The 1975 Māori Land March
a memoir by vivian Hutchinson
2. Ngahuru — Autumn
ALL THE EARLY preparations by Whina Cooper and her organising committee were leading to the first major hui of the new Matakite movement. It would be held over the weekend of the 1st and 2nd of March at the Te Puea Memorial Marae at Mangere on the shores of the Manukau harbour, in south Auckland.
Whina had invited over a dozen tribal groups from around the North Island, and about 350 people turned up, including representatives of the Auckland District Māori Council, the Māori Women’s Welfare League and the urban activist group Ngā Tamatoa.
The tribal groups were invited to present their take, or issues of concern, to the gathering ... while Whina sat at the front of the meeting house receiving these submissions.
The most curious thing for me at the time came when I realised that Whina was really listening. She was not just passing the time until she could announce some big plan for her organisation that she had prepared earlier. Most of the organisers already knew that there was no big plan. The hui itself was the plan, and it was an opportunity for thinking and creating something together. Whatever strategies Whina planned to get on with would emerge from the take of the people.
Whina was familiar with this listening role from her days as the founding President of the Māori Women’s Welfare League. She was also fully stepping into her authority as a Northland rangatira.
And really listening meant not just being across the details of the land claims being discussed, and being aware of the genealogies of the people speaking their stories, but also being present to the heartache and frustration and real grief that people had brought with them to what they hoped would be a significant gathering.
Over the two days we heard the Ngati Wai case, the Ngati Whatua case of Orakei and Bastion Point, and the Tainui Awhiro case that centred on the golf course at Raglan, as well as many more.
And as each case was put before Whina, I could feel the sympathy and sense of shared frustration tangibly emerging in the hui. Stories of never-ending Land Court hearings. Stories of families at war with each other over the decisions and the consequences. Heart-breaking stories of survival, and of promises to keep on keeping on until the land of their ancestors was secured and able to be passed on to future generations. Stories of significant kuia and kaumatua who had passed on well before their own aspirations for justice and fair play could be fulfilled.
There was no real fire in that meeting room. There were the tears and the ashes of a struggle that seemed never-ending and practically hopeless. Over those two days at Mangere, you couldn’t get a better summary of how the issue of Māori land was stuck. These people were not getting anywhere.
And there was considerable resentment at the fact that the majority of New Zealanders – Pākehā New Zealanders – were simply enjoying their lives and its privileges without much of an idea of how much it had cost their Māori neighbours, and in fact was still costing them.
The two days reminded me so much of the similar stories I had continuously heard during my teenage years at Parihaka. I fully understood that the forgetting of the majority culture was as much a part of the process of colonisation as any battle of war or act of theft by legislation.
The forgetting followed the blood and dishonour. Its job was to take the privileges gained from these injustices and deliver them, spotlessly, to the next generation.
But here at Mangere were the tired and marginalised voices of a consistent resistance to this colonisation. They were the earth-bound spots that were never going to be washed out. Their resistance stories were sometimes passed on in the very names of the grandchildren running around that marae ... children unaware that, in time, they too would be playing their part in facing the forgetting and keeping alive the stories that spoke of their connection to and stewardship of their land.
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ON THE SUNDAY, about mid-way through the morning session, I needed a break to clear my head from the accumulated grief and frustrations that were being shared at the meeting.
I left the hui for a while and went for a walk around the tidal mudflats that were close to the marae. There were hundreds of birds all over the flats and, every now and then, my walk would disturb them into taking flight.
These were the migratory birds, the godwits or kuaka, who seemed full of tension and anticipation because they were only days away from launching themselves into a very long flight to Alaska on the other side of the world.
I got lost in the beauty of the place, and the wonder of these large flocks of birds preparing themselves for their journey ahead. And, by the time I got back to the marae, I realised I had a fully-composed plan of action in my head. The plan was its own flight of fancy, also based around a very long journey. It wasn’t like I thought of it ... it was more like I remembered it. And it was both naïve and a little mad.
Back at the marae, lunchtime was in full swing, and I grabbed a plate and joined Joseph Cooper, Whina’s son. He was looking troubled and anxious. This was the last day of the hui and it certainly felt that they just weren’t getting anywhere. Joseph told me that he was not really looking forward to the afternoon. He was concerned that the hui would actually result in some useful action. He then looked at me and asked: “So, what would you do in this situation?”
