The 1975 Māori Land March
a memoir by vivian Hutchinson
4. Kōanga — Spring
AS IT TURNED OUT, there were only about 40 marchers there at Te Hapua on that first bright Spring morning of the 1975 Matakite Māori Land March.
Despite traveling around the North Island and campaigning for the six months before the march started, it was practically impossible to gauge the level of real support beforehand.
Those 40 marchers leaving the Te Hapua marae on Sunday the 14th September seemed a very modest contribution to any movement or national debate.
But, in spite of its inadequacies, the land march proved to be something that caught the moment. As Whina Cooper again stepped into her authority and leadership, she too caught the moment.
On this first day, a photo was taken showing Whina starting out on the 1000-km protest while holding the hand of her three-year-old granddaughter Irenee Cooper. It had been taken by Michael Tubberty of the New Zealand Herald, and has since become an iconic photograph of the modern Māori renaissance.
Whina Cooper and her granddaughter Irenee Cooper (aged 3) set off on a dusty Far North road for Parliament, 14 September, 1975. Photograph Michael Tubberty/New Zealand Herald
It was a picture that immediately spoke to the New Zealand psyche, and became itself an instrument of awakening. To me, this image of Whina was telling everyone: We haven’t gone away. I’m still here. There’s still work to do. And while I’m at it, I’m passing on this kaupapa, this mission, to a new generation.
By the time the marchers reached Auckland City, there were thousands of us walking over the Auckland Harbour Bridge. It was clear by then that we had definitely achieved the beginning of an awakening in the New Zealand mind, Māori and Pākehā.
In the following weeks, the land march continued to capture the public imagination and indeed the public participation that we had hoped for. It was estimated that over 50,000 people joined the marchers at some time during the month-long journey.
For Māori, many of the key land rights activists met each other or deepened their existing friendships in what was essentially a month-long wānanga of awakening. And, for us as Pākehā, we now had to definitely rewrite the stories we had been telling ourselves about our past, about race relations, and about the ongoing theft of Māori land.
I’m not going to go into the details of the march itself. That’s another whole story. It’s a fantastic, and at times a very humbling story. Actually, it is literally thousands of stories, and most of them are not mine to tell.
The Māori Land March gave birth to countless outcomes and consequences in areas of national, local and individual significance. Every participant in the long journey from Te Hapua has had their own narrative about what brought them to the march, who they met along the way, what it felt like to walk over the very land that they may have been fighting for, perhaps for generations ... and what they decided to do once the march reached Wellington. And every one of these narratives is a part of what made the Māori Land March a transformative event.
Route of the 1975 Māori Land March (coutesy of National Library) >click< for larger view
It was in the last week of the land march, as it was approaching Wellington, that Māori Affairs Minister Mat Rata got the legislation passed to establish the Waitangi Tribunal. This was not generally considered a significant thing at the time, and it was almost completely unnoticed by the march participants. But in succeeding decades the Tribunal would prove to be Mat Rata’s most enduring legacy, and a critical vehicle for addressing land rights issues.
Meanwhile, it would also take the further pressure of the Matakite-inspired occupations and demonstrations at places like Raglan/Whāingaroa or Bastion Point/Takaparawhā, for the political will to address land rights issues to grow much stronger.
And if we look over the last five decades, we can see definite progress in terms of recognition of historical accounts, formal apologies to iwi, financial settlements, the return of some assets, and co-governance arrangements between Māori and the Crown and local authorities.
I believe there will be no rolling back these fundamental changes because these actions and policies have also reached deep into the now Aotearoa New Zealand psyche and the sense of who we want to become as a nation.
In 2015, at the fortieth anniversary of the Matakite Land March reaching Wellington, the National Library quoted historian Tiopira McDowell who argued that the march has become one of the most powerful and symbolic moments of modern New Zealand history, contributing to the moulding and reshaping of Māori and Pākehā culture, identity and race relations in the later decades of the 20th century.
And for 2025, the Ministry for Arts, Culture and Heritage has included the 50th anniversary of the Māori Land March as an event that will be officially acknowledged as part of the Government's Commemorations Programme, in the recognition that it has helped to shape our national identity.
All of New Zealand is now clearly affected by the Māori renaissance. And the nation that is emerging around us is becoming a better one because of it.
Fifty years later, I can only say: Yes!
Stepping into an unknown. The Māori Land March leaves the Te Hapua Marae on Sunday 14th September 1975. Photograph Christian Heinegg
Day One. The Māori Land March in the Far North with vivian Hutchinson, Cyril Chapman (carrying the pou whenua), and Moka Puru. Photograph the Auckland Star
FOR MYSELF, after the 1975 March, I went on to further contribute to the land rights campaigns at Raglan and at Bastion Point. I also worked with Aunty Marj and Gretchen Lawlor (another land marcher) to create a seven-year cycle of wananga gatherings at Te Niho o te Atiawa, which we called the Earth Festivals.
