The 1975 Māori Land March
a memoir by vivian Hutchinson

1. Raumati — Summer

 

IN 1975, I WAS already a working journalist, contracted to an Auckland inner-city newspaper. It was a part-time job that, as far as I was concerned, funded my real vocation as a community activist.

These were the days of full employment, and you really didn’t need to spend years in training if you could learn your skills on-the-job. I had done just a few months basic training on the journalism course at the Auckland Technical Institute when they realised I had a talent for reporting and, soon enough, various media organisations were head-hunting me and offering me employment.

So, within a year of leaving High School in New Plymouth, I found myself writing for a very interesting Auckland newspaper. City News was a free Ponsonby-based community paper which only had two reporters on its staff. We also did all the editing and laid out the typesetting by hand before the stories were printed. I had the “community” round of reporting for the inner city suburbs which, at the time, were largely composed of low-income and working-class families. I was also the journalist covering the Auckland City Council meetings.

This job and its basic income enabled me to throw myself into the community issues I was most curious about. I soon struck up a friendship with local Ponsonby identities Betty Wark and Fred Ellis, who were two very active citizens in the street politics and social welfare issues of the inner city. They became both my mentors and co-conspirators.

My reporting opened doors for our activism, and I was able to amplify the inner-city issues of poverty, homelessness, tenants protection, mental health and race relations. I did this by telling the stories of the active citizens of Auckland – many of whom had a lot to teach me about justice and fairness for the vulnerable, the disabled and the marginalised, and about the positive possibilities of community development and civic leadership.

vivian Hutchinson working as a journalist for the City News newspaper in the 1970s, with Auckland Mayor Sir Dove-Meyer Robinson. Photo City News

It was Betty Wark who introduced me to Whina Cooper. Betty herself had grown up in the Hokianga and was part of Whina’s large extended family. Whina had got in touch with her to say she was starting a new organisation to focus on Māori land rights, and she needed Betty’s help. She particularly wanted to talk to a journalist.

I really knew nothing about Whina Cooper at that time, so I went to the Auckland Library to dig up some research. I found out that Whina was the daughter of the prominent Northland rangatira Heremia Te Wake, and had herself had done business with virtually every New Zealand Prime Minister back to George Forbes in the 1930s. She'd worked on Māori economic and social development projects in Northland, and in Auckland city. She had a reputation as a fearsome authoritarian who suffered no fools. She had coached rugby teams, and chaired a branch of Federated Farmers, and was a Justice of the Peace. She had been the first President of the Māori Women’s Welfare League. She’d been honoured for her work in the Māori community with an MBE and a CBE. And she was 79 years of age.

Final Battle Ahead. Whina Cooper photographed at home 1975 by Robin Morrison, NZ Listener

That last point made me particularly curious: What was the new project that she wanted to start at this late stage in her life?

So I jumped on my motorbike and travelled out to the southern Auckland suburb of Panmure where Whina Cooper was living with her son Joseph and his immediate family. I interviewed her about this new organisation that she was starting which she called Matakite – a name she interpreted as “... the ones who can see ahead”.

It was a curious choice for the name of an organisation with political objectives. The term matakite in Maoridom at that time was more often used in a spiritual or wairua context referring to the prophetic visions of a seer.  But for Whina, her new organisation was being set up “... to help the blind, to help those with no perception to see ahead the future.” And what Whina saw ahead was very much in the real world, and needed no divination.

Before European settlement, Māori hapū and iwi had 66 million acres of land. By 1891, after the land wars and confiscations, this area had diminished to just 11 million acres. By 1930, different legislation and further land sales had brought the total acreage down to 4 million acres. In 1975, it was less than 3 million.

Whina Cooper could clearly see that if Māori didn’t do something now about land rights legislation, then the very last lands in tribal ownership would be lost forever. She argued that Māori people needed to unite so that they can fight with all their strength for the retention of their land.

I was able to pitch Whina’s story to my co-editor, and we made it the front-page lead for the next weekly issue of City News, under the headline Matakite: a call to the Maori people.

Front page of the City News, 19th February 1975, the beginning of vivian Hutchinson's coverage of the new Matakite land rights movement.

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THAT INTERVIEW WITH Whina Cooper was not just the beginning of my reporting on Matakite — it also began our friendship and our collaboration. Whina immediately recognised that I was not a newcomer to Māori communities, or to land rights issues. I had spent much of my teenage years at Parihaka marae, in coastal Taranaki, helping out the Taranaki kuia Matarena Raumati Rau, or Aunty Marj, who had connections with my family that had stretched back to the 1930s and 40s.

In the early 1970s, Aunty Marj was leading a restoration project that was converting a former dining room, Te Niho o te Atiawa, into a new meeting house. There were already two marae at Parihaka Pā, but Aunty Marj was intent on turning Te Niho into a place which would serve quite a different function, and possibly also become a place where a different type of conversation could take place.

I’d regularly go out to the pā — which at this time was largely a ghost town — and help Aunty Marj with various projects involved in this restoration, or work in the kitchens and help host people who were visitors to the marae.

Parihaka in the mid-1970s. Te Niho o te Atiawa is the long double-gabled house on the left of the road.