I then laid out the far-fetched plan that had come to me on the mudflats while walking.
I described a protest march taking place that would go from Cape Reinga, at the top of the North Island, down to Parliament Grounds in Wellington. It would probably take about a month.
I told Joseph that we needed to raise our thinking beyond doing something to address any specific problems of legislation, and we needed a strategy that would instead begin to address the political indifference and the cultural forgetting. The march I saw was such a strategy. The important thing wouldn’t be the marching in itself, but the awakening that the marching hoped to produce in the minds of all New Zealanders.
If we could sustain a month marching on the road and being in the news, then all eyes would be on the issue of Māori land. By walking through the rohe and lands of so many hapū and iwi, and by stopping each night at different marae, Te Roopu o te Matakite would have the opportunity to say, “Wake Up! We need to work together and address these issues.”
And by having a sustained walk that took it beyond a one- or two-day media event, we would also be seizing the opportunity to awaken the Pākehā mind. Our Pākehā neighbours would have to address all those fairy tales that told us we had the best race relations in the world, and that all the land rights issues were dead and buried in the past.
All credit to Joseph ... he took this unlikely suggestion, and the strategy behind it, very seriously. He looked around the dining room and said, “My mother’s got to hear this.” So he went and collected Whina and she joined us at our table.
I then repeated the suggestions and strategy that had come to me on my morning walk. Whina didn’t really react or make any comments. She obviously already had a lot on her mind because the day’s business was soon coming to a close. She thanked me and her son for our enthusiasm, and then went off to take her place as the meeting was reconvened.
I thought then that would be the end of it. I helped Joseph clean up the lunch dishes and we returned to our own places in the meeting house.
Later that afternoon, after a couple more tribal groups had given their presentations, the chairman of the New Zealand Māori Council, Graham Latimer, was also feeling the frustrations in the room.
He decided to stand up and have a go at Whina Cooper, challenging her, “Whina, why have you got us here? What are we doing? What’s going to be different about this new Matakite organisation that you are bringing together?”
To everyone’s surprise, Whina stood up slowly from her seat, waved her walking stick at the room and said, “We’re going to march. We’re going to march on Parliament so that no more land will be taken or sold.”
The room was stunned – no more so than myself who nearly fell off my own seat. We just weren’t expecting this. I had been given no indication that Whina had even thought the suggestion was a decent idea. But here we were.
Graham Latimer, still on his feet, was the first to say, “I’ll join you.” And you got the sense that, finally, a real fire had come into the room.
Interview with vivian Hutchinson on the origins of the Maori Land March — from the documentary Te Whaea o Te Motu (1992) directed by Bryan Bruce youtu.be/GOwwMzS-aAs
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IN THE IMMEDIATE weeks that followed, all eyes were on Whina Cooper to see if she was serious about going ahead with this unlikely idea.
No-one had done it before, and the logistics would stretch any form of organisation, let alone a completely new one. There wasn’t any Budget available. This woman was 79-years old. Did she really think she could pull it off?
The press were sceptical yet cautious not to completely dismiss Whina’s ability to make things happen.
The New Zealand Herald only gave a two-paragraph article to the Mangere meeting, published on the Monday morning afterwards. It concluded that the
“...Maoris at Mangere had unanimously agreed that a confrontation at Parliament Grounds was the best way to vent their anger at what they said was a lack of interest in their views.”
And as if to underline the point, the Herald itself showed no interest in going into any detail about the land grievances that had been discussed at the marae.
New Zealand Herald coverage of Mangere Marae hui, 3rd March 1975
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IF I HAD THOUGHT I had a re-education with Aunty Marj at Parihaka ... then perhaps I should have been prepared for the steep learning curve I was going to be on over the next six months. I was being introduced to a very different New Zealand as seen through the eyes of Whina Cooper.
After the Mangere hui, the Matakite organisers spent two months in strategy and logistics meetings, mainly at Joseph Cooper’s home in Panmure. The house would be full to overflowing as people squeezed into the kitchen and the lounge to discuss a weekly agenda.
