Friends

My grandmother lives with Uncle Ben o her own land in her own little house with all her friends.

 

The sitting room is warm and cosy.  It has a sleepiness feeling about it.  Whenever I enter this room, time seem to stand still.  I felt relaxed and tired and a kind of peace filled up inside me.  That was the place for me to relax by the fire in the big chair.

 

On the walls are hundreds of photos of all the relatives.  Some of these were long gone, but somehow she could communicate with them.  Somehow. 

 

I used to watch her at night when the tv had just ended.  She'd fall asleep and her lips would move.  I could almost lip read what she was saying in Maori.  But as usual she would go too fast for me.  Sometimes, she would catch me trying to read her lips.  She would only smile at me.  Each time she smiled at me, I would go all warm and fall asleep.  If you looked closer into her eyes you could see her culture all stored away there inside.

 

I said she lived in her own house with all her friends.  To my grandmother her friends were all the photos hanging on the walls.  She knew them all.  To me, all the people there seemed to live on through her, because her face told the story of many tangi gone by.

 

Nanny, as she was known to all her mokopuna, is very understanding.  I hated travelling when I was small and Nanny lived twenty miles away.  She'd say to me, "You don't have to come if you don't want to because I have lots of friends." 

 

She would point to all the photos and smile.  That made me feel really good.  And now that I am older, I don't see her often.  But, I know that she has a lot of friends she could talk to about old times.  Photos of people is a way of keeping in touch with them.  Nanny and I seem to understand that relatives and the smiles are all joined together in a word called, "Friends."

SAVE THE SOUL OF IHUMATAO

I sat with Mavis Roberts, kuia of Te Ahiwaru, her son Saul and nephew Jim in her modest home under the lengthening shadow of the airport runway expansion.   She looked out her kitchen window across her tiny section, “One day these fields will come back to us as kaitiaki.” That was November 2010.

It’s Sunday 11pm 21 February 1864 at Rangiaowhia, near Te Awamutu where a congregation of elderly men, women and children are about to begin Holy Communion with ‘the blood of Christ’.  A rifle shot shatters the peace as eighty-eight men of The Forest Rangers of the 65th Regiment led by Col George Marmaduke Nixon mounted one of bloodiest attacks that pinned down the congregation and the church alight.  Von Tempsky and his Forest Rangers entered the fighting later.  Everyone inside perished.  Today there are streets around Ihumatao and the airport named after those bloody ‘heroes’ of the Empire.  A monument to Nixon stands in Otahuhu.  Here in Ihumatao the people of Te Awhitu, Kawerau-a-Maki, and Te Ahiwaru, Ngati Te Ata are not alone as they dig in for the remaining shards of their cherished Lands around Ihumatao; ancient, sacred and a future about to go. 

(Photo) The SOUL(diers), cousins of Ihumatao: Waimarie McFarland,, Moana Waa, Pania Newton, Haki Wilson, Qiane Matata-Sipu, Bobby-Jo  Pihema and children

SOUL (Save Our Unique Landscape) is led by new generation rangatahi who have put themselves through law school and into the media who now take the fight to where it matters most.  Cousins, Moana Waa, Pania Newton, Waimarie McFarlane, Haki Wilson and Quiane Matata have a linking heritage to the land and to the ancient Otuataua Stonefields around Ihumatao in Mangere.  They, with their supporters last November presented a petition to parliament with 4,000 signatures opposing The Special Housing Areas Act (SHA62) taking up land to build 480 homes on land around Ihumatao.  They know that they would be forsaking their children and generations to come if they don’t make a unified stand now.  They also know that their mana, prosperity and wellness was intact up to the [i]1860s when things turned very bad for them.  “Since the confiscations of 1863,” says Quiane Matata, “This community has been knocked by one set back or another as we prepare submissions to the Waitangi Tribunal.”

‘SoulTimes’ points out that, “The SHA is (1) In breach of the Treaty as the Act is passed without consultation and (2) That the Act does not make provision for the protection of Taonga and (3) It undermines the ability of the residents to exercise Kaitiakitanga in relation to the land.”  Their objections are laudable given that The Otuataua Stonefields and the land is the last bastion of Tainui history dating back to the ninth century.”

