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
The 1975 Māori Land March
a memoir by vivian Hutchinson
3. Takurua — Winter
IT WAS ON RETURNING to Auckland from Taranaki that I began to notice more that Whina was referring to the march as a sacred march.
We were intending to walk over the very land we were fighting for. In many cases, people had given their lives in these land rights disputes. Such a march was never going to be a jolly walk down the road.
Whina explained that the marchers would be taking on the responsibilities of a much wider story of people and their connections to the land. And we wouldn’t be the only ones on the road – we would need to make room for the ancestors who would be walking with us.
It wasn’t until much later — when I was walking on the march itself — that I really began to understand more deeply what Whina meant by this being a sacred march.
I came to appreciate that a land march, this walking itself, is grief-work.
Yes, even nations must come to terms with the grief they have generated, especially in the dishonour of their broken promises.
A land march can begin to address that grief. There is a necessary conversation taking place between our walking and the earth, as we seek to create a genuine pathway to peace and reconciliation.
In Whina’s view, a sacred march would practically mean that every day would begin and end with karakia or prayer, with particular acknowledgement to the mana whenua of the different tribal lands through which we were travelling.
There would be strong discipline expected of the marchers, with people being asked to leave if they couldn’t live up to these expectations.
No drinking or drugs. No visiting hotels when we stopped along the way. No transistor radios while we were walking. We were expected to conform to marae protocol, and treat everyone we meet with respect.
If we encountered any criticism, or hostility from bystanders along the way, we would be expected to hold each other accountable for our own behaviour. We would respond to any provocations in a spirit of peacefulness and goodwill and, if met with force, we were not to respond with any violence ourselves.
The most visible characteristic of Whina’s concept of a sacred march was her instruction that there be no protest placards or flags carried on the march.
She pointed out that the Parihaka prophets or Princess Te Puea never carried placards. And neither did any of Whina’s other mentors. Her view was that protest placards were really a recent media cliché and were designed for photographs in a newspaper. She thought they were a visual assault that too easily became a distraction from a unified message.
“You do not need them,” said Whina. “The people who march have their own mana. They are their own placards.”
The only symbol that the march would be carrying would be the pou whenua. In pre-European times, this would be a large carved pole that a tribe would place in the ground as a symbol of land ownership. The pou whenua would be the single symbol of the intention of the march, meaning “This land is ours!” As such, it would become a potent expression of mana and rangatiratanga.
In her early speeches of her campaigning, Whina said her intention was to carry the pou whenua from Cape Reinga to Wellington, before sticking it in the ground outside Parliament as a challenge to legislators.
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SO HOW DID the march preparation activities get funded? Where did the money come from?
I can tell you that I never saw Whina Cooper filling in a funding application. Nor was she lining up before any philanthropic foundation to plead the virtue of her intentions.
Whina Cooper was already known as a formidable fundraiser. With her charisma and remarkable oratory, she had headlined many fundraising cultural events in the Māori Community Centre in central Auckland in the 50s and 60s, and she had led the fundraising to establish the Te Unga Waka urban marae in Epsom. She also had a reputation for being rigorous about who was looking after the money, and doing the book-keeping.
But when I joined the organising committee, I soon came to understand that the financial backbone of this new initiative was going to be its faith in the Māori cultural economy of koha (gift, or donation). As organisers, we were undertaking the shared risk that if we were doing the right thing, then the money would follow.
There was nothing magic about this process. And in the meantime – until people caught up with our vision – we paid for things ourselves.
Once Whina and the Matakite organisers published our intentions, we looked for allies and supporters ... and all sorts of people came out of the woodwork. Appeals were made to the existing networks of community and activist groups, marae, the union movement, and sympathetic churches. Every person, whatever their modest circumstances, was invited and encouraged to make some sort of contribution. A bus, the loan of a car for a month, some food, some petrol, medical and cooking equipment, and yes, some cash ... they were all offered on a koha basis.
Koha is a fragile basis on which to base any sustained struggle. But during this time, I learned that the cultural economy of koha is not primarily about the money or goods being offered. It is about the relationship that was established through the gift. The giving, in itself, was a way of weaving the tangible foundations of this new movement.
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ONE OF THE SIGNIFICANT networks of allies and supporters came from CARE, or the Citizen’s Association for Racial Equality. It was during this period that I first met and reported on the activities of David Williams, who was the CARE Secretary. In later years, we would go on to become great friends and often travel to significant cultural events together.
CARE Secretary David Williams, in the 1970s
CARE was an unusual and inspiring group of Auckland active citizens who were playing a key role in generating a public conversation about racism and race relations.
David had brought some unique skills to his role as CARE Secretary — he had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and had taught law at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. In 1975, he was lecturing in history and law at Auckland University.
David is Pākehā, as were the majority of the CARE committee which included some other distinctive personalities such as Tom Newnham, Joris de Bres, Keith Sorrenson, Richard Northey, Ian Mitchell, Mary Hume and Helen Clark (later to become a Labour Prime Minister).
And the committee also included some key Māori and Pacific community activists such as Betty Wark, Fred Ellis, Helen Kesha, Titewhai Harawira and Agnes Tuisamoa.
When CARE members learned about the proposal for the land march, they immediately saw it as an opportunity to make sure that Pākehā were educated about the ongoing issues of Māori land, and how these concerns could also tell us about the real state of our nation in terms of race relations, equity and opportunity.
As the planning for the land march progressed, many CARE members also took it as their role to become practical allies by reaching into their wider community and church networks to gather support in terms of fundraising, petition-signing, and help with other resources and logistics.
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MEANWHILE, AT THE BEGINNING of July, things were starting to stir in government offices in Wellington. Matiu Rata, the Minister of Māori Affairs, thought it was time to try and stem the growing support for Matakite and the Māori Land March. He decided to launch a massive publicity campaign to tell would-be marchers of the progress he had made in settling Māori land grievances since he took office at the end of 1972.
Not on his watch. Matiu Rata photographed in 1968
It was no real secret that Mat Rata did not want this demonstration to take place on his watch. He felt undermined and discredited, and he saw the existence of Matakite as a vote of no-confidence in his efforts.
He was, after all, the first Māori that had been appointed Minister of Lands, and Minister of Māori Affairs. And it was especially galling to him that the march was proposed to start in the Far North, at Te Hapua, which was his own home town.
1975 was also going to be an election year for a Labour Government that was still on its first term. He did not want to see his political opponents use the march to their own advantage.
Mat Rata travelled to Auckland to launch his campaign which he hoped would get across the “facts” which would counter “a great lack of knowledge” about his many steps taken to overcome land problems.
These steps included the return of thousands of acres of land to Māori owners, plans to make changes to the Town and Country Planning Act, and his instruction to the Māori Trustee not to alienate Māori land without a Court order. Rata was also encouraging as many Māori land owners as possible to combine their interests into Māori Land Incorporations.
Rata said that the idea behind his publicity campaign was to let people know what has been going on “so they can judge for themselves”.
The campaign included a feature interview with the City News. Because of my role with Te Roopu o te Matakite, I had to step back from undertaking the interview, and it was done by an independent journalist, Wayne Brittenden.
In introducing his interview, Brittenden commented:
“As a person, Mat Rata is warm and congenial, as a political interview subject he skirted many direct questions with rambling answers that employed all the familiar expressions from the politician’s phrasebook.
“Mr Rata is in an unenviably pressured role as the representative of the increasingly impatient Māori community, and the Cabinet Minister of a party suffering from a severe bout of pre-election jitters.”