It turned out that I was the only Pākehā on the organising committee. Not that much was made of this ... there was plenty of work to be done and not enough hands and resources to get on with the tasks ahead. I didn’t take on any public role and, apart from my journalism, sought to make my contribution as a friend in the background who was very much part of the team.
Which is not to say that Pākehā participation was not contentious. At the very start of the first organising meeting after the hui at Mangere, I was directly challenged about my role in the group by the prominent unionist and Ngā Tamatoa leader, Syd Jackson. There were about 200 people gathered in the Te Tira Hou meeting house in Panmure, and Syd Jackson stood up to be the first speaker.
“I think we should start as we mean to carry on,” said Syd, speaking to Whina. “We should ask that Pākehā to leave.”
The room went tense and silent. I was stunned by this blunt and public way of calling me out. And I could feel that there was some support in the gathering for Syd’s point of view.
But Whina was having none of it. She stood and gave Syd Jackson a significant dressing down. She made it clear that my participation was her own call. She then quickly dispensed with any more interruptions to her own agenda and moved on.
I later made it clear to the Matakite organising group that, if my ongoing involvement was going to make things more difficult, then I would be much more comfortable with stepping back.
But Whina Cooper insisted that I was to remain as part of her team. And she certainly wasn’t going to have the shape of her organisation determined by Syd Jackson.
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BEFORE WE GO much further into the march campaigning and preparations, and because this memoir is being told from my own point of view, I need to wind this narrative back a bit and recount some events that affected me more personally.
The march itself was not envisaged to go through my own home province of Taranaki, but it was clear early on that our mountain and our people were going to have a significant impact on its strategy.
Whina had whakapapa links to Taranaki through her mother, and she had also been mentored by Te Rangi Hīroa (Sir Peter Buck) who was a close friend of her father. She was well aware of the Taranaki struggles to have their confiscated lands returned.
Even before the Mangere hui, and before the idea of the march was conceived, Whina had been keen to have Taranaki participation in her new land rights campaign.
Her own personal links with Taranaki were largely from another era, and from her days organising with the Māori Women’s Welfare League. So, in the lead-up to her inaugural meeting, Whina decided to send an informal messenger to Parihaka to see if there would be any interest in participating in the new organisation.
The messenger drove from Auckland to Parihaka, on the Taranaki coast, but had mis-calculated her travel time and had ended up arriving at the pā after dark. She was driving into a village of deserted buildings, and realised she had no idea as to where she was going.
But she noticed a faint light at the back of a large twin-gabled meeting house, and she thought she saw several people moving around in what might have been the kitchen area at the back of the building. She decided to knock on the front door. After a while, the door was unlocked and opened, and she was greeted with a karanga to come inside.
Before her were the legendary “Aunties” of Te Niho o te Atiawa – Aunties Ina Okeroa, Sally Karena, Neta Wharehoka, and Aunty Marj Rau. They had been hosting visitors to the marae and were unwinding in the kitchen after a very full day’s work. The Aunties later recounted to me what took place, and their opinions about this unusual encounter.
Whina’s messenger explained to the Aunties that she had been sent with instructions to speak to the elders and to give them a parcel that she had brought with her. The parcel contained a stack of newspapers – all of them the same copy of the Auckland City News with the front-page feature I had written on Whina and the new Matakite organisation.
And there was an envelope with a separate colour photograph, one taken of Whina when she had been presented with her CBE honour for services to the Māori people. The messenger explained that she had been instructed to particularly point out the white feathers that were on Whina’s head in this photograph.
The photo that Whina sent to Parihaka, where she is wearing Te Raukura, the white feathers of peace. The photo was taken at the time of Whina receiving her CBE (Commander of the British Empire) honour for services to the Māori people.
The messenger soon left, having accomplished her task, and the Aunties retired to the kitchen to read the papers and talk about what had just happened. Because of their own involvement with the Māori Women’s Welfare League in the 1950s, these kuia were not unfamiliar with Whina Cooper and her track record. And it would be fair to say that they were somewhat suspicious of Whina’s motives and the role that she was now undertaking.
“She’s a bossy one,” said one. “You’ve got to watch out if she doesn’t get her own way”. And, “What does she really expect from us?” asked another.
But Aunty Marj hadn’t personally met Whina Cooper before, and was impressed by her gesture of reaching out to them in this unusual way. “I do hear your caution,” she told the other kuia. “But I’m going to go to Auckland and see for myself. And while I am there, I’d better find out whether Vivian has got himself into water that is over his head.”