The state stripped them of their birthright making them dependent wards in their own country, first by confiscation and later by legal device through The Native Land Court to remove tupuna from their villages. The state waived its own laws to legitimise appropriation.  The lust for Maori land was cruel, unlawful and undeserving.  The consequences for the home people were language loss, cultural erosion, and social breakdown in the new nation they so enthusiastically helped to build. 

They spread out like vampires thirsting for the life-blood of Earth.  Free market capitalism is the new theology where wealth, not people is the new religion with its ethos of speaking so no one understands.

SOUL asks, “When will earth living humans learn to live with the land and stop plundering the generosity of a giving earth?”  We constantly face the ravages of weather, gun violence, fear and the deepening disparities between the poor and those who want more now choking our silent planet to the point where it’s ridiculously out of control.

Mavis Roberts adds, “We watch helpless as the mana of our land is sucked, like the water that’s bottled and sold.”  And since tribal identity is linked to land, the loss is more devastating.  I see richness in SOUL, in their elders and in their wider community.  But that’s wearing thin.

Te Ahiwaru, Te Akitai Te Kawerau-a-Maki and Ngati Te Ata are a giving, ingenuous people, deserving of respect.  They have been giving, open and future looking.  Their connection to this land is now seriously threatened by mergers and consolidations of wealth extremism.  

 “Let’s be nice”, some say, only trouble is nice doesn’t exist anymore.  The cold fingers of penury are reaching deep into the blood stream of our nation, especially when we see a mum with four kids (one a baby) facing winter sleeping out in a van in a cold street.

The Maori landscape is defined by a continuous cultural link to natural features such as wai (water), ngahere (forests), repo (marshlands), wharua  (valleys and estuaries), waahi tapu (sites, burial grounds, stone fields), waahi mahinga kai (cultivations), parekura (fortifications and fortresses), paparahi (ancient tracks), and ahi ka (fires on the land).

This threatened space is for the people of Ihumatao a taonga or a cultural treasure. It means also the obligated Kaitiakitanga or protection of the land and its natural resources.  During the Waitangi Tribunal hearings (1985), the nation heard other stories of heroes like Tarapipipi Te Waharoa of Ngati Haua who, with a mere 500, built a formidable fortress between the Waikato River and Lake Waikare at Te Kauwhata defending their mana against the overwhelming odds of 1300 troops and a gun-boat, on 20 November, 1863.  They routed the might of the mightiest empire.  For trying to defend house and home, they were quickly slapped with The Suppression of Rebellion Act of 1863 for a rebellion that didn’t take place.

 “The Natives were treated as rebels and war declared against them before they had engaged in rebellion of any kind and in the circumstances they had no alternative but to fight in self defence.  In their eyes, the fight was, not against the Queen’s sovereignty, but a struggle for house and home ...”. (The Hon Sir William Sim, Royal Commission Report, 1926)

So, what happened?  What happened is well documented in the testimonies put before The Waitangi Tribunal:

“... it was therefore resolved to drive these poor men and women and their children from their homes and confiscate their lands. There was no difficulty in finding a pretext.  They were Maoris and relatives of Potatau....”  (The Hon Sir William Sim, Royal Commission Report, 1926)

Is this retribution for a ‘rebellion’ to defend house and home?  Eleven thousand acres around Ihumatao was confiscated and today all that is left is 1.5 acres of Maori Reservation Land on which the Makaurau Marae stands.  They feel powerless against the political and corporate elite of power brokers to preserve what little is left.  “Since the confiscations,” Says Pania Newton, “Our community has suffered.”

I see a people spurned whose voice is no longer a voice in the wilderness.  It is the voice of moderation for justice, not violence nor insurrection.  Yet.  How much more can they take?  Still, they continue to watch over their dwindling acres and exercise kaitiakitanga just as Kaiwhare, their benevolent taniwha oversees the harbour and the bounties of Tangaroa.  Strangers keep coming, whose underlying ethos was strictly to gain more land.  They came in the guise of friends from their own repressive structures. 

 “Standing at this corner, “says Pania Newton, one of the cousins, “And looking over the land, I see this beautiful green space;  a peaceful, very spiritual space. I see European and Maori history. I see the Maori history when our tupuna were settled in this area. It’s very quiet here. It’s peaceful.  It’s devastating to look at this land and try and picture a 480 unit, high-density housing going up.” 
Qiane Matata-Sipu adds, “The SHA Act doesn’t allow for Maori to have input about what areas are designated as Special Housing Areas.  That goes against the Treaty of Waitangi. I want my children to have some connection to the whenua in the way that their great-grandparents did.” 

