1 NZLR 513, 517 (PC) Maori have found the task of dividing the fisheries resource to be “an extremely challenging process”; See also Te Runanga o Wharekauri Rekohu Inc v Attorney-General [1993] 2 NZLR 301; Waitangi Tribunal, The Fisheries Settlement Report Wai 307 (Department of Justice, Wellington, 1992).; Te Runanga o Muriwhenua v Te Runanganui o Te Upoko o Te Ika Association Inc [1996] 3 NZLR 10, 16; Te Waka Hi o Te Arawa and others v Treaty of Waitangi Fisheries Commission (4 August 1998) unreported, High Court, Auckland Registry, CP 395/93 (Wgtn) Anderson J.

[21] Hui-a-Motu 10 November 2009 at Rydges Hotel ILG (Iwi Leaders Working Group) on Climate Change

[22] In two consultation documents called “Te Tirohanga Rangapu” and “Te Urupare Rangapu” approved Iwi authorities were to be created to deliver certain programmes, usually in health or social welfare. Iwi were to be agents and service providers for the Crown operating with appropriately indigenized Pakeha structures.

[23] Smith G, “Kimihia te Maramatanga”, Doctoral Thesis, Chapter 5, p.103.

[24] The work in this area has been progressed under Minister Sharples‘ Taskforce on Māori Economic Development. The Taskforce has a number of portfolios spanning; the primary sector; access to capital, labour force development and training, small and medium enterprise development and support; Māori branding opportunities, infrastructure investment, kaupapa Māori models of commercialism and co-investment amongst Iwi and with the Crown. Mark Solomon is leading the work stream on co-investment amongst Iwi and with the Crown. See Background Paper, Iwi Chairs Forum to United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights and fundamental freeds to Professor James Anaya located at http://www.iwichairs.maori.nz/Special-Rapporteur/Iwi-Chairs-Forum-Background-Paper.pdf p 11

[25] Te Puni Kokiri; The Maori Economic Taskforce – Kokiri – Kokiri 15 2009.

[26] The Crown policy to negotiate the settlement of Treaty claims with large natural groupings with tribal interests at an Iwi level rather than at a hapu, whanau or claimant level has been the subject of much attention by the judiciary in a number of contexts from challenges to the robustness of mandates, concerns around the failure to address the needs of overlapping claims and allegations that customary relationships to land are being transformed contrary to Te Tiriti o Waitangi and settled principles of Maori Law as negotiated following the Lands case. See: The Ngati Awa Cross Claims Settlement report Wai 958 2002 The Te Arawa Mandate Report: Te Wahanga Tuarua;Wai 1150 2005; and the Tamaki Makaurau Settlement Process Report Wai 13622007; Hayes v Waitangi Tribunal HAC WN CP 111/01 10 May 2001; Waitaha Taiwhenua o Waitaki Trust v Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu HC WN CP 41/98 17 June 1998; Milroy v Attorney General [2005] NZAR 562 (CA) and New Zealand Maori Council v Attorney General [2008] 1 NZLR 318 (CA); Pouwhare v Kruger CIV-2009-485-976 High Court; Attorney General v Kenehi Mair & Ors [2009] NZCA 625; Haronga v Attorney General [2010] NZCA 201; For a full discussion of the genesis of the policy See also Annie Mikaere, “Settlement of Treaty Claims: Full and Final, or Fatally Flawed?”, (1997) 17 NZULR 425; Malcolm Birdling, “Healing the Past or Harming the Future? ‘Large Natural Groupings’ and the Treaty Settlement Process”, (LLB(Hons) Research Paper, Victoria University of Wellington, 2003),12.

[27] Many chairs of the National Iwi Chairs Forum (NICF) like the late Archie Taiaroa, who was also a former Chairperson of the now defunct National Maori Congress, have a long history of fighting for the rights of iwi and hapu to maintain their mana motuhake and political sovereignty. Sir Archie Taiaroa was the Co-Chairperson with the late Sir Hepi Te Heuheu at of the Hirangi Hui convened to consider a Pan-Maori response to the questions of the controversial Fiscal Envelope Policy. The difficulty in the present regime is that the models of settlement being agreed to by many of the Iwi Chairpersons and their constituents (like the statutory boards created over Waikato River and the Rotorua Lakes in the past) are still models of participation and management of policy within the Crown’s rubric of authority which denies the legitimacy of tino rangatiratanga in the modern context and highlights the fact that the Crown Treaty Policy Framework is still in the main unilaterally developed by the Crown. Furthermore the question must be posed do Iwi Chairs have the mandate to interface on these issues with the Crown by the peoples at the grass roots whom they purport to represent on matters when their organisations focus is quite often limited to particular land management or fisheries management issues.