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IN THE END, Aunty Marj didn’t make the Mangere hui, but flew to Auckland a few weeks later to attend the second of the march organising meetings. She was collected from the airport by Syd Jackson and his wife Hana. Hana Jackson, formerly Hana Te Hemara, was originally from Taranaki and she had a strong friendship and mentoring relationship with Aunty Marj.
The three of them drove straight from the airport to the Matakite meeting at Te Tira Hou Marae in Panmure. They arrived just as the meeting was starting, with well over a hundred people gathered in the meeting room. Aunty Marj was formally welcomed, and then invited to speak.
After greeting Whina and the various kaumatua in the room, Aunty Marj held up the photograph that Whina’s messenger had carried to Parihaka. She pointed to the white feathers on her own head, and then to the ones worn by Whina in the photograph, saying, “Whina, if you are going to lead a march to Parliament Grounds under the Raukura, then I am going to walk with you. And I will also be there at Parliament to welcome you.”
That last statement was particularly important for those present, like Whina, who knew the genealogies of Māori leadership. Aunty Marj was speaking in her capacity as Te Atiawa mana whenua of Wellington, which included Parliament Grounds. She was also a descendant of the renowned Te Atiawa rangatira, Kahe Te Rau-o-te-Rangi, who was one of the few Māori women who had signed the Treaty of Waitangi.
Aunty Marj then turned to address the people gathered at the meeting, and pointed out, “When you say you are marching on Parliament, I wish you would say you are marching to Parliament. Because Parliament is your place. It is your marae. Don’t ever believe that it doesn’t belong to you. You will be marching to your own place.”
Then a peculiar thing happened – even more remarkable when you consider that Aunty Marj later told me that she had no previous conversation with Syd or Hana Jackson about the contentious events of our first organising meeting.
Aunty Marj herself was concerned that the proposed march focus on fairness and justice issues, and not become a separatist or anti-Pākehā demonstration. She finished her speech by creating a visual statement of her own fundamental belief that “We’re in this together”.
She pointed across the room and motioned me to stand up. She then turned and looked at Hana Jackson and asked her to also stand. Looking straight at Whina, and pointing to me, she said, “Whina, this is my nephew ... I hope you are looking after him.”
And then, pointing to Hana, she said, “This is my niece ... I hope you are looking after her.”
And then we all sat down.
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THE ORGANISING GROUP – Te Roopu o te Matakite – was formally brought together after these first meetings at Te Tira Hou. It nominally had Whina Cooper as its chair, and its formal members included Graham Latimer, Chairman of the New Zealand Māori Council, Mira Szaszy, President of the Māori Women’s Welfare League, Ranginui Walker of the Auckland District Māori Council, and Syd Jackson and Titewhai Harawira of Ngā Tamatoa.
But in reality, most of the day-to-day organising was led by members of Whina’s family, and a handful of Auckland community activists. We became the practical backbone of this initiative right up until the march began.
Our weekly meetings were usually chaired by Dave Clark, a prominent Auckland union leader. He showed considerable skill in managing details, and guiding the diverse passions of the room into a common direction. His wife Rena worked with Whina to sort out the finances of the new group, and keep track of the growing level of koha or donations that were coming in to support the initiative.
Another important figure in this early organising was Witi McMath of Ngati Wai. Witi had a military background, and was particularly concerned about how to bring a practical sense of discipline to the diverse group of marchers who were likely to be turning up. He advocated for a system of march marshals that would be able to address issues of public safety if there were large numbers of people walking on busy roads.
Once plans started to shape up, Te Roopu o te Matakite then embarked on four months of campaigning and public meetings held on marae and community halls, with most weekends and several nights during the week taken up with activities. There were some quite large meetings – again, several hundred people at a time – as people wanted to find out much more about what Whina Cooper and this new organisation was up to.
In Auckland, these gatherings were held at Te Tira Hou marae in Panmure, Te Māhurehure marae in Point Chevalier, and Whina Cooper’s main base at Te Unga Waka marae in Epsom. We also travelled to significant hui on marae at Waitara in Taranaki, Kaikohe in Northland, Ohinemutu in Rotorua, Te Teko near Whakatane, and to Ngaruawahia.