Being with Aunty Marj as a teenager had given me something of an alternative education. I was not just learning about things Māori, but I was being given an entirely different view of what it was to live and belong in Taranaki. I had my eyes opened to the local stories of the land wars and confiscations that I had never heard about at High School.

I also got to learn about the inspiring example of the Parihaka prophets of peace, Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi, and their leadership in acts of passive resistance to the theft of tribal land. Their non-violent protest strategy of fencing and ploughing the land had led to hundreds of Māori men being imprisoned for years in the South Island, without proper trial.

I may have already been growing into the sense that I wanted to be a community activist. But these formative experiences at Parihaka also gave me the early realisation that most of the actual communities of my home province were based on land that had been taken by theft and dishonour. And, by the 1970s, there was almost no mainstream acknowledgement or conversation about this history and its consequences to our communities today. In fact, the average New Zealander barely knew about it at all.

So while it might seem very unlikely that this Pākehā teenage journalist had turned up at her Panmure home to interview her about her new venture, it didn’t seem unlikely to Whina Cooper at all. As far as she was concerned, I was just the right person to do the job, and I had turned up at just the right time.

And, of course, her story and her intentions should be on the front page of the free newspapers that were outside every dairy in central Auckland.

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WHEN WHINA COOPER invited me to join her organising group, she said one phrase that, for me, confirmed my participation.

She said, “We’re in this together.”

She wasn’t talking about her and I personally, but she was referring to the “we” of Māori and Pākehā. She went on to tell me, “We’re not going to solve our land issues unless both Māori and Pākehā make some changes and then figure out how to solve our problems together.”

This notion of “We’re in this together” was not a ploy. She was not in the business of flattering the Saviour Complex that too many Pākehā people end up bringing into their problem-solving activities. Instead, I recognised her statement as a genuine invitation to a collaboration, and that the beneficiaries would be both our peoples.

I’d heard this attitude before, and seen it in action when working alongside Aunty Marj at Parihaka. In fact, the two women were quite similar. Aunty Marj also had a reputation as a kuia of stern authority, yet “We’re in this together” was also one of her basic operating assumptions. Most of her work in Taranaki sought to create bridges of genuine friendship between Māori and Pākehā. Her view was that these bridges would enable us both to step up to our obligations and responsibilities more fully.

Matarena Marjorie Raumati Rau Kupa MBE photographed at Te Rewarewa Pa, overlooking the Waiwhakaiho River, New Plymouth, Taranaki

This bridge-building always seemed to me to be a remarkable invitation – given the weight of our histories, and the scale of the violence and devastation to Māori lives, assets and communities in Taranaki. I’m not at all sure, if the boot was on the other foot, that my own English, Scottish and Irish families would be as capable of offering such goodwill.

But if you knew Aunty Marj, you would soon come to realise that this bridge-building was never an avoidance of difficult conversations, and it was not based on any “We are one people” sentimentality. It was an instruction.

Aunty Marj would point to the words written on Te Whiti o Rongomai’s tombstone at Parihaka, which were also the underlying message of Te Raukura, the white feathers that Taranaki Māori women wore on their head:

He kororia ki te atua i runga rawa

He maungarongo ki runga i te whenua

He whakaaro pai ki nga tangata katoa

These words were not just meant for Christmas cards. They were meant to be taken seriously.

In the face of ignorance, abuse and devastation, the instructions of Glory, Peace and Goodwill were never going to be an easy or simplistic pathway to healing and reconciliation. But to create such a pathway was the work of prophets.

The fact that there had been no Wounded Knee-type of massacre at Parihaka during the sacking of the marae in the 1880s, or that there had been no IRA-style campaign of violence and resistance in the generations since the land confiscations ... is not evidence of the capitulation of a demoralised and defeated people. It is the evidence of a people who have had a determined adherence to the practice of peace.

Aunty Marj Rau (on right) inside the meeting house of Te Niho o te Atiawa, Parihaka 1977

My own time at Parihaka had convinced me that the fact that there was peace to be enjoyed in Taranaki today was largely down to the fact that Taranaki Māori had taken the instructions of Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi seriously.

So when Whina Cooper said “We’re in this together”, I knew that it was as much a wero, a challenge, as it was an invitation.

And if Whina was inviting me into the obligations and responsibilities of working with her on her next project, then I would need to take it seriously. I also had enough experience to expect that this relationship with Whina was going to be a fierce friendship.

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FOR HER NEW initiative to succeed, Whina Cooper had little doubt as to what needed to happen first: Wake up!  And she was determined to call on all the allies of earth and spirit in order to rouse the engagement of her own people.

As she was pulling together this new organisation, you would often see her waving her walking stick to proclaim:

Te Ihi, Te Mana, Te Tapu – Maranga Ra!

At the time I met her, Whina was working on completing a waiata or song that would go on to become the anthem of her Matakite movement.

The first verse of it goes

Na te kore mohio i haere wehewehe

Noatu ai tatou ara tawhitiwhiti

Haere ana i te roanga

Haere ana i roro i nga taua

Ka whakairo noa tatou

An interpretation of the full song is that it speaks to people who are separated and divided:

All we do is sleep, and the important things are not understood. Te Roopu Matakite is about awakening and listening. Its aspirations are yet to be fulfilled . . . but they would be of benefit to all mankind.