The Matakite organisers immediately convened a meeting to discuss the Minister’s publicity campaign. We issued a press statement that gave a different view on many of the “facts” and specific points in Mat Rata’s comments. And we noted that while Mr Rata might feel contented with his performance as Minister of Māori Affairs, there was still a widespread sense of bitterness and impatience over the fact that the government hadn’t done more. The statement pointed out that
“… The march is an illustration of this growing impatience and is designed to make Parliament act with greater haste to satisfy Māori demands. It is also designed to provide the Minister with the support to implement more meaningful policies.
“Despite government action, we continue to lose Māori land. Te Roopu o te Matakite wants to stop the alienation of Māori land altogether. We don’t just want to slow it down.”
The publicity campaign was not the end of the matter, as Mat Rata and his team would continue to reach out to their own considerable networks to discourage their participation in Matakite and the land march.
And while this was going on, the march organisers had no idea that Mat Rata’s influence was much closer to home than they realised.
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IT ALSO FELT to the organisers, and to the Cooper family members in particular, that there had been moves taken to amplify the discontent with Whina Cooper’s own track record of dealings on Māori land. The family felt that some of the rumours were being spread by Māori Affairs officers who were loyal to their Minister.
As Michael King, Whina’s authorised biographer, later reported,
“... rumours began to spread from the minister’s office (not from Rata himself) that Whina was a hypocrite, because she herself had sold family land to Pākehās and made a great deal of money from the transactions. It was not difficult to find people in Panguru to add smoke to this fire by talking about Whina’s wheeling and dealing which they had not understood, and which some of the members of the community there had resented.”
Whina was naturally upset about these stories. They were being put about by people who did not know the details of her earlier business activities and land transactions. She told her biographer that, in order to stop the rumours, she arranged a meeting to confront one of the culprits at the Department of Māori Affairs in Auckland. The man subsequently apologised and admitted that the allegations were groundless.
Meanwhile, Mat Rata’s wide network of contacts were encouraged to make their own independent statements to news media to show that the support for the march was far from unanimous. Ironically, one of these statements later came from Waipu Pita, an elder of the Ngati Wai. He told the Northern Advocate,
“Mrs Whina Cooper is putting into the minds of our young people the idea to march on Parliament, while failing to tell them that if they lack land, it may be because of the selfishness of their own parents. Many Māori have sold their land to the Pākehā. Do they want that land back, to sell it again? ... I am sorry that the march puts Mr Rata in a position where it appears he is discredited before his people.”
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Fundraiser Ticket for the Matakite Benefit Concert at Te Unga Waka marae, Epsom, July 1975, sponsored by the Maori Women's Welfare League.
IT WASN’T UNTIL the end of July that Whina Cooper held her main Matakite fundraising event at Te Unga Waka. It was a very familiar context for her, and the event was being sponsored and co-organised by the Māori Women’s Welfare League.
The night saw performers from Hato Petera College, Tamaki College, and the Te Rongopai cultural group. A highlight of the evening was the unveiling of the freshly-carved pou whenua. This had been carved by Moka Puru, Whina’s son-in-law. The design features lizards, which Moka explained would have special significance for the marchers because lizards were territorial and never left their land.
The long pole was carried into the marae by two of the college pupils. After congratulating the performers, Whina said,
“What good is it performing if we have no land and we have to perform on Pākehā land? I don’t want our young to be a burden on the State. The pou whenua means that this land is ours. We’ll stick it in the ground to say the land will be ours.”
Interview with pou whenua carver Moka Puru from the documentary Te Matakite o Aotearoa -- the Māori Land March, directed by Geoff Steven (1975) http://youtu.be/fDRQYEr-yks
WHILE OTHER PREPARATIONS for the march were progressing, Whina herself was bringing together a new element of the Matakite strategy. She wanted the march to carry with it a “Memorial of Right” that would enshrine the demands of the Matakite movement and could be formally signed by rangatira along the route of our journey.
Again, in pursuing this strategy, Whina was symbolically weaving this 1975 demonstration into previous examples of Māori appeals for their land rights. King Tawhiao in 1886, and King Te Rata in 1914, had both taken petitions to the British Crown in London. These expeditions had involved the preparation of a Memorial or Statement of Māori Rights.
Whina’s own Memorial of Right was to be somewhat clouded in secrecy. She didn’t want the press getting hold of its details, and for it to be pulled to bits by public debate before it was delivered.
It was envisaged as a large scroll that could be ceremonially unrolled each night on the march, before inviting local rangatira to add their signatures. It would be housed in a leather-bound box, and wrapped in a protective cloak. As the Memorial gathered more signatures on its journey down the North Island, it would also grow in stature or mana and come to be considered a sacred artifact of our protest.
The Memorial would be addressed to all the Members of the House of Representatives – not just the Government – and they would be personally named up front.
Whina had asked her son, Joseph Cooper, to come up with the wording on the document. Joseph chose to write the three clauses in somewhat archaic terms. But in his final paragraph, he cut to the chase:
“... that all pernicious clauses in every statute of the present day or in new statutes of the future, which have the power to take Māori land, alienate Māori land, designate Māori land, or confiscate Māori land, be repealed and never to be administered on the remaining Māori land at the present day, and whereas management, retention and control remain with our Māori people and their descendants in perpetuity. Ake ake.”
Whina’s intention was that when the marchers got to Parliament Grounds, they would hand the Memorial over to the Prime Minister, and this would constitute the climax of our month-long demonstration.
Acting Parliamentary Speaker, Jonathan Hunt, with the Memorial of Right and cloak presented to him by Te Roopu o te Matakite, after the Māori Land March reached Parliament Grounds on 13th October 1975. He is also holding the signed forms of the Petition of Support. Photo by the Evening Post.
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AFTER WHINA EXPLAINED to us the purpose of the Memorial of Right, I discussed with her the need to also have a much wider petition. I understood the importance of her strategy of focusing on the signatures of tribal rangatira ... but we also needed a strategy to solicit the signatures of ordinary citizens – Māori and Pākehā – who supported the protest.
Whina agreed, and asked me to design a petition form that would be carried with us on the march, and we could invite onlookers to sign it as we walked through the towns and cities.
Whina was adamant that every page of the petition would carry her own signature. And she also wrote an introduction explaining the reasons for the march.
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AT THE END of August, we finally broke through into the mainstream media when the weekly newsmagazine The Listener decided to do a feature article on Whina and the preparations for the march.
Whina also did an Encounter television interview, which TV2 curiously promoted by describing Whina as a “80-year-old radical”:
"... Mrs Cooper’s view is that the march will be a final bid by Maori people to prevent the creation of a landless proletariat with no dignity, no mana, and no stake in society."
The march organisers felt that the media exposure was finally giving us some of the national coverage that the land march needed in order to attract more tangible support. We needed as wide a group of New Zealanders as possible to be informed about the reasons for the march, so that there would be support for the necessary political action on land rights issues.
Throughout the campaigning, I continued to write articles and updates in the City News, including a larger front-page feature that discussed the history of Maori land rights issues, the reasons for the Matakite march, how the current legislation was continuing the land alienation, and the Ngati Wai case that was a clear example of discrimination.
A version of this article was later reprinted as an information brochure that would be passed out during the march itself as we walked through towns and cities.
Information brochure handed out during the progress of the Maori Land March, taken from articles by vivian Hutchinson in the City News.
I had begun this feature article with a quote from the well-known New Zealand poet James K. Baxter. He had become more recently famous for leading a hippie commune experiment at the Maori community of Jerusalem on the Whanganui River. He died in 1972, but in that year he produced a small pamphlet called A Walking Stick for an Old Man in which he outlined his wide-ranging thinking on Maori issues and the state of race relations in New Zealand. This pamphlet was later reprinted in the first edition of the local hippie guide-book, The New Zealand Whole Earth Catalogue under the title He Tokotoko mo te Koroheke.
Baxter’s thoughts had a huge impact on me at the time when I was a teenager living and working on the marae at Parihaka. As I read He Tokotoko, I felt as though my own intentions were also being named and seen.