These gatherings invited many Pākehā New Zealanders into a Māori world for the first time, while introducing them to the history of Taranaki land struggles, and the inspiring work of the Parihaka prophets of peace.
Meanwhile, I returned home to live in Taranaki and got on with other aspects of my active citizenship.
I have spent a working life learning more about the nature of community, and making what contributions I could in terms of employment issues, and poverty, housing, health, education and environmental matters.
And I certainly acknowledge that all of these contributions to community, and to common sense, have been fundamentally shaped by the growing up I was able to do while helping organise the 1975 Māori Land March ... working and learning alongside such an intriguing range of mentors, activists and friends ... and coming to terms with myself, as I walked with them from one end of the North Island to the other.
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Matarena Raumati Rau Kupa (Aunty Marj) visiting Whina Cooper in Panguru, Hokianga, in the early 1990s.
Farewell. At Dame Whina Cooper's tangi in Panguru in March 1994. (left to right) Steve Tollestrup, Aunty Marj, vivian Hutchinson and Tony Hansen
WHEN IT COMES TO land rights issues in the 2020s, it is frustrating and sad to report that, half a century later, we are still looking at stolen land being privatised and sold off into a speculative land market. James K. Baxter’s old dog seems to be still in residence under that table.
I think that the 2018 government decision to privatise the last of the leasehold lands in Waitara is the continuation of a long line of dishonourable and unjust decisions that will haunt us in Taranaki for decades to come.
The Waitara lands issue is unfortunately illustrative of many other properties tied up in councils, universities, government departments or former government-owned corporations which were originally “acquired” from Māori sources, or held in “endowments”, and are now being sold off at market prices to satisfy the appetites of their current owners.
This is Your Life — Whina Cooper, filmed at Government House in 1987, and hosted by Bob Parker. Photograph Government House
vivian Hutchinson interviewed on Whina Cooper - This is Your Life (1987) http://youtu.be/OELVhAXwS3U
And then there are the perpetually renewing leases of Māori land – leases that have endured without the consent of Māori owners. Various governments had promised to address this, but it has remained on the back-burner, especially in the face of the entitlement protests of the farming community. Perpetual leases are all over the country, but Taranaki has the highest concentration of these leases in New Zealand. They are a perpetual injustice woven into the structure of our farming wealth and inter-generational prosperity.
So “Not One More Acre” – even in the 2020s – is still a very real line in the sand ... no matter how much you dress it up in the language of neo-liberal management or do-nothing politics.
But, half a century later, I find myself thinking much more widely about land rights and our responsibilities to Papatūānuku that we either remember or forget at our own peril. I believe we would be making a mistake to think that a land rights struggle in the 21st century is simply about the justice of who-owns-what in terms of property. The demands of our time are asking us to reach well beyond our mental cages that have trapped us in the ideas of possession and extraction.
Aunty Marj once pointed out to me that being tangata whenua is not an identity. Nor is it defined by blood and lineage. It is a job description. It is about what we choose to do because we are rooted in our relationship to place. It is about the love of place and how that love both gives us a sense of belonging and also gives us practical work to do.
In the next 50 years, with the climate emergency and the collapse of biodiversity determining the wellbeing of all our communities, future generations are definitely going to judge us by how well we all step up to this job description.
In this 21st century, we are remembering that the “we” of “We’re in this together” must also include the earth herself.
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40th anniversary of the Matakite Māori Land March arriving in Wellington, at Te Ahumairangi National Library in Wellington, 13th October 2015. (left to right) former land marchers Cyril Chapman, vivian Hutchinson, Professor David Williams with Paul Diamond, curator of the 2015 Turnbull Library exhibition "Not One More Acre". Photograph National Library
I AM NOW stepping into my own elder years, and naturally I’m reflecting on some of the things I think I have learned. Writing a memoir is a useful way of opening up that space.
Of course I am still learning. To some extent, now is the time for me to listen to the unlikely nineteen-year-olds in my own life — those who may well be seeing things that I can’t yet imagine.
One of the things I have learned is that prophets and artists don’t live so much in the future. They live in a very special type of “now”.
The matakite that flows from prophecy and artistry is not just about how we see ahead. It is also about what we choose to do now that creates new possibilities for the future.
Te Roopu o te Matakite and the 1975 Māori Land March played their part in creating some fresh possibilities.