[28]Wickliffe; T; Lifting the Veil of Secrecy Koha Issue 7 p.5 Published by FOMANA Capital Ltd September 2010;

[29] http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1002/S00209.htm

[30] Waitangi Tribunal, Turanga Tangata Turanga Whenua, WAI-814, 2004, p.436.

[31] Ibid, p.438

[32] Ibid.

[33] Wickliffe,; T,; ‘Lifting the Veil of Secrecy’, Koha, Issue 7, p.5, Published by FOMANA Capital Ltd September 2010.

[34] NZPD, 6 December 1989, 14429.

[35] In Crown Proposals for the Settlement of Treaty Claims the Crown also claims that it wishes to be sure that the assets and resources transferred to Maori were managed and administered within a proper legal structure.

[36] Te Tepu, Series 6, Episode 15. Transcript from Interview with NICF leader Tukuroirangi Morgan by Waihoroi Shortland.

[37] Hooton Matthew: Foreshore & Seabed Issue Risks Going off the Rails Exceltium Corporate & Public Affairs Quarterly; Summer Edition 2010; p.10.

[38] L Tukua, S Wilson, A Houkamau, J Ruru, T Paenga, M Black, S Clair, T Wilson, H Ruru and M Skerrett see Figure: Relationships with the Iwi Leadership Group Ministry of Environment.

[39] New Zealand Ministry for the Environment (2007), Consultation with Maori on Climate Change: Hui Report, Ministry for the Environment, Wellington.

[40] Submission on Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Iwi Leadership Group and Maori Reference Group Executive, 29 February 2008.

[41] Federation of Maori Authorities: Submission to the Emissions Trading Scheme Review

Committee.

[42] Maori Community Development Act 1962 ss 17 and 18.

[43] Submission on Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Iwi Leadership Group and Maori Reference Group Executive, 29 February 2008.

[44] The Ministry of the Environment also supported participation of Maori Reference Group members at each of the regional hui and supported additional hui for the Maori Reference Group on 25 September and 25 October 2007; a Maori leadership-lead National Maori Climate Change Hui on 3 September and 26 October 2007; a National Maori Forestry Hui on 8 November 2007; and weekly meetings of an executive of Maori Reference Group during October and November. Finally, government support was also provided for the transportation, accommodation and meals for members of the Climate Change Iwi Leadership Group, Maori Reference Group Executive and secretariat to meet with Ministers and attend all national hui including the most recent one held on 18 December 2007.

[45] Dated 23 October 2007.

[46] Mahuika, Apirana (for and on behalf of the Climate Change Iwi Leadership Group), Letter of 13 October 2007, Climate Change Iwi Leadership Group Response to Officials Report.

[47] Submission on Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Iwi Leadership Group and Maori Reference Group Executive, 29 February 2008.

[48] Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee: 114.

[49] Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee: 113. Specific reasons for opposing the ETS also included a) an ETS will not make a significant contribution to lowering our domestic emissions; b) the Maori Party was unconvinced that the market is the best mechanism to set prices on carbon; c) the current mode of living in developed countries is not sustainable into the future d) the urgency of the climate-change crisis demands the development and implementation of an effective scheme that is not reliant on whether or when the price of carbon increases to a sufficient level to incentivise change; e) intensity based allocations and subsidies distort the market model by allowing businesses to increase their emissions without penalty and be rewarded for it.

[50] Climate Change Leadership Group Position Paper, 13 November 2009 prepared for the Maori Party located at http://cst.org.nz/groups/job_vacancies/files/f/909433-2009-12- 14T165354Z/13%20Nov%20ILG%20position%20paper%20for%20Maori%20Party.pdf

[51] Climate Change Leadership Group Position Paper, 13 November 2009 prepared for the Maori Party located at http://cst.org.nz/groups/job_vacancies/files/f/909433-2009-12- 14T165354Z/13%20Nov%20ILG%20position%20paper%20for%20Maori%20Party.pdf

[52] Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee, see also Sustainability Council of New Zealand Media Release 12 November 2009. Households would bear half the total costs resulting from the proposed changes to the ETS during its first five years (52%), while accounting for just a fifth of all emissions (19%). Pastoral farmers would gain a $1.1 billion subsidy and pay the equivalent of 2% of their fair share of the Kyoto Bill during the first five years of the scheme, while large industrial producers would gain a $488 million subsidy.