In it, Baxter penned a memorable comment about land rights:
“ ... In relation to Maori lands, the government is like a dog crouching under a table on which somebody is crumbling a loaf of bread. Each time that crumbs fall to the ground the government licks them up with its tongue. It hopes in time to devour the whole loaf. This is the effect of the present Maori land legislation.”
— James K. Baxter, He Tokotoko Mo Te Koroheke (1972)
This seemed the perfect allegory to introduce my own article on what our land march was for.
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JUST A MONTH before the march was about to start, we finally gained an Editorial comment in the New Zealand Herald:
"The march will, of course, be more than a demonstration. It will be an exercise in logistics of a scale and nature rarely undertaken in this land. Even though only a hard core of people may march the whole distance, between some stages probably thousands of people will be on the road. Many of them will require feeding, overnight accommodation, and other support which the places they will reach will be hard pressed to provide without advance organisation.
“There will, too, be more than a touch of sadness about the march. Can it really halt or reverse a process that began more than a century and a half ago? Can old traditions of land ownership be reconciled with new realities, not least in their tribal implications? At best the answers are clouded in doubt. But the spirit and sense of purpose that promote the striving are in themselves achievement."
And a few days later, we heard from The Auckland Star:
"The extent to which the march snowballs or tapers off will tell the Government and the country much about the Maoris today. Is land still "the soul of the Maori people," as Mrs Cooper and others assert, now that the race is partly an urban one? Does legislation recently passed and promised on Maori Affairs and the Treaty of Waitangi really satisfy true Maori feeling? Can the race's culture survive if more of its land goes? And, more fundamentally, is this resurgence and reverence for the land a wave of the future or nostalgia for the past?"
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AND THEN AT A TIME when we least expected it – just two weeks before we were about to begin – the march was called off.
It was Betty Wark that told me, when she suddenly turned up in a taxi outside my flat, saying we had to go to a meeting. She said that the march had been cancelled, and Whina was going to lead a deputation of elders to Wellington to meet with the government and talk about legislative changes. A meeting with the Prime Minister, with full press coverage, was also being organised for the following week.
To say that we both were angry is probably an understatement. There was a feeling of deep betrayal by Whina who had made this unilateral decision without consultation with the rest of the Matakite organisation. We could only anticipate a sense of disempowerment amongst the whole organising team.
We were not unaware of the other forces that had long been in play. And the Minister of Māori Affairs, Mat Rata, had bided his time to see whether march preparations were indeed coming together before he made his move.
Just three weeks before the march was due to start, Rata had met with about 200 march organisers and supporters at Te Unga Waka marae in a five-hour meeting behind closed-doors. No press were allowed. Here, an initial proposal was made for organisers to call off the march and instead go to Wellington and put their case to the Prime Minister. The idea was soundly turned down by those at the meeting.
But obviously this had not proved to be the end of the matter. Just a few days later, Whina Cooper had unilaterally endorsed Mat Rata’s proposal.
One of the big surprises to us at that Te Unga Waka meeting was to find that our main kaumatua – the man who had led us in marae protocol during the previous six months, and had spoken for Whina in those ceremonial spaces when it was the role of men to speak – had been revealed as a Labour Party plant. When Betty Wark and I sat down with him to ask what was going on, the first words he said to us were, “I am the Minister’s man.”
Anyway, with the march definitely called off, Betty and others decided to call an urgent extraordinary meeting at the Māori Community Centre in Freemans Bay and clear the air about what had happened and see if anything of our plans for a march could be rescued.
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THE MEETING TURNED OUT to be a fairly small gathering of the usual suspects of the central city organisers. At first, we had no idea whether Whina Cooper would actually turn up. But, before it started, she did indeed arrive with a large entourage of family and other supporters. Her supporters would easily have outnumbered the other people in the room.
We sat in a circle and we all got to speak and express the sense of betrayal and frustration that our six months of organising and campaigning was going to end in nothing.
Titewhai Harawira, in particular, did not hold back her opinions and fierce feedback to Whina. The air was thick with accusation and disappointment.
Whina and her supporting speakers weathered this feedback and stuck to their position. They shared the view that a delegation to Parliament would have a more direct and immediate effect on the land rights issues we were concerned about. If we could directly change the legislation, then it would make a huge difference right throughout the country. The delegation was a practical and wise alternative that meant we didn’t have to step into the complete unknown of an untried and untested demonstration.
Someone then suggested that we take a vote on the matter as a way of bringing our proceedings to a resolution.
It was quickly agreed, and I just as quickly realised that the march was probably lost. Whina had clearly much more support in the room, and the vote was only going to confirm that.
So we went around the circle quite slowly as each person said their “Yes” or “No” as to whether the march should go ahead. Several of the “Yes” votes, myself included, said that regardless of the outcome of the meeting, and regardless whether Whina was coming with us or not, we were going to go to Te Hapua and march anyway.
As the voting slowly progressed around the room, it was as if all the events of the previous six months were somehow focused on this moment.
I was sitting directly across from Whina Cooper in the circle. I looked up and realised that she was staring at me directly. She wasn’t happy. It was the sort of look that could cut a tunnel into stone.
The voting process then got closer to where Whina was sitting, and she was getting more and more uncomfortable. Then she suddenly stood up and announced that the march would go ahead after all, and she’d see us all at Te Hapua. The voting was immediately stopped.
Whina may have had the numbers to get her own way in a democratic count. But she was not going to submit to any democracy. She was going to make her own call.
Those of us who were determined to march were initially dumbfounded, and then later somewhat relieved. Whina’s family members were exasperated. Several of them told me later that they did not want the march to be called off, especially after dedicating every spare minute over the last six months to its preparations. But they’d fallen in line when the matriarch had made her decision. Now they would have to emotionally do another about-turn.
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This whole process of “calling off” the march — and then deciding to go ahead after all — was exhausting for all the march organisers. It had been a serious assault on our sense of trust and cohesion with one another at a time when there was still so much left to do.
More than this, the Matakite team were being brought face-to-face with the power issues of how this demonstration would play itself out on a national stage. It wasn’t just a mad and naive idea any longer. There was going to be a price to pay for confronting that power. We could no longer disappear into the magical thinking of the possibilities we imagined. Now was the time when we had to shoulder the responsibility and accountability of the huge risk we were undertaking.
Despite all the preparations, no-one really knew what was going to happen. And in many ways this last-minute conflict and show-down with Whina was like the labour pains of giving birth to that unknown.
The incident had its consequences. After the decision to call off the march was reversed, the kaumatua that had been leading our interactions on the marae was never seen at a Matakite meeting again. And the Auckland Star reported that Prime Minister Bill Rowling, the Minister of Māori Affairs Mat Rata, the Minister of Works and Development Mick Connelly, and the Minister of Internal Affairs Henry May, were all left “twiddling their thumbs” as they waited for their scheduled meeting in Wellington with Whina Cooper that didn’t happen.
I was left with a different appreciation of Whina as a woman, as a leader and a rangatira. She too had her doubts. She too was already vulnerable and exhausted. She too had fears that it could all completely collapse and turn into a fiasco that would be a permanent blow to her mana.
But there was also something else there. She might have been grumpy about it but, for all her authoritarian tendencies, there was also steel in her willingness to really listen to her people ... and when it felt right, to change her mind.
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ANOTHER MATAKITE SUPPORTER that I became good friends with at this time was the poet, Hone Tuwhare. He turned up at one of our early organising meetings, and his immediate response to hearing Whina speak was, “What can I do to help?”
Hone Tuwhare
Hone was living in the South Island at the time, but was doing quite a bit of traveling while performing his poetry readings. He took it upon himself to meet up with various interested parties, explain what the march was about, and solicit their support.