I do hope their example will continue to speak to us of justice, peace and reconciliation in our nation, and in our time.
vivian Hutchinson
Taranaki
27 June 2024
Notes and Links
This memoir is available to read online, visit www.taranaki.gen.nz/matakite50
vivian Hutchinson QSM (Pākehā of Taranaki, Hutchinson of Fermanagh, McIntyre of Barra) is a community activist and social entrepreneur who has spent most of his life working mainly on issues of race relations, social justice, and job creation. He is the author of How Communities Heal — stories of social innovation and social change (2012) and How Communities Awaken — some conversations for active citizens (2021). He is also one of the creators ofTū Tangata Whenua - a Masterclass for Active Citizenship which has been run in partnership with Tu Tama Wahine o Taranaki www.tutamawahine.org.nz.
For more on vivian Hutchinson, visit www.taranaki.gen.nz/vivian
thank you to Awhina Cameron, Carl Chenery, Cyril Chapman, David Williams, Garry Moore, and Lynne Holdem for your comments on earlier versions of this memoir.
“Trust me in Spring” the seasonal graphic used through this memoir shows the Māori Land March on College Hill, Ponsonby , Auckland City on 23rd September 1975. Original photograph by Christian Heinegg
“Matakite: A Call to the Maori people” by vivian Hutchinson in the City News 19th February 1975
“March on Parliament” New Zealand Herald 3rd March 1975
“Maoridom on the march” by vivian Hutchinson City News 5th March 1975
Te Matakite o Aotearoa — The Māori Land March (1975) directed by Geoff Steven (Seehear Ltd, TV2) is now considered an iconic documentary about the land march, with Leon Narby as cinematographer. It features interviews with Whina Cooper, Eva Rickard, Saana Murray, Tama Poata, Joe Hawke, Moka Puru, John Hippolite, and Witi McMath. Available on http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/te-matakite-o-aotearoa-1975
The Matakite waiata by Whina Cooper (1975) is fully reproduced in the “Whina” biography by Michael King (1983) published by Hodder and Stroughton. See 271.
“Unity Call on Māori Land” in the New Zealand Herald, 23 April 1975
“Somewhere to go back go...” by Pauline Ray Thursday Magazine 22 May 1975; “So little ancestral land left” interview with Witi McMath by vivian Hutchinson
Ranginui Walker, June 1975, A Matakite Manifesto (draft)
The first shots in the Taranaki Land Wars ... see Radio New Zealand documentary “NZ Wars: Stories of Waitara (2019)” produced by Great Southern Television https://youtu.be/fW20zpWlCC8
illustration of seabirds on the rocks at Waitara by Cliff Whiting, from “Bitter Payment: The Taranaki Troubles”, by Michael Keith, New Zealand School Journal, Part 4, Nos 1 & 2, 1978 (Ministry of Education) courtesy of Cliff Whiting.
“Watching the Seabirds at Waitara” by vivian Hutchinson July 2016 at www.taranaki.gen.nz/watching-the-seabirds-at-waitara
vivian Hutchinson was part of the Peace for Pekapeka campaign from 2016—2018 that sought to challenge the further privatisation of the Waitara stolen lands. For more, see www.taranaki.gen.nz/waitarapapers
Hikoi: The Land March (2016) directed by John Bates (Scottie Productions) is a thought provoking documentary that revisits the march. It features interviews from 2015 with Joseph Cooper, Cyril Chapman, vivian Hutchinson, Hinerangi Puru, Moka Puru, Dave Clarke, Rena Clarke, Carmen Kirkwood, Rowley Habib, Rawiri Tuhiwai-Ruru, Deidre Nehua, Tame Iti, Rose Lazarus-Spicer, Chris Booth, Te Aroha Alec Hawke, Grant Hawke, Moana Jackson, Angeline Greensill, Dr Aroha Harris, Waireti Walters, Rovinia Maniapoto-Anderson, Kahutoi te Kanawa, Geneva Tumango Patea, and Turama Hawira. Available on TVNZ on Demand
“Rata hopes to defuse land march”, Auckland Star 9 July 1975
“Mat Rata: Convincing or Confusing?” interview with Mat Rata, by Wayne Brittenden, in the City News 16 July 1975
“Matakite answers the Minister” by vivian Hutchinson, City News 16 July 1975
“Maori Land March” (feature article) by vivian Hutchinson in the City News 25 June 1975
“Maoris raise funds for Land Protest” New Zealand Herald 26th July 1975
“A People on the March” The New Zealand Herald editorial 30 July 1975
“Maoris in Protest” The Auckland Star editorial 4 August 1975
“Matakite campaigning well” by vivian Hutchinson in the City News 6th August 1975
“Ngatiwai tribe elders rankled at support for Matakite’s land march” Northern Advocate 16 September 1975; “Elders at odds over march” Northern Advocate 17 September 1975; and “Waipu Pita: Who dares sign for Ngatiwai?” Northern Advocate 18 September 1975
“Protest march leaders will meet Mr Rata” Auckland Star 13 August 1975
“March Plan Still Firm” New Zealand Herald 25 August 1975
"Final Battle Ahead" by Pauline Ray, and photo by Robin Morrison The Listener 23 August 1975.