This was an exhaustive schedule for everyone involved ... and yet I would have to say that, despite her advanced years, one of the most exhausting things was trying to keep up with Whina.
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IT WAS DURING our campaigning period that I became friends with Cyril Chapman. Betty Wark was his older sister, and Cyril was often staying at her home in Herne Bay which was only a couple of streets away from my own flat.
We were around the same age and, despite our differences, we quickly became mates and would often go out to the pub or clubs together, or meet up and explore the late night flea markets of Karangahape Road.
Betty Wark encouraged Cyril to join the Matakite organising group, and he also became part of Whina’s campaign entourage. He would later be asked to become the main carrier of the pou whenua, a tall carved pole that would be carried at the head of the march as it travelled down the North Island.
Cyril Chapman carrying the pou whenua, a symbol of mana and rangatiratanga, in the Palmerston North Square, Manawatu, during the 1975 Māori Land March.
Cyril was from the Hokianga and, on one of our spare weeks during the campaigning period, I went with him back to Northland and visited his family home at Tutekehua, near Mangamuka Bridge. It was a welcome week of fishing and foraging, and going for long walks around the muddy mangrove shores of the upper Hokianga harbour.
During this holiday, I got to hear of how Cyril's extended family had long gained a reputation as being protestors and activists on land rights issues that still remained unresolved to that day.
Cyril had told me of how both his grandparents, Tainui and Huhana Oneroa, and his uncle Wiremu Oneroa, had been arrested in the 1950s after occupying their old homestead or papakainga land called Omakura, near Tutekehua.
This block of land had been leased out by the Maori Affairs Department, against their will. The grandparents built a nikau house and the extended family (including Cyril's mother) moved in to reassert their ownership. The elders were arrested and they spent two months in jail for trespassing and refusing to leave the land.
A decade later, the dispute flared up again as the local council decided to put a new harbour coastal road right through a urupa, or burial ground, that was connected to the papakainga land. Cyril's grandfather went and fenced off the urupa in an effort to protect the old graves. But the bulldozers came and simply continued with their plan, uncovering bones during their excavations. The family gathered the uncovered bones and re-buried them at a nearby burial ground at Mangataipa.
These occupations and arrests were small and isolated acts of defiance at a time when there was no real public or media attention on the land rights struggles of these rural Hokianga families. By 1975, such stories seemed like part of a long-buried and forgotten history.
But with the Matakite initiative, it was stories such as these that were coming back into the light. This new movement held the hope that there would be a renewal of whanau and hapū engagement in efforts for justice and reparation.
Towards the end of this holiday break, Cyril and I took the opportunity to travel by motorbike up to the Far North village of Te Hapua, where the Matakite were planning to start the land march. There we stayed with his friends Rose Raharuhi and Richard Mason.
This was the first time that I had been over the roads that the land march was planning to walk on. On the gravel roads of the Far North, I began to appreciate just how isolated many of the places on our march itinerary really were ... so it was a bit of a wake-up call as to the reality of what we were undertaking.
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AT A LATER Matakite organising meeting, Hana Jackson proposed that the land march begin in Te Hapua on Sunday the 14th September 1975. In doing so, she was seeking to connect the Matakite initiative to the recent work of Ngā Tamatoa.
Just three years beforehand, on the 14th September 1972, Hana and other members of Ngā Tamatoa walked up the steps of Parliament to deliver a petition calling for an official programme of support for the Māori language, and for getting Māori taught in our education system. Because of this petition, the 14th of September soon became known as Māori Language Day, and would eventually become the beginning of Māori Language Week.
Hana argued that the loss of land and the loss of language were both consequences of colonisation and assimilation, and that for the Matakite land march to start on this particular day would be a recognition that these issues were deeply connected. The Matakite organisers strongly agreed, and decided to make the 14th September our starting date.
The organisers now had a Spring deadline on which to bring all our campaigning and preparations to a conclusion.
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THE FIRST MAJOR CAMPAIGN event outside of Auckland was for Te Roopu o te Matakite to go to Taranaki and attend Maui Pomare Day. Aunty Marj had issued the invitation for Whina to come to this major Taranaki tribal gathering that is held around the 27th June each year at Owae Marae in Waitara. For this particular year, the hui was also going to include a contingent of Māori University Graduates from around the country, and it would be an excellent opportunity to spread the word.