He would often stay with me in my flat when he was in Auckland, and we would spend hours in wandering conversations “trying to fix the world.” But Hone was also a high-functioning heavy drinker, and I think the bigger attraction of being able to stay at my flat was that I was only a couple of streets away from the Ponsonby Hotel known as the Gluepot. And Hone was a regular in the public bar.
So I would rarely see him in the evenings, but after hotel closing time, he would walk to the flat, politely let himself in, and ‘crash’ on my divan bed.
On the week before we were to travel up to the Far North, I was about to publish a final feature in the City News about the march starting the following weekend. As expected, Hone was staying with me and getting himself together for the month ahead. I don’t think I really fully appreciated his own struggles with this commitment – he was signing up for a month of sobriety and he didn’t want to let anyone down.
I got up early one morning to go into the office where we were manually laying out the design of the editorial pages for the next weekly issue of the newspaper. Hone was fast asleep on the divan in my room. But he had been up early in the morning, and there on my writing desk was a poem he had finished just a few hours beforehand. A note said it was his koha for my hospitality.
I published it in the City News the next day.
The New Zealand Land March on Wellington
Hepetema 14 - Oketopa 17, 1975What will I wear? What can I afford to wear? And will my landlord keep my flat for me in Dunedin? This long walk: what a hell of a thing.
I need a haversack. Who will lend me one? I might have to carry my gear in a sugarbag with flax tied to the bottom corners: no sweat. But I need a raincoat. Who will
trust me with one in the immense time of Spring when showers bless the earth? Eh? I am old. Already wrinkles spread inexorably: inching, inching. They’re not all of
them laughter-lines. Agh, what a hell of a thing. But it won’t be a lonely walk. People all around and mostly young: from blue-brown with bits more added right on
up to off-white? Jesus, how self-conscious can you get. Like man, I only want to last the distance, right?
Yeah: and all the different people worrying differently and separately about the decision and the action of commitment they each have taken to grab the burning but elusive
star together. And together not knowing what lies at the end of the star’s reach. Together, not knowing whether they will get a punch in the face at the end of the
road, or, with much pain learn that it is just the beginning... My feet are beginning to ache already. The cracks on my Māori feet are beginning
to widen, my blood turned on. Do not laugh.
Laugh only when the blisters fade with the jaded politicians and their cunning.
Laugh only when the small spies soft-pies pie-eyed freckled ladies and their mafia-men with dark glasses are dug out like bed-bugs from among us. Be watchful, watchful.
I need a haversack. Who will lend me one? I need a raincoat. Who will trust me in a time of Spring when flowers clamour for the yellow and the blue,
the red the green of the life-giving earth? What a good time to take a walk.
— Hone Tuwhare
Hone Tuwhare poem from the documentary Te Matakite o Aotearoa -- the Māori Land March, directed by Geoff Steven (1975) http://youtu.be/vYNxGNbWyV8
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AS THE MARCH ITSELF got closer, at the back of many of our minds was the objective we had set ourselves: how could we cover so many miles each day on foot?
Only a ‘hard core’ of marchers would be expected to walk every day. The others – kuia, kaumatua, and family members with children – would travel most of the way in vehicles, before joining the marchers as we went through the main streets of the towns and cities.
But even for the ‘hard core’, the expectations of walking the large distances on our itinerary just didn’t seem possible. The average fit person might be able to keep up walking 20 miles each day for a month but, beyond this, our best intentions were likely to prove to be impractical.
And there was also another thing to consider: Marae protocol meant that we would have to be at the next venue by four o'clock in the afternoon, and be rested and ready for the ceremonial welcome and speeches that each tribal group would be expected to give.
A collective achievement. Witi McMath and Tom Poata organising the marching route during the Māori Land March, September 1975. Photo by Christian Heinegg. This image was used as the poster for "Not One More Acre" the 40th anniversary exhibition at the Turnbull Gallery, National Library, Wellington September-December 2015
It was Witi McMath who came up with the details of our collective system of marching. His solution to our ‘impossible’ task was to break the marchers up into smaller groups and – by using our buses, mini-vans and cars – space these groups out every 20 miles. In this way, everyone would be walking their specific piece of the march at the same time.
Although we were just making all this up as we went along ... this strategy for our marching was an inspired piece of organising. As Witi McMath explained it at the time, Te Roopu o te Matakite as a whole would be doing the march. He said that was important for us all to understand that this protest was going to be a collective achievement ... and not an individual one.
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Next: 4. Kōanga - Spring
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.
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
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
Matakite
The 1975 Māori Land March
a 50th Anniversary Memoir
by vivian Hutchinson
download as a PDF
“Who will trust me in a time of Spring when flowers clamour for
the yellow and the blue, the red the green of the life-giving earth?”
— Hone Tuwhare
I WAS ONLY 19-years old when I first met Whina Cooper, and was invited to join her new land rights action group called Te Roopu o te Matakite.
Even though I was a young Pākehā man, I had spent a significant part of my teenage years growing up and helping out at the Māori community of Parihaka, in coastal Taranaki.
It was unusual for this time, but my experiences at Parihaka had made me very familiar with the history of the Taranaki wars over land, the legislative confiscations that had followed the wars, and the non-violent campaign of resistance by Taranaki Māori to this land-grab.
So it is perhaps no great mystery that, in early 1975, I found myself in Auckland with Whina Cooper as she was shaping up the strategy behind her new land-rights group.
What is perhaps a greater surprise was that, during her inaugural meeting to establish this group, I was able to suggest to Whina the idea of the Māori Land March — a 1000-km protest walk from the top of the North Island down to Parliament Grounds in Wellington. It was envisaged as a non-violent demonstration against the ongoing theft of Māori land, and a way to shift the political indifference that surrounded land rights issues.
In the next six months following that inaugural meeting, I had the privilege of working within Te Roopu o te Matakite to make the land march a reality. And I was also part of the core group of marchers who collectively walked from Te Hapua (near Cape Reinga) down the North Island to Wellington.
The 1975 Land March has since been recognised as one of the catalysing events of the modern Māori renaissance. It brought the issue of Māori land back into the public spotlight, and connected a new generation of activists to a much longer history of protest and peaceful resistance over land rights issues.
It also built a much wider public mandate for action over land grievances, and in so doing has proven to be a turning point in reshaping both Māori and Pākehā culture.
This is my memoir of how the land march was created. It is obviously an inadequate account. It is one person’s perspective on what has been a collective endeavour for justice and reconciliation. The land march was also part of a movement for change that stretched well beyond Whina Cooper’s own remarkable leadership, and the activities of Te Roopu o te Matakite in the 1970s.
It may seem unusual for a Pākehā man to be so centrally involved in what was essentially a Māori-led initiative. Yet at the time, while I was often challenged about my role in the organising of the land march, I never felt I was in the wrong place.
My participation was encouraged and well supported by friends and mentors, from both within Te Roopu o te Matakite and elsewhere. These people fostered in me the strong conviction that our human capacity to address issues of justice, to solve problems, and to create the communities we want to live in, is at its best when we find ways of working together.
Fifty years later, despite the ups and downs of a lifetime of community activism, this basic conviction continues to drive my work as an active citizen.
But back in 1975, I obviously had a lot to learn. As perhaps did all of us involved with Te Roopu o te Matakite. This memoir shares some of the stories of what that learning journey had in store for us, as we worked together to create something that hadn’t been done before.
Start: 1. Raumati - Summer
home 1.Raumati 2.Ngahuru 3.Takurua 4.Kōanga
Glastonbury, watercolour by Marianne Muggeridge (1972) from collection of Matarena Raumati Rau Kupa
Aunty Marj and Glastonbury
WHILE WELCOMING and being curious about all spiritual paths, Aunty Marj was herself a committed Anglican, with a special affinity for St Mary's Church (later, Cathedral) in central New Plymouth.