The Matakite song was partly inspired by an old poem, Not Understood, by Thomas Bracken. He was an Irish immigrant to New Zealand in the 1870s who also penned what later became the New Zealand national anthem, God Defend New Zealand.

Not Understood was probably just as well known among the poetry readers of his day. My interpretation of Bracken’s poem is that it is about the amnesia that creeps into our lives and enables us to be unkind and even cruel to one another. Perhaps Bracken was reflecting on his own times, and the curtain of forgetting that was already lowering just after the land wars.

As Whina was writing her own verses nearly 100 years later, she knew that one of her jobs would be to pull up that curtain and, in doing so, awaken the current generation to the ongoing dispossession of Māori land.

For Whina’s Matakite was not going to be a project that focused on historical grievances, however unresolved they might be. The new group would be protesting about the ongoing dispossession — through many recent reinventions of land-grab legislation.

This purpose of Matakite would come to be summarised in the determined catch-cry of “Not One More Acre!”

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IT WAS A GROUP of Ngati Wai land rights activists that first approached Whina Cooper to lead a new organisation on Māori land issues.

Ngati Wai was a coastal iwi in Northland whose land stretched between Whangarei and Whangaparoa. The Ngati Wai Action Committee was set up to fight for the retention of their lands when seven-eights of their remaining foreshore properties within Whangarei County were being requisitioned by the Crown and the local Council, and would be compulsorily acquired over a 20-year period. The land in dispute also included the historic ancestral burial grounds of Ngapuhi chiefs at Whananaki, Te Kapua, Oakura, and Whangaruru North. The majority of these lands were being redesignated as either public recreational areas or public open space.

The legal adviser to the Action Committee was a young lawyer called Winston Peters, who was himself of Ngati Wai and Scottish descent. (Winston Peters had just announced that he was standing as the National Party candidate for the parliamentary seat of Northern Māori. In doing so, he was directly taking on Matiu Rata, the Labour Party’s Minister of Māori Affairs).

The Ngati Wai Action Committee were pursuing every opportunity to put an end to any further dispossession – Not One More Acre – and they came to Whina Cooper because they could see that they were not going to make any headway on their local issues until the national legislation that had emboldened councils and government agencies was fundamentally changed.

So they needed a national campaign and a nationally-recognised leader such as Whina Cooper. There was also the added advantage that Whina had links to Ngati Wai by virtue of her first husband who was from the Gilbert family of Ngunguru.

Yet the Ngati Wai Action Committee may or may not have realised the fullest implications of their request. Once they engaged her commitment, Whina would make the cause completely her own.

I talked with a leading member of the Action Committee, Witi McMath, for both an interview in the City News, and a feature article in a national magazine.

The Ngati Wai coastal land in dispute was 4,500 acres, and it was being taken under two acts – the Public Works Act, and the Town and Country Planning Act. Witi McMath told me that council maintained that the land was unproductive and was not being farmed. “They said that by turning it into reserves or open space then it could be utilised by all people. That’s why they wanted to take it out of Māori hands.”

Witi felt that the whole operation was being done because Māori land was considered cheap and easy to get. He was also mindful of the tourist potential of this coastal land as this particular piece of coast was one of the most valuable undeveloped tourist spots in New Zealand. “There was nothing to say they wouldn’t re-designate it out for something else after they’ve got it from us. They’ve done it in the past when they have taken reserved areas and then sold it back to private interests.”

It was natural for the Ngati Wai Action Committee to feel that the local council was discriminating against them through their planning proposals.  At Te Ruatahi there was a strip of land that had been designated for public open space. In the middle of this strip was a block of land that had not been designated, even though it looked exactly the same as the land on either side. The difference was that the undesignated block of land belonged to a brewery.

In a briefing written for Whina and the new Matakite group, the author and academic Dr Ranginui Walker said that the 1967 Māori Affairs Amendment Act had been widely condemned and branded as the “Last Land Grab” by its critics. After 1967, there were many submissions to parliament by the New Zealand Māori Council, the Māori Women’s Welfare League, Māori Incorporations and other associations who sought to bring about changes to the Act and slow down the alienation of Māori land.

But Dr Walker pointed out that while these Māori institutions had been preoccupied with the 1967 Act, other statutes had been brought into play to continue the process of alienation of Māori land. As in the case of the Ngati Wai lands, these laws included the Town and Country Planning Act, the Rating Act and the Counties Amendment Act.

Dr Walker argued that it was “an act of cultural genocide” for the Pākehā to use his political power to keep fashioning laws “... that will eventually strip Māori of his tribal estate”.

Dr Walker concluded that, while our society was undeniably bi-cultural, its social and legal institutions are monocultural:

“There is, for instance, no statute that recognises the cultural attitude of the Māori to land. There is no law that recognises communal ownership of land as a valid title equal in status to individual title. In the name of social justice, such legislation should now be written before it is too late ..."

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Next: 2. Ngahuru - Autumn

 

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