TV2 Encounter programme - profile on Whina Cooper and her campaign trail for the Maori Land March. 25 August 1975, produced by George Andrews.
“Whina Cooper – fight but not with arms” by Ray Watchman, Zealandia 31st August 1975
“PM waited in vain for delegation” Auckland Star 8 September 1975
Inside the Land March (New Zealand Geographic, September 2022) by Arielle Kauaeroa Monk, gives an overview of the land march and its achievements, and features photographs taken by Christian Heinegg, who was also one of the 1975 land marchers. The Heinegg collection of Matakite photographs are now in the Alexander Turnbull Library, and were featured in the library's 2015 exhibition to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Land March. http://www.nzgeo.com/stories/inside-the-land-march/
“Sacred march begins Sunday” by vivian Hutchinson in the City News 10 September 1975
“The New Zealand Land March to Wellington” poem by Hone Tuwhare in the City News 10 September 1975
“Progress ... but the Māori land march goes on” Auckland Star 11 September 1975
"Marchers Prepare" by Stephanie Gray, The New Zealand Herald 12 September 1975
James K Baxter pamphlet “He Tokotoko Mo Te Koroheke (A Walking Stick for an Old Man)” published in the first New Zealand Whole Earth Catalogue (1972), published by Alister Taylor and co-edited by Owen Wilkes, Jim Chapple, and Tim Shadbolt.
for more on Aunty Marj, see Matarena Marjorie Raumati Rau Kupa (1913-2010) at www.taranaki.gen.nz/matarena
“Whina” biography by Michael King (1983) published by Hodder and Stroughton. See Chapter 11 “Maori Land March”.
for more on the forgetting, see “The Anniversaries of Our Amnesia” by vivian Hutchinson, eTangata website 8th March 2020. https://e-tangata.co.nz/history/the-anniversaries-of-our-amnesia/
marcher and photographer Christian Heinegg was interviewed in the September 2002 edition of New Zealand Geographic www.nzgeo.com/stories/on-the-march/
Turnbull Library Exhibition “Not One More Acre” in Wellington National Library Wellington September-December 2015 was curated by Paul Diamond. For more see https://natlib.govt.nz/events/not-one-more-acre-opens-september-14-2015
map of the route of the Māori Land March, and the marae that hosted marchers, courtesy of the Turnbull Library 2015 Exhibition “Not One More Acre”
“Exhibition a window into the iconic NZ land march” Te Karere TVNZ interview with Cyril Chapman and vivian Hutchinson by Roihana Nuri 13 October 2015 https://youtu.be/_oyetx_seMk
“Not One More Acre” Te Karere TVNZ interview with Paul Diamond interview with Pere Wihongi 29 October 2015 https://youtu.be/u3i8jm1qaw4
“Dame Whina Cooper remembered ahead of 40th anniversary of historic hikoi” Te Karere TVNZ on Te Rarawa settlement claim 11 September 2015 https://youtu.be/vgPjtZpEdyY
Te Ahi Kaa on the 1975 Maori Land March - Commemorating 40 years Radio New Zealand 18 October 2015 featuring coverage of the panel discussion hosted by the National Library to commemorate 40 years since the 1975 Land March. https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/teahikaa/audio/201774903/1975-land-march-commemorating-40-years
Radio NZ Upbeat – photographer John Miller on the Maori Land March with Eva Radich 29 October 2015 https://www.radionz.co.nz/concert/programmes/upbeat/audio/201776569/john-miller-maori-land-march
“Hikoi: The Māori Land March” (2016) documentary directed by John Bates. Available to view on demand at www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/hikoi-the-land-march This film marked the 40th anniversary of the march. Made with the support of NZ On Air.
vivian Hutchinson interviewed by Kim Hill on the Māori Land March 40th anniversary, Radio NZ National Programme 10th October 2015 www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/201774095/vivian-hutchinson-the-maori-land-march
This memoir has been published to the commons. It is freely available to read on the internet. You are welcome to copy and share it, and use extracts, providing you attribute the article or extracts to the author, and do not redistribute it for commercial purposes. It is licensed for distribution under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 New Zealand License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/nz/deed.en