Her youngest brother, Tikitūterangi Raumati, had been the first Anglican Maori minister ordained in St Mary's, and when he retired he became the kaumatua of the Cathedral.
Aunty Marj often reminded visitors to Parihaka that Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi were Christian prophets, steeped in biblical teachings as well as mātauranga Māori. She would point to the memorial stone on Te Whiti's grave and remind people that the inscription there was the Christian message of peace and goodwill as sung by the angels gathered at the birth of the child of Christ.
To Aunty Marj, the Anglican Church had indigenous Celtic roots that long pre-dated the arrival of the Roman Church in England in the sixth century AD. The folk histories of these roots tell stories of a young Jesus traveling to England with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a tin trader familiar with the area. This journey to England is celebrated by the poet William Blake in his words for the hymn “Jerusalem”:
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green:
And was the holy Lamb of God,
On England’s pleasant pastures seen!
The folk histories also recount how Joseph of Arimathea established the first Christian church on British soil at Glastonbury in the 1st century AD.
Stained glass detail from St John’s church in Glastonbury showing Joseph planting his staff in Wearyall Hill.
When Arimathea arrived at Glastonbury, he was carrying a walking staff which had been cut from the same tree that Roman soldiers used to make the mock Crown of Thorns that they placed on Christ's head during his crucifixion. The long journey to Glastonbury had been exhausting, and Arimathea and his group stopped to rest on a hill that was later named Wearyall Hill. He struck his thorn staff into the earth, whereupon it miraculously rooted, and burst into bloom. That Holy Thorn was preserved for future generations when cuttings were planted in the grounds of Glastonbury Abbey.
The Holy Thorn blooms every year at Christmas
THE GLASTONBURY LEGENDS arrived in New Plymouth during the mid-1800s, with its first European settlers, and the construction of the stone church of St Mary's. A cutting of the Glastonbury Thorn was planted in the church grounds by Archdeacon Govett in 1860.
Aunty Marj often took visitors to the tree, which still survives today. She would re-tell the stories of the early roots of Celtic Christianity and the legends of Joseph of Arimathea. She recounted how the original Holy Thorn would miraculously flower in mid-Winter on Christmas Day, rather than in the usual Springtime of similar trees.
And at Christmastime each year, cut blooms of the Holy Thorn were sent from Glastonbury to Queen Elizabeth II, head of the Anglican Church, as a reminder of the roots of the Christmas message and its arrival in England.
In her 80s, Aunty Marj expressed a wish to travel to Glastonbury and walk on Wearyall Hill where, after two thousand years, a living descendant of that original Holy Thorn was still standing.
Her family and friends fundraised to enable this journey which Aunty Marj undertook with her sister Mana.
Moewai Atarea beside the Glastonbury Thorn, planted by Archdeacon Govett in grounds of St Mary’s Church in 1860
Parihaka Earth Festivals
1978-1984
IN SEPTEMBER 1978, a series of small gatherings began at Parihaka marae which introduced a whole new generation of Pakeha people to a Māori world on their doorstep. It also awakened many of the participants to a history and inheritance of war and the opposition to the land confiscations that took place in Taranaki in the 19th century.
This cycle of gatherings continued to be held annually for the next seven years, and saw a steady stream of Pakeha visitors from throughout New Zealand and the world come to respect and honour the legacy of Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi, the Parihaka prophets of Peace, and to learn more about the passive resistance struggles of Taranaki Māori.
The gatherings were also designed to be cross-cultural “festivals” which featured workshops and conversations about environmental concerns, alternative lifestyles and the diverse spiritual traditions which offered insights into creating healthy communities through justice, peace and reconciliation.
THE PARIHAKA EARTH FESTIVALS grew out of the friendship between Taranaki kuia Matarena Raumati Rau-Kupa (Aunty Marj), local community activist vivian Hutchinson and the Auckland-based astrologer Gretchen Lawlor. Kuia Matarena saw the gatherings as part of her vision of welcoming the “students and teachers of the world” to Parihaka to learn about the example and heritage of the prophets of Peace.
For the previous decade, kuia Matarena had been leading a restoration project on the marae in which the former dining room, Te Niho o te Atiawa, was transformed into a new meeting house. She was supported in this work by a large network of elders, friends and relations, including the Parihaka kuia Ina Okeroa, Sally Karena and Neta Wharehoka, and kaumatua Te Ru Koriri Richard Wharehoka.
At the recommendation of Gretchen Lawlor, the first Earth Festival was timed to coincide with the Spring Equinox, 21st September, which was also the International Day of Peace. Later gatherings were either held around the Spring or Autumn Equinoxes.
Kuia Matarena gave the name “Te Raa Aranga”, or “day of emergence” to the first Spring gathering, recognising that this was a sacred festival that had been celebrated by communities for thousands of years in places like Stonehenge in Britain, and had also been observed in many other cultures around the globe.
When Matarena was asked one evening as to why she was hosting the Festivals at this time, she replied that these gatherings would help remind Pakeha people that they also come from indigenous traditions.
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THE EARTH FESTIVALS were multi-generational and multi-cultural and attracted participants from all parts of the country. The gathering sizes could fluctuate between 30-100 people. There was a particularly large number of young people who turned up who were in their late teenage years or their early 20s.
The popular youth culture at the time was the American and British counter-cultural movement commonly known as the hippies. This was essentially a reaction (or “counter”) to the post-war consumer society of the 1950s and 60s.
The hippie movement became an explosion of alternative ideas and lifestyles which flourished in New Zealand in the late 1970s culminating in a series of huge summer music festivals like the Nambassa gathering in the Coromandel.
This counter-cultural movement could be seen beyond the music to fashions in clothing and the arts and publishing, as well as a growing interest in community living, co-operatives, organic gardening, vegetarianism and natural healing ... and a fresh push for the civil liberties of women, minorities, and gay and lesbian people.
This was a time that also saw an explosion of interest into deeper aspects of Christianity, as well as exploring an alternative array of religions, spiritual enquiries and “personal growth” practices.
When such a large number of these “alternative” Pakeha young people turned up at Parihaka to the Earth Festivals, they drew much curiosity and sometimes consternation or amusement from the Parihaka locals. Yet they were generously welcomed and hosted ... while, in later years, earning the tongue-in-cheek label of “Ngati Hipi”.
Whina Cooper (1895—1994) speaking at Owae Marae, Waitara on Maui Pomare Day, 27 June 1975, beginning her campaign to gain support for the Māori Land March. photo by John Miller
Māori Land March leaving Te Hapua, 14 September 1975 with vivian Hutchinson, Cyril Chapman (carrying the pou whenua), and Moka Puru. photo by The Auckland Star
A SIGNIFICANT INFLUENCE on these gatherings in the 1970s was the emergence of a new phase of indigenous land rights activism, and its impact on the views of mainstream Pakeha society.
Kuia Matarena and the elders of Te Niho had been active supporters of the Matakite Māori Land March led by Dame Whina Cooper in 1975.
vivian Hutchinson had been on the organising committee of Te Roopu o te Matakite and campaigned with Whina Cooper to gain support for the Land March in the six months before it started. Gretchen Lawlor and her partner Steve Tollestrup had also walked on the Land March, which left Te Hapua in the Far North on September 14th and reached Parliament Grounds in Wellington a month later. This protest had a direct influence on the establishment of the Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal and became a significant influence in later land rights struggles.
By 1977, the main focus of Māori land rights protest was on the occupation of Takaparawhau (Bastion Point) at Orakei in Auckland City. This was led by Joe Hawke of Ngati Whatua who had also been one of the organisers of the Māori Land March. There had also been a connection between the Bastion Point protestors and Parihaka that had been reinforced by a private visit by the Ngati Whatua leaders to Te Niho o te Atiawa during their time of occupation.