Whina’s traveling entourage comprised of members of her extended family, and a number of the Auckland urban Māori activists who had first come together at the meeting at Mangere marae. As such, it was a very diverse collection of supporters who were still in the process of getting to know one another.
Waitara was the perfect place to start our wider public campaign for support because it had a special place in the history of our nation, and especially on the issue of land disputes. In 1860, it was the place where the first shots were fired in the Taranaki Land Wars which then spread to many other areas of the country. In 1863, in response, the government confiscated 1.2 million acres of land in Taranaki as punishment for “the rebellion”. Even the mountain was taken.
Whina saw the march as definitely connected to the passive resistance stand taken by Taranaki Māori against this catastrophic loss of land. This journey to Maui Pomare Day was an opportunity to affirm that connection.
A statue of Sir Māui Pomare dominates the forecourt of Owae Marae. He was a medical doctor who became renowned for his work to improve Māori health and living conditions. He was also a politician, and Member of Parliament for Western Māori Electorate from 1911-1930.
Māui Pōmare's own dealings with land issues came with its own complicated political legacies. Some of his decisions, especially around land leases held by Pākehā settlers, had led to a further major alienation of land from its Māori owners.
But his main legacy came late in his political career when, together with his friend Sir Apirana Ngata, he pushed for a full government inquiry into the raupatu or land confiscations of the previous century.
The 1926-27 Sim Commission represented the first time that the hapū and iwi of Taranaki had received a serious consideration of their grievances. The Commission concluded that the government's prosecution of war in Taranaki had been wrong and the confiscations unjustified. Taranaki Māori had not risen in rebellion against Queen Victoria’s sovereignty. Actually, according to the Commission, they had been given “... no alternative but to fight in their own self-defence … in a struggle for house and home.”
Further in its report, the Commission concluded that the confiscations had been excessive and recommended compensation be paid. The Taranaki Māori Trust Board was later set up and received an annual reparation payment of £5,000.
There was also a single reparation payment of £300 recommended in acknowledgement of “the wrong that was done to the Natives at Parihaka”. These payments were not discussed with the iwi concerned, and were never accepted as adequate.
Whina Cooper had a personal link with the Sim Commission, because her second husband William Cooper was its only Māori Commissioner. She was critical of its proceedings because the Commission could not make any ruling about the legality of the confiscations themselves, but could only assess whether they were “fair and just”.
Whina also said she was disgusted with the £5,000 annual reparation payment because, for such a large area of land, it only amounted to about two cents per acre, per year. The government payment was also never linked to inflation ... which meant that, by the 1970s, it was at an even more token amount.
Not One More Acre! Whina Cooper speaking from the porch of the Meeting House at Owae Marae in Waitara, on Maui Pomare Day, June 1975. Whina and Te Roopu o te Matakite were starting their North Island campaign to gain support for the Māori Land March. Photograph by John Miller
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THIS CAMPAIGN JOURNEY introduced many of the Matakite travellers to Waitara itself – the river-mouth town that surrounded Owae marae. Much more than New Plymouth city, Waitara was the central heartbeat to Te Atiawa tribal life.
But this township carries a heavy inter-generational burden from the legacies of colonisation. Not only was it the first place that shots were fired in the Land Wars, but its fertile river-flat lands were at the front line of the land confiscations. The very street names of Waitara township still today celebrate the land agents and military leaders who facilitated this theft.
But whereas most of the rest of the Taranaki confiscated land was steadily privatised into Pākehā ownership, Waitara itself would remain a special case of real estate that was frozen in its own doubletalk.
A good deal of the township and residential properties were tied up in “endowments” of leasehold real estate owned by various government proxies such as the local Council or the Harbour Board. This stolen property was now in long-term leases, with many of its tenants being Māori families paying rents on land that was once their own tribal estate.
This situation represented a complex challenge to anyone concerned about the ongoing race relations in Taranaki. In 1975, mainly due to the forgetting, it was hardly ever talked about.
Disinherited. The Seabirds at Waitara, illustration by Cliff Whiting 1978
At Owae marae, Whina Cooper and her entourage were shown the carved figure of Wiremu Kingi Te Rangitake, which stood just inside the meeting house. This was the Waitara chief who led the resistance to land sales and land confiscations in the 1860s.