Soul will take their peaceful fight to the streets, to the courts and into parliament.  They are fighting for the mana of their tupuna. They’re not alone.  Ironically, Tainui in Mangere has again shown great generosity of spirit as they did in the 1860s by opening the doors of one of its marae at Te Puea to the poor and homeless.  They deserve respect and they deserve honour.  The ‘cousins’ of SOUL Ihumatao are telling their story.  The more disagreeable the truth then the more it must be told.  Their fight is for house and home.  “They want everything,” Mavis Roberts concludes, “When will the struggle end?  We have only hope.” 

They cling to hope.  Hope is inside.  No one can take it away.  No good thing ever dies. 

Haare Williams Papakura 28/07/16

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[i] 1863The Suppression of Rebellion Act

No right of trial before imprisonment its intention was the punishment of ‘certain aboriginal tribes of the colony’, for rebelling against the Crown

ŌTUATAUA

The Ihumatao Stonefields in Manukau 

“One day these fields and land will come back to us as kaitiaki,” the impassioned words of Mavis Roberts, kuia of Te Ahiwaru tribe sat in her lounge looking out across the waahi that was once a sacred site for her people of Ihumatao, now being swallowed up irrev0ocably by Auckland’s International Airport expansion.

Some weeks earlier, I sat amongst the Otuataua rocks with a sketch book in hand and felt the nearness of her ancestors looking over my shoulder nodding their heads approvingly now, her words echoing their anguished cries when they were stripped off these cherished acres going right back to 1863 for alleged disloyalty to Queen Victoria.  A long time to grieve. 

As I sat amongst those rocks, there was an omnipresence of Te Ahiwaru generations around their fires, fishing nets and gardens.  I also felt their presence when the local tribes gave evidence to The Waitangi Tribunal Manukau Harbour Claim 1986:

“The Natives were treated as rebels and war declared against them before they had engaged in rebellion of any kind and in the circumstances they had no alternative but to fight in self defence.  In their eyes, the fight was not against the Queen’s sovereignty, but a struggle for house and home ...”

(The Hon Sir William Sim, Royal Commission Report, 1926)

For Mavis, her son Saul, and nephew Jim, “This is more than a commercial thing without a heart,  a cash till nor is it a space for boxes to be built upon boxes.”  I asked, “What does this land mean?”  “He pūmanawa! A heartbeat!” 

“The old name for those stones is Atuataua – The Warriors of the Gods,” Saul Roberts told me.

Aucklanders turned their backs on this space in the 1960s when the sewage ponds were sited here,  “Though in a funny way that has protected the area from going the same way as other parts of Auckland.” 

The stone walls is evidence of a thriving industry built around survival; every stone moved with bare hands their warmth trapped in mounds provided the hothouses to propagate seeds and seedlings for planting in the fertile soils.

I saw images of harvesting the bounties of Tangaroa protected by the kaitiaki of The Manukau Harbour, [1] Kaiwhare’ the watchful taniwha. Their mana and prosperity was intact up to the 1860s when things went awfully wrong. This sublime rural landscape is as old as human habitation as early as the ninth Century.  The Otuataua Stonefields is testimony to the resourcefulness of early Maori to use stone walls to trap the heat in the walls of their houses and stone mounds. 

In their storage pits the stones provided a way to preserve food stocks such as kumara, taro and in later years, potatoes.

What happened? 

What happened is well documented in the testimonies put before The Waitangi Tribunal:

“... it was therefore resolved to drive these poor men and women and their children from their homes and confiscate their lands. There was no difficulty in finding a pretext.  They were Maoris and relatives of Potatau...”.

(The Hon Sir William Sim, Royal Commission Report , 1926)

Tainui tribes had valid customary rights promised under the treaty when it was signed in 1840.  Those rights were protected and guaranteed by the British Crown. In closing its hearing on The Manukau Harbour, The Waitangi Tribunal wrote;

 “… its governors and officials acted with ruthless pragmatism that sidelined the treaty and deliberately advantaged settlers over Maori, and its purchases left Te Ahiwaru, Te Aki Tai, Kawerau-a-Maki and Ngati Te Ata in poverty.”