On 25th May 1978, however, the government of the day sent in more than 600 army and police officers to forcibly remove the protestors, arresting 222 people. They demolished the meeting house, other make-shift buildings, and the community gardens.
The Ngati Whatua leadership responded to this sacking with peaceful and passive resistance – a resolve that showed that Bastion Point had become the Parihaka of a new generation.
The negative public reaction to these government interventions later proved to be a turning point in national attitudes towards Māori grievances.
The police cordon around the protest village at Bastion Point during the eviction on 25th May 1978. Photo Ministry for Culture and Heritage
IT WAS ALSO in response to this climate of protest and dissent that the idea of the Earth Festivals at Parihaka took root. Kuia Matarena advocated that, alongside the necessary acts of protest and resistance, we also needed to create places that explored a different conversation between Māori and Pākehā, and one that reached across racial, political and spiritual differences.
Her view was that as we faced our difficult histories together and addressed the ongoing questions of justice, we also needed to lay a much deeper groundwork for the friendships that could lead to peace and reconciliation.
The Earth Festivals were innovative in that, at this time in the 1970s, there were just not that many opportunities for Pakeha people to visit marae and get to know a Māori world on its own terms. Most of the participants were keenly aware of the privilege being offered to them, and the learning and responsibilities that came with such an invitation.
The Festivals were influential in that they introduced participants to a history and a face of New Zealand that they had never experienced in their own families, or been taught at school.
Several participants later went on to become involved in the anti-racism and treaty training workshops in the 1980s, or to introduce and support Māori points of view and initiatives within community organisations and networks and government departments.
The festivals were also personally transformative. Many participants reported that not only were they being introduced to a Māori world ... they were also awakening to a different understanding of themselves as Pakeha New Zealanders. They were awakening to a deeper sense of their citizenship that was also tied to this place.
And for a whole bunch of the young people involved, these Festivals taught them how to gather. The example and guidance of the Parihaka elders had a definite impact on the culture of gatherings that these young people went on to create in their own communities and workplaces throughout New Zealand, and the world.
Kuia Matarena in Te Niho o te Atiawa, answering questions after her presentation on the history of Parihaka and the passive resistance campaign of the 19th century. photo by Jane Dove Juneau from the 1983 Autumn Equinox Festival
THE FIRST WORKSHOP at every gathering was from kuia Matarena who spoke on the history of Parihaka and the lives of the prophets of Peace. Her presentation was based on the oral histories of her own elders, as well as the documentary research of friends and historians such as Dick Scott and Michael King. In later years, she worked with vivian Hutchinson to assemble a fuller presentation that included the slides of photographs drawn from the archives of the Taranaki Museum and the Alexander Turnbull Library, with a recorded commentary. The slide-and-tape presentation was the first audio-visual about the history of Parihaka, made well before the availability of video technology at a community level.
The presentation was finalized for the centennial commemoration of the sacking of the Parihaka village by colonial troops in November 1881. It was first presented at an art exhibition commemorating Parihaka held at the Govett Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth. The audio-visual was thereafter shown regularly in the Taranaki Museum, and in secondary schools throughout the province.
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IN NOVEMBER 1983, Kuia Matarena and vivian Hutchinson were invited to become part of the speaking and touring group for the international One Earth Gathering, a 7-day festival that was held at the Tauhara Centre in Acacia Bay, Taupo.
Kuia Matarena spoke on Māori and wider indigenous issues, while vivian spoke on unemployment in New Zealand, and the work of the New Zealand worker co-operative movement. Other speakers in this “Festival of Awareness” represented subjects as diverse as Aboriginal land rights, organic agriculture, horticulture and orcharding, new approaches to business, appropriate technologies, meditation, health and wellness, community living at Findhorn in Scotland, contemplative Christianity, clowning, and the visual and performing arts.
After the Taupo gathering, the speakers went on a 13-city tour from Dunedin to Whangarei, convening public meetings and leading workshop events. The public meetings during the tour used a version of whaikorero or circle sharings as their main format for introducing the One Earth Gathering speakers. This style of meeting had been directly influenced by the evening whaikorero held at the Parihaka Earth Festivals.
One of the unexpected bonuses of the national One Earth tour was the dozens of people who came to public meetings, who had also previously attended the Festivals at Te Niho o te Atiawa.
They gave a tangible sense of the diverse impact these small Parihaka Festivals had gone on to have in vastly different areas of New Zealand life ... as the young participants had moved on to find their place in educational institutions, in arts and cultural activities, community services, working in businesses or establishing their own social enterprises.
THE CYCLE OF EARTH FESTIVALS lasted for seven years before kuia Matarena and some of the key organisers turned their attention to other work and responsibilities. Some of this included running gatherings elsewhere, or working with other community issues and whanau or social services in New Plymouth.
Yet many of the friendships and relationships that were established during the Earth Festivals have proven to be enduring in the 40 years since they began.
Many of the participants are now grand-parents ... who look back and can see that these gatherings were a significant incubator and contributor to what their lives had become. And the Parihaka Earth Festivals had also helped to shape the craft and the genealogy of future gatherings that would continue to unfold in Taranaki, and around New Zealand.
Spring 2018
Written for the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Festival
held at Te Niho o Te Atiawa, Parihaka, Spring 1978
The Fifth Wind
by Robert MacDonald
published (1979) by Bloomsbury / Hodder & Stoughton
extract from the chapter "Elders of the Coastline"
detailing how Robert MacDonald met Aunty Marj, and his unexpected visit to Parihaka.
WHEN I LEFT Manukorihi pa I decided to phone one of New Plymouth's most remarkable personalities — Mrs Matarena Rau-Kupa, known by most people as Auntie Marj. (Auntie is an honorific, a term of respect and affection given to many women who are seen as kuia, or female elders.) Auntie Marj had spent much of her life trying to narrow the gap between the Pakeha and the Maori. During our phone conversation she told me that the following evening she would be attending an event in the coffee-bar of the New Plymouth Art Gallery, and that if I came we could talk after it was over.
So I turned up at the Govett-Brewster Gallery and found that a party of Tibetan monks of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition were being welcomed to New Plymouth, and that they were to lead a discussion on meditation and the spiritual life. A tall young man detached himself from the crowd when I entered the gallery, and introduced himself to me as Vivian Hutchinson. 'Auntie Marj asked me to look out for you,' he said. 'She'll be here soon. We're taking the monks to Parihaka tomorrow to spend the night there and we wondered if you would like to come too.'
I was a little surprised to find that after only a few days in New Plymouth I'd not only been given lunch at Manukorihi Pa by Aila Taylor but also been chosen by some mysterious fate to be entertained at Parihaka with Tibetan holy-men. But when we met at the end of the evening's meditation, Auntie Marj greeted me with a hongi, a pressing of noses.
'I believe in our Maori greeting,' she said. 'I would greet every being on earth with a hongi. It's a sharing of inner breath with each other.' And truly the hongi does create a feeling of unusual closeness, a sense of real union between those taking part, quite unlike anything experienced during a Western handshake or a peck on the cheek. 'I'm having a bit of trouble about the visit to Parihaka,' she told me. 'I've got to get there early with the food, but I haven't got any transport yet.' With some trepidation I offered the services of myself and my mother's tiny car, envisaging large bags of kumara and other supplies. But the next day Auntie Marj and I fitted ourselves quite comfortably into the Riley Elf, with some baskets of provisions on the back seat and a large flax kit on Auntie Marj's knees. We hurtled off towards Parihaka at well under forty m.p.h., and Auntie Marj had plenty of time to point out to me places of interest en route.