Just before the first shots were fired at Waitara, Wiremu Kingi wrote a letter to Donald McLean, the chief land purchase commissioner, about the pressure he was under to sell. He wrote,
“These lands will not be given by us into the Governor’s and your hands, lest we resemble the seabirds which perch on a rock. When the tide flows the rock is covered by the sea, and the birds take flight, for they have no resting place.”
War and the legislative theft of land did follow. And this forced so many families of Te Atiawa into becoming the disinherited seabirds that Wiremu Kingi predicted in his letter to McLean.
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THE WAITARA TRIP was really my first experience of seeing Whina in full flight as an orator — something that she was obviously used to doing from her days with the Māori Women’s Welfare League.
Whina had no trouble commanding attention in the meeting house at night, or from the porch of the marae during the day. For those of us who travelled with her over the following months of the Matakite campaigning, we were able to experience some pretty extraordinary oratory from this seasoned leader.
Every night, after the karakia or prayers had finished in the meeting houses, Whina was invited to speak. What started off as a fragile elderly kuia carefully raising herself up on her walking stick ... soon became a charismatic and spell-binding performance of a woman who somewhat miraculously had the voice and energy of a person half her age.
Whina would begin with a whanaungatanga where she would weave herself and her Matakite movement into the histories of the place and the specific people who were in the room. She would flatter, and cajole ... and then speak more stridently as to what was happening over the loss of Māori land, and the need for everyone to work for change. Then she very directly called on the people gathered in the room to wake up and get involved in the movement.
In her oratory, Whina would speak both in Māori and in English — effortlessly switching between the two languages in a way that they became one communication. She would speak for several minutes in Māori — poking and waving her walking stick — and then either deliver a punch-line or a summary in English that would underline her intentions.
No-one in the room was left in any doubt as to what her essential message was. It was a style of oratory that gathered everyone into a shared experience, regardless of their competencies in either language.
And at the end of her speech, Whina would gradually transform back into the elderly kuia. It was almost like she would physically shrink in stature in front of our eyes. You were certainly left thinking you had just witnessed something extraordinary. And you were also left thinking about what you could do to get involved.
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AFTER THE EVENTS of Māui Pōmare Day, Whina and Te Roopu o te Matakite travelled further out on the Taranaki coast to visit Parihaka. There, we were hosted by Aunty Marj and the other kuia of Te Niho o te Atiawa.
As Whina was welcomed onto the marae, she started crying. Deeply crying. Soon everyone in our party was also in tears.
The Village of Peace had been the centre of so much hope and promise. At the height of the campaign of passive resistance against the theft of land, people had come to Parihaka from all over the country. It had quickly become New Zealand’s largest-ever Māori village.
But here, in 1975, was a village that had seen much better days. There were so many empty houses, their wooden frameworks rotting and collapsing, their hedges returning to the wild. The once-grand meeting house, Te Raukura, home to Te Whiti o Rongomai and his followers, had burnt to the ground a decade beforehand and was now only survived by its grey concrete foundations.
After Whina and her party were welcomed into Te Niho o te Atiawa, they were given a short overview of the history of Parihaka by Aunty Marj. The restored meeting house had some mural-sized photographs which showed the community in its hey-day.
Many members of Te Roopu o te Matakite had already become familiar with the history of Parihaka and the Taranaki land disputes after reading the book Ask That Mountain by Dick Scott. This book had just been republished in a new edition that year.
When Whina spoke, she asked for the support and guidance of the prophets of peace in shaping her new land rights initiative. She then spoke of the legacy she carried from many of the other Māori leaders of succeeding generations – Maui Pomare, Peter Buck, James Carroll, Apirana Ngata, Princess Te Puea, Tau Henare, and Paraire Paikea.
“I am the last one alive that has known all those people,” Whina said. “I have gone around with them, watched them, listened to them, and filled up my baskets of knowledge from them. I have only ever wanted to put that knowledge to good use.”
This was only the early days of the Matakite campaigning, but Whina was already starting to become aware that this new movement was shaping up to become the biggest test yet of her knowledge and experience.
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Next: 3. Takurua - Winter