1894, The Validation of Invalid Land Sales Act meant that any Pakeha settler mis-dealings concerning Maori land were legitimised by this Act. Te Ahiwaru, Te Akitai and Ngati Te Ata in Auckland and other tribes lost land through this vicious Act.

Evidence of Pakeha settlement here in the 1800s also abound; reminders in the names Ellett, Rennie, Wallace, Mendelsshon and Montgomerie families.

The Ōtuataua Stone Fields were secured as a reserve in 1989 by The Manukau City Council, in Sir Barry Curtis’ words;

“To honour the history of the land and the people who built their homes and raised the families here over the past 800 years.”

Well, the signs are that’s come to an end …

The second runway for Auckland International Airport has already gobbled up whanau and land.  Tracts of rich horticultural soils around Mavis and her whanau are going.  And there’s no easing back in sight.

Saul Roberts told me, “Big wet boxes go up everywhere and nowhere.  Once land becomes urban then there’s no going back.  It’s called progress, but at what cost?”

“Every time I open my back door, I see the shadow of an airport,” Mavis concluded. “No, it’s never too late; the heartbeat of our ancestors breathes in us.”

And so, despite a Royal Commission Report, and a hearing before The Waitangi Tribunal, the litany of broken promises for Mavis and her people continue. 

Rua Cooper, Tainui kaumatua left us this taonga:

 “Ahakoa nga hara kua ūtaina ki runga ki te moana tapu e hora nei, ngā he me ngā whakamomori kei tua, ahakoa te kaika te ngākau o a mātau rangatahi, ka ū tonu te ngākau māhaki o te iwi o Manukau ki te ture Atua, ki te ture whenua, me te ture o te motu.  Engari, me whakatika ngā hara ahakoa atu mehe tīmata ano”

Rua Cooper 1992

(Translation)

Despite wrong doings to the people and to the Manukau Harbour, and some chafing at the bit by our young people, those before us reaffirmed their loyalty to the nation; it’s not our loyalty that is in question but the good faith of the other partner of the treaty.  Past wrongs can be put right, and it’s not too late to begin again.”

Manukau has a special cultural heritage.  The Ōtuataua Stonefields can only survive where it is.  

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[1] Te Manuka – the name, meaning “anxiety” over the dangerous harbour crossing was named by Hoturoa, captain of Tainui canoe

Haare Williams a strange but inspirational chance meeting  at The Grafton Bridge Cemetery with a ‘street kaumatua’ as a ‘light and breath   into what Auckland can be.

It’s Wednesday one year ago on 13 February, seven days and 174 years on since Hobson witnessed the signing of the treaty at Waitangi.  I still have a tingling feeling meeting ...

Remus Thompson-Jackson Kukutai

It’s a warm mid-summer’s day and I have come to The Grafton Bridge Cemetery to honour probably New Zealand’s most iconic historical figure ‘Captain William Hobson Lieutenant Governor, 1840-1842’.  I hadn’t realised that someone had joined me until a gravelly voice spoke, his diction as crisp as the fresh light. 

“Kia ora.  Ko Remus ahau; Remus Thompson-Jackson Kukutai”.  Surprised but not suspended.  Hmmm, Remus I thought now there’s a heroic name for a literary hero.  Was not the city of Rome founded by the twin brothers Remus and Romulus in 758BC?. 

We shared a short karakia with Hobson, then silence.  When he opened his eyes and mouth I was immediately drawn to the poet in him.  He regaled me with his whakapapa to Kukutai, a noble whanau of his Waiuku and Te Awhitu kin, a descendent therefore of the thirty-two chiefs being  the only signatories of the treaty in te reo Pakeha (English language). 

We were meant to be there that day.  His face was layered by the whips and scorns of the streets of Auckland and he, by his own admission a Street Kid.  “I’ve been on these streets for the best part of my life,” he admitted.  His face told me he must be a good seventy-plus.  His eyes expressed wit, empathy and a poetic nuance.

He spoke on decorously, “The strangers knew what they wanted:   land.  Maori wanted to protect their lands.  Heke knew what tauiwi (the strangers) wanted.  Heke quickly withdrew his moral support for the newcomers’ “Lust for more land.”  But, spurred on by the spirit of building a new nation, Apihai Te Kawau of Ngati Whatua wanted the same by making a ta koha (loan) of 3000 acres of prime tribal lands to build the new capital. 