The last time I'd been to Parihaka was with my father, and we were then outsiders looking in at a place which seemed mysterious and foreign. This time I was very much on the insider's party, for Auntie Marj was one of the Parihaka Aunties, a notable group of women who had worked hard to keep the spirit of the place alive. When we arrived in the village of peace I was introduced to three more of these renowned Aunties in the cookhouse. There was Mrs Ngahina Okeroa (Auntie Ena), open, impulsive and bluntly honest in her manner; Mrs Netta Wharehoka (Auntie Netta), more reserved and reflective by nature, and a good organiser; and Auntie Sally — Mrs Mana te noki Karena — aged seventy-five, with a long grey plait of hair which was still thick and vigorous, and great vitality in her eyes and voice. I was also introduced to Auntie Sally's grand-daughter, a handsome young woman who was called by everyone 'Little Missy'. She welcomed me not with the hongi, or with a shake of the hands, but with a warm kiss on the lips.
Aunty Marj, Aunty Ina, and Aunty Sally at Te Niho o Te Atiawa, Parihaka, 1977
These Parihaka Aunties were among the women who broke tradition at the Waitangi Tribunal hearings by speaking on the Owae marae of their knowledge of the coastline and of the marine lore of the Maoris. It was remarkable that, despite years of struggle to establish some space in the Pakeha world for the Maori view of things, they had nothing but warmth, friendship, aroha and good humour to offer me. Though Auntie Sally was to confide in me later that she did find it hard to get rid of her anger at times. They tell you to be patient. By heck, I've been patient enough already!' she cried.
The arrival of the Tibetans and their companions brought a temporary end to food preparations in the cookhouse, and there was a ritual greeting outside Te Whiti's large meeting-house, Te Niho-o-Te Atiawa — The teeth of Te Atiawa. This began with the Aunties giving a karanga, or call, to the visitors to come forward, which they did with their palms pressed together in respectful greeting. Inside the meeting-house there were songs in Maori and speeches in Maori and English, and after the welcoming was over Auntie Ena went to one of the monks and affectionately rubbed his skin. 'You are the same colour as us!' she remarked with surprise. Later, when she realised that these were all holy men, she expressed her regret for this forward behaviour. 'To us you are all very tapu,' she said. 'I touched you today and I am sorry if this was a wrong thing to do. I touched you because I liked you.'
Indeed, all the Aunties were fascinated by the appearance and personality of the Tibetans, which suggested to them some close connection with the Maori people. 'I think your visit to Parihaka has really linked us to our past — the ultimate link with the ancestors,' Auntie Marj was to tell the monks at the end of their stay. And Auntie Ena was to confess: 'When I met you yesterday it was as if I had known you for years. That was why I went up and gave you a rub.'
For their part the monks seemed equally at ease in Te Whiti's meeting-house. 'We feel as though there is monastery energy with us in this room,' said one. 'There is great warmth here.' That evening, after the Aunties had sung them many songs and told many stories about Parihaka, the monks unwrapped from their protective cloths a number of Tibetan instruments including a drum and bells, and sitting cross-legged on the floor of Te Niho-o-Te Atiawa, they began chanting and playing a type of music which had never been heard under that great roof before — rhythmic, solemn, but also joyful sounds which reverberated round the walls and must have woken the mighty spirits of that place from their sleep. The Aunties sat spellbound, as I did. It was as if a new force was entering Parihaka and mingling in the night air with Te Wairua Maori, the Maori spiritual world.
The Tibetan Buddhist monk Lama Geshe Sangpo and his translator Lama Chodeak visited Te Niho o Te Atiawa in 1984, in a visit organised by Roy and Caroline Gillett. The monks were founders of an Auckland Buddhist centre, the Dorje Chang Institute, which was based on the teachings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
At one point in the evening the Aunties fell silent for a while, and it seemed from their low asides to each other that something was troubling them. Blunt-spoken Auntie Ena broke the tension at last by announcing that there was a question she had to sort out with the visitors. 'We hear that you have taken two hundred and sixty-five vows,' she said, 'and one of these is that you will never sleep in the same room as a woman. We don't want you to break your tapu.' The custom in meeting-houses is for everyone to sleep together, laying out a bed-roll wherever there is space on the floor. The Aunties were concerned that this custom might embarrass their guests, and force them to breach their tapu. Auntie Ena made it clear that the Tibetans could sleep elsewhere if they wished. 'We will see that you keep to your vows. A vow is a bond.' But the three men urged the Aunties not to be troubled on their account. 'There is the rule you have mentioned,' they assured us, 'but our rules are not inflexible. Where it would be right to follow the custom of the country we can do so.'
And so that night we all laid out our mattresses in the large hall the monks being allowed a respectable distance from the rest of us, ranged along the right-hand wall. But before there was any sleeping there was much talk about Parihaka and about the community which existed there when the Aunties were young.
Auntie Marj told of sitting out of doors in the winter to await the appearance of those faint stars the Pleiades, known to the Maori as Matariki, or Little Eyes. Their rising marked the New Year and the people would sing until they appeared and greet them with tears. 'There would be lots of voices calling to that star, and the men would do a haka. The elders could tell you what the stars said — whether there would be a barren harvest that year or plenty.'
On the edge of the marae at Parihaka there are some enormous rocks, and the Aunties recalled that a man, standing on these stones, would call out to the people at five o'clock in the morning to light their fires and prepare their hangi or earth ovens for the day ahead. 'They have gas hangis now and we waited five hours for that food to cook,' said Auntie Sally. 'The children took round the food and ate what was left on the stones,' said Auntie Ena. 'If you didn't have any it didn't matter, as long as you gave the best to the visitors,' said Auntie Marj. 'You couldn't tell that to our children today,' someone else remarked. 'Our people used to say, "Give us food for here,"' Auntie Ena commented enigmatically, tapping her heart.
The message of non-violence and universal brotherhood which Te Whiti preached at Parihaka is a powerful one, and is deeply ingrained now in the Te Atiawa community of Taranaki. He was a man who did great deeds in suppressing evil so that peace may reign, as a means of salvation to all people on earth,' are the words engraved on Te Whiti's monument in the centre of Parihaka. `His emblem the Raukura, which signifies glory to God on high, peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind, he bequeathed to his people Te Atiawa.' This emblem of three white feathers is worn proudly by the Parihaka Aunties on special occasions, and in Te Whiti's meeting-house they told their Tibetan guests that Te Whiti's message of goodwill was for the Pakeha as well as the Maori.
'Te Whiti said, "Let the world come to you — call to the world," ' said Auntie Marj, and with all the Aunties this has happened.' Their views about welcoming the Pakeha to their bosom had brought them criticism at times, from younger activists who during the last five years had raised the call for Maori separatism. 'The young want to take over. They are more radical and more spendthrift,' said one of the Aunties. 'We look to the future and they look to tomorrow.' If words could kill we'd have all been dead long ago, remarked Auntie Sally. All the Aunties were a little shocked by the militancy shown by the younger generation of Maori women. 'They ask us if we believe in equal rights for women,' said Auntie Sally. 'I say no, it is not our culture. In the Maori way the men are first.'
`My generation liked to put dinner on the table. Some modern women would put an axe on the table instead,' Auntie Marj observed.
Talking about the loss of the language, Auntie Sally confessed, 'I'm one of those who wouldn't teach my kids Maori. The slaps on the hand I got at school for speaking Maori myself! I didn't want my son to go through that! But my boy now says to me, "Mum, why didn't you teach me Maori?" It's only the strong ones like us who held on to it. What use was it? It was trodden on!'
She recalled her son as a little boy saying to her, 'Mum, what am I? Pakeha or Maori?' When he grew up he went to university and joined a Maori Club, but he didn't know the language. And when he sought help from a teacher he was told, 'You have got the best teacher possible at home — your mother!' And Auntie Sally added, 'It was the first time I realised there was something valuable In Maori.'