[53] http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3095679/Maori-Party-revolt-threatens-Emissions- Trading-Scheme

[54] Tahana Y, New Zealand Herald, 4 July 2009 http://www.nzherald.co.nz/forestry/news/article.cfm?c_id=47&objectid=10582485

[55] Turia T;18 October 2009 in Transcript of interview with Guyon Espiner on ‘Q&A’ Sunday October 18 2009 p 5

[56] http://www.iwichairs.maori.nz/Special-Rapporteur/Iwi-Chairs-Forum-Background-Paper.pdf p 11

[57] Mahuta Nanaia, Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party, 6 May 2010 http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1005/S00089.htm

[58] Maori Legal Forum, July 2010, Question by Tipene Marr of Ngati Rangitihi and Dr Marilyn Brewin, Director of Research, Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga to Member of Parliament for Tai Tonga Rahui Katene.

[59] Bennett Paula, Press Release, 23 August 2010

http://www.national.org.nz/Article.aspx?ArticleID=33728

[60] Turia Tariana, Address to Iwi Leaders Forum 19 August 2010

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1008/S00477/address-to-iwi-leaders-forum.htm

[61] Jesson, Bruce, Waitangi A Pakeha Issue Too, first published in Auckland Metro, 1983, p.109, and subsequently in Andrew Sharp (ed) To Build a Nation Collected Writings 1975–1999 , Penguin, Auckland, 2005.

[62] Jesson, Bruce, There have always been Alternatives: Only their Purpose is Mad, Dunmore Press Ltd, 1999, p.216.

[63] Jesson Bruce, There have always been Alternatives: Only their Purpose is Mad, Dunmore Press Ltd, 1999, p.221.

Annette Sykes: The Politics of the Brown Table

Hana Pera Aoake (Ngaati Hinerangi me Ngaati Raukawa, Ngaati Mahuta, Tainui/Waikato, Ngaati Waewae, Kaati Mamoe, Waitaha) is an artist and writer based in Te wai pounamu. Hana published their first book, A bathful of kawakawa and hot water in 2020 with Compound Press. Hana holds an MFA in Fine art from Massey University (2018) and was a participant in the ISP programme at Maumaus des escola artes (2020). Hana has published writing widely including in Granta, Ockham lectures pocket series, Artnow, Running Dog and many more. Hana is a current participant in Regional assembly, an artist-led online studio programme connecting cultural practitioners working in regional and remote geographies across the Asia-pacific.

Arapera Hineira Kaa Blank was a Māori poet and teacher. Born and raised in Rangitukia in the northeast of New Zealand’s North Island, she was one of a small group of Māori writers writing in English during the 1950s. In 1959 she was awarded a special Katherine Mansfield Memorial award for her essay Ko taku kumara hei wai-u mo taku whanau. She was married to Swiss-born Pius Blank for 44 years and had two children, Marino and Anton. For the last ten years of her working life Arapera taught te reo at Auckland Girls’ Grammar School where the girls knew her as Ma Blank.

Morgan Godfery (Te Pahipoto, Ngaati Manaipoto, Ngaai Tuhhoe, Ngaati Tuuwharetoa, Lalomanu (Samoa)) is a writer and trade unionist. He is the editor of The Interregnum, published by Bridget Williams Books in 2016, and has columns with Metro and The Guardian. Morgan also regularly appears on radio and television as a political commentator, has authored numerous academic chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles, and works in Research and Enterprise at the University of Otago and is an associate at The Workshop, a public policy thinktank. Morgan is also

a former staffer for the late Parekura Horomia, the Minister of Māori Affairs in the 5th Labour government.

Hemi Hireme (Ngāti Awa, Ngāi Tūhoe, Ngāti Raukawa) is a decolonial educator and researcher.