In Auckland, the treaty was signed on five sites, the first on 4 March 1840 at Karaka Bay along the shoreline between Tamaki River and Maraetai.  The last at Waiuku (near the Waikato Heads) on 11 April 1840 by thirty-two chiefs of Ngati Paoa, Ngati Maru, Ngati Tipa, Ngati Pou and Ngati Tamatera (maybe Ngai Tai and Ngati Te Ata) and countersigned by Captain Joseph Nias and missionaries Henry Williams and William Fairburn. 

 “Don't ever forget!  Tell them.”  As I tried to get a word edgewise, I said, “Ok, I will.”

 “Maori were successful sailors, boat builders, navigators, carpenters, traders, soldiers, farmers and business people; we beat them at their own game.  Their science was the sky above and the earth below.”  He took a long breath.  “This is a waahi tapu that need tenderness and the human touch.”  

“Pakeha; they don't care for their mate (dead); nor about their tupuna (ancestors). They talk with passion about te tai ao (the environment). Nonsense!  We, Maori are the ones who carry the cost of any environmental damage and we’re still paying the price.”

 “Ko te moni ke te atua te atua o Te Pakeha.  This holy place is nothing more than an open toilet.” (he used a more graphic expletive to describe the condition of this ‘holy’ place).

He spoke on ponderously.  I tried to get another word.  He as I was, deeply shocked by the stressed look of Hobson’s resting place in a forgotten wilderness.  

 "Look at this, a Waahi Tapu, and what do you see (long pause), “... shit and litter.  And broken memorials, a rubbish dump, unkempt trees, around it a city without eyes, ears or a heart. “

We were there for probably an hour, maybe more.   Yet, gemstones fell from the lips of this luminary who has walked each pavement across the city he loves.  Before I left, he nudged me to recite a karakia and asked for ‘Whakaaria Mai,’ (Amazing Grace) for Hobson, for this waahi tapu, for rangatahi who find solace under the bridge and for a city for its indifference for those who reside here. 

We embraced in a long hongi as we parted, I said, “Thank you your amazing grace,” He bowed with a smile.  I asked for and he gave me his address at 140 Hobson Street.  I assured him that I’d pick him up for lunch. 

I looked back to wave and catch his eye but he was already in an animated conversation, quite likely apologising to Hobson for the sins and omissions of the great city he founded.  Again I saw the poet who did not lack nuance or faith in his words.  He struck me as angry, yes, but rich, feisty and compassionate.  Hobson deserves more than this.  Where then is the noble patrimony of state, civic, church and marae elders.  Any sign of that is not visible.  Ngati Whatua alone on the 6^th of February each year comes here at dawn to honour Hobson – and may I add Remus. No credit points to Auckland Council and the mighty super city plan which he renamed, “the most unliveable City in the world - if you’re Maori or poor that is.”

                 

As I left, I took away with me the rare images of a face sculpted by the whips and scorns of time with the shadows of tall oak trees and the lengthening stretches of sunlight that burnished a trail across forgotten head stones.  His words cutting deep, “Hobson was a good man.  A good man, e hoa!”

When I boarded my bus, I knew that I’d met a poet who sees a city desperate for happiness, a kind of epiphany in his sudden appearance with poetic words denouncing an “... uncaring city.  Is this retribution for having the vision and courage to build Auckland?  “No!” he assured me. His is not a lone voice in his remonstrations for hope.  

Since that day, I have tried to connect with him at 140 Hobson Street.  No one there.  I have checked with whanau at Whatapaka Marae on the Manukau.   They know of no-one by that name.  Was he just a part of my vivid imagination?  A spectral vision or did I meet an angel? Just suppose I actually met the reincarnation of the Roman hero, Remus? 

I know one thing, I’d met a poet who lacked neither nuance nor ambiguity; he struck me as rich in imagery, emotion, insight and an amazing grace. Remus Thompson-Jackson Kukutai.  Extra-ordinary!

We shared Hobson’s hope for a new nation as he recounted Hobson’s words.

“He iwi kotahi tatau. We are one people.”

(William Hobson 6 February 1840)

Hei kona mai.

Haare Williams

Papakura 5 February 2016