Priscilla Rose Howe (Pakeha) is an Artist and graphic designer currently based in Ōtautahi. Her art practise is inspired by supernatural worlds and theatrics to explore her queer experience using predominantly pencil. She recently exhibited a solo presentation at The Auckland Art Fair with Wet Green and a solo exhibition at Sanc Gallery. As a designer she was a finalist for The Best Design Awards Graphic Selection (2017) and holds a Bachelor of Visual Communication Design(1st class hons) from Massey University (2016)

Aroha Novak (Ngai Te Rangi, Ngati Kahungunu) studied Sculpture and Installation at Dunedin School of Art, completing her undergraduate degree (2007). She was awarded the David Con Hutton scholarship towards postgraduate study and completed her Master of Fine Arts (2013), also at Dunedin School of Art. Her work has focussed on escapism, utopias and idealism within a capitalist, postcolonial and institutionalised society, frequently working outside of traditional gallery spaces and collaborating with other artists. Her work is often research and project based, drawing out indigeneous and local histories that have been forgotten or suppressed. Novak is a multidisciplinary artist, letting the concept dictate the materials used by employing a new approach to each project. Her practise encompasses sculpture, installation, painting, design, photography, sound and video

Jessica Palalagi was born in Aotearoa/New Zealand and traces her ancestry to Niue/Nukututaha in Te Moananui a Kiwa and Aberdeen, Scotland. She has an MA in Art History from Auckland University and has most recently been involved in sustainability within the retail sector in the UK. She is a founding member of In*ter*is*land Collective; a misfit collection of queer, moana artists and activists based around the world. Her artistic focus is born out of the duality of existing in the interstice, the vā, the space between and she constantly seeks meaningful reciprocity in all forms of expression. She is made of the saltiness of all moanas spanning hemispheres, the journeys that her ancestors navigated, the movements of dark to light made by the mahina, the languages that have been lost, the strength of the matriarchs before her and the music of Barry White.

Anna Rankin is a writer, journalist, and filmmaker who lives between Aotearoa and the United States; Alaa’ Breighith is an architect, the daughter of the great Palestine from the town of Beit Amr, the immortal emblem “exist is to resist”.

Daniel John Corbett Sanders (b.1994) is a Jewish Pākeha artist and curator from Ngāmotu, New Plymouth. His work and research investigates the dreams and catastrophes of urban history viewed through queer narratives of inner-city life, and engages with queer investments in questions of sovereignty, biopower & necropolitics, especially as played out in local and global histories and events. In 2020 Sanders founded Parasite, an artist-run gallery prioritising the exhibition of LGBTQ+ artists.

Annette Sykes is a human rights lawyer specialising in the rights of indigenous peoples to promote their own systems of law and has a strong focus in her career on all aspects of law as they affect Māori especially constitutional change. Annette is renowned for her activism and protest against the New Zealand government on issues affecting Māori and this has been an active part of her career and community activities. Annette has been practicing law since 1984 and currently has her own law practice in Rotorua, Annette Sykes & Co Ltd where she is from, Ngāti Pikiao and Ngāti Makino of Te Arawa waka with strong whakapapa connections also to Ngāti Awa and Tūhoe.

Jade Townsend (Ngāti Kahungungu, Te Ātihaunui-a-Pāpārangi) is a visual artist and storyteller working at the intersection of her Māori and British heritage. Townsend has curated Whānau Mārama an exhibition programme including over 16 Māori artists at Commercial Bay for Matariki in Auckland where she is concurrently exhibiting her first major sculptural commission – the nine whetū of Matariki. Townsend was recently awarded artist-in-residence at Artspace Aotearoa and has completed other residency programmes at Objectspace, Slade School of Art in London and Red Gate gallery in Beijing.

Te Whanganui-a-Tara based interdisciplinary artist, Tessa Williams, explores the relationships Māori have with each other and their natural environment. Tessa considers current issues as well as the way that she makes impacts on herself, her community and her environment. Producing a mixture of ephemeral, painted, photographic, video and sculptural works, Tessa allows her audience to engage on different levels with the kaupapa , united into a single statement of intent, but created through the lens of one Māori māmā.

Bios

Acknowledgements

We would like to mihi to the mana whenua at Ootakou and Puketeraki marae, the Puaka Matariki Festival, Priscilla Rose Howe, Laurel Doody Library supply, the authors (& their whaanau for letting us republish their work), the filmmakers, our whaanau and friends.