As the night drew on in the Parihaka meeting-house the talk got more animated and at times all the Aunties seemed to be speaking at once. Auntie Ena said she could talk all night about fishing. `We went into the sea with clean hands, a clean basket, and with respect for the sea,' she told us. 'And when fishing we sent the first fish back to God. We wouldn't eat it. There was plenty more where that one came from. And at certain times of the year we put our oars up — that's preservation. We'd been taught that. There's a difference between the Maori way and the Pakeha way.'
I drifted off to sleep eventually, and the next thing I knew was that Vivian was standing in the doorway of the hall ringing a large handbell. It was breakfast-time. I took a walk outside after eating, and strolled to the edge of the village.
None of the buildings I passed was lived in. Parihaka was still in many ways a ghost town, a ceremonial centre, a place for pilgrimage and weekend gatherings. The bustling community of three thousand people which once occupied this spot was gone, and there was little sense of the dramatic events that had passed in the peaceful village I strolled through. I passed a little wooden house surrounded by large clumps of arum lilies. Ahead of me was a marshy area with a stream, a thicket of trees and tree-ferns. Among the bushes I saw kingfishers and fantails, and pukeko strode ahead of me on their long red legs, flicking their white rumps. And I heard the oodle-ardle-wardle chatter of magpies in the pines growing on a little knoll to the right of the stream. Standing up high and clear ahead of me was Mount Egmont, its crown gleaming with snow in the morning sunlight.
In former times the famous carvers of Te Atiawa always portrayed the peak of the sacred mountain in their images of human figures, placing the peak between the brows almost like the third eye, the life-force surging upwards into the spirit world. I saw as I returned to the meeting-house that the Tibetan monks, strolling meditatively round Te Whiti's monument, its glass-fronted reliquary containing his greenstone patu and ear pendants, were far away in that spirit world themselves, so I did not interrupt their reverie. But I had time to explore the meeting-house itself.
There are many pictures hanging on the walls of Te Niho-o-Te-Atiawa. There is a photo of Te Whiti taken while he was in prison in the South Island, and another showing him with his daughter and her husband. And there is one taken at his tangihanga, his funeral ceremony. The prophet's body lies in a marquee and among the crowd of mourners are many white women, fashionably attired in white dresses and picture hats. Auntie Marj noticed me peering at these women and she remarked, 'The Maoris would be in black.'
There are a number of photos, too, which show Parihaka as it was, and a painting by the Maori artist Selwyn Muru of Te Whiti and Tohu with their enemy Bryce. The two prophets are pictured in mystic blue oils and with bright, strong eyes, while Bryce, the opportunist Pakeha politician, stands to the right of them, his figure tinged with red for anger and his eyes sinister slits. Then I noticed a photo of Auntie Netta's husband with Dick Scott, the author of the story of Parihaka, Ask That Mountain. I recognised her husband as the old man I'd seen at Parihaka during my previous fleeting visit with my father.
Auntie Ena sat talking to me as preparations were made for us all to say farewell. She told me that when parties of schoolchildren came to stay in the meeting-house they were sometimes startled by the custom of boys and girls sleeping in one large room together. Auntie Ena had to demonstrate to them how it was possible to climb into one's night-clothes in public while retaining one's modesty. The impact of this warm communal world on the town-bred youngsters was often overwhelming. 'I've seen children go out from here crying,' she said. I was not surprised to hear this. A little while later I felt a sense of loss myself, when our time at Parihaka came to an end. I pressed noses with the Aunties, and shook hands and bowed to the monks. Little Missy kissed me again. Auntie Sally gave me her telephone number and told me to call her. And I set off for New Plymouth with Auntie Marj and her now empty baskets.
'Nau te rourou, naku te rourou, ka ora te tangata' — 'Your food basket, my food basket, will give life to the people.'
Robert McDonald is a painter, printmaker and author living in Wales.
For more see http://robertmacdonald.co.uk/
Matarena Marjorie Rau-Kupa MBE
(nee Raumati) 1913-2010
Puke Ariki Library and Museum tribute to Matarena, accompanying her original portrait which hangs inside the Library building.
Matarena Raumati Rau Kupa (Aunty Marj) in the Brooklands Bush, New Plymouth, Taranaki. photo portrait by Margaret Bake (1981)
Known to the nation as 'Aunty Marj', Matarena was the first born of 18 children to Parehaereone and Haamiora Raumati. She was lovingly nurtured, educated and supported by her elders to be a leader of her family and wider community of Taranaki.
In 1961 she began her involvement with the Taranaki Museum and gave her knowledge freely to assist staff to better understand Taranaki from a Māori worldview.
In the early 1990s she became the kuia and cultural advice expert to support and mentor the work of staff of the New Plymouth District Library. She assisted the library with many initiatives including hosting and attending New Zealand Library Association Conferences, the Children's Library activities, and gave countless hours of cultural guidance and advice to library sector staff both locally and nationally.
Matarena was a founding member of the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and helped establish Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. Her undying support of the Taranaki Museum and New Plymouth District Library was also instrumental in bringing together iwi of Taranaki to support the development of Puke Ariki.
Matarena created a legacy of mentorship in Taranaki and her family and friends continue to support Puke Ariki. Matarena conducted all of her work with grace and intelligence. Her contribution to the wider development of the library and museum sector has helped ensure the participation of tangata whenua and the inclusion of Māori cultural values at all levels.
— Puke Ariki / New Plymouth Library
Kuia Matarena Rau Kupa at Royal Opening of Renovated New Zealand Parliament buildings - November 1995
Taranaki 'lost a great leader and mentor"
Kuia Matarena Rau-Kupa Obituary in the Taranaki Daily News 1st January 2011
Parihaka 1970s
by vivian Hutchinson
THE MATAKITE MAORI LAND MARCH had finished eighteen months beforehand, and I was living and working in Auckland. I was also regularly traveling back home to Taranaki to continue supporting the work that kuia Matarena (Marjorie Raumati Rau Kupa, or Aunty Marj) was doing at Parihaka.
For the previous decade, Aunty Marj had been leading a restoration project on the marae in which a large former dining room, the twin-gabled Te Niho o Te Atiawa, was being transformed into a new meeting house.
The Parihaka community was once at the heart of a passive resistance campaign against the colonisation and confiscations of land in Taranaki in the 1860s. Even after the brutal sacking of the “Village of Peace” in 1881, there were still hundreds of people living there or visiting the marae on the holy days of the Prophets, the 18th and 19th of every month.
But four generations later, by the 1970s, Parihaka was virtually a ghost town. What had been a thriving village had now only one or two people as permanent residents. The bell was still being persistently rung on the monthly holy days ... but there were many such times when no one turned up.
Kuia Matarena Marjorie Raumati Rau Kupa, photographed at Te Rewa Rewa Pa, near the Waiwakaiho river, New Plymouth
Aunty Marj’s very identity was steeped in what Parihaka stood for. Her father Hamiora Raumati had been brought up in the household of Nohomairangi Te Whiti. Nohomairangi was the son of Te Whiti o Rongomai (one of Parihaka’s original prophetic leaders) and he had married Marj’s grand-mother, Ngaropi Damon.
Aunty Marj had a vision, and she also had a mission. Her vision was that the teachings of the Parihaka prophets of the 19th century were going to be just as important to the 21st century. She saw thousands of people from all over the world coming to Parihaka to hear the history of the marae, and learn about the continuing messages of fostering peace, and pursuing non-violent action for change.
Her mission was to restore a venue so that the people of Parihaka could welcome these guests, and offer the manuhiritanga or hospitality that could show the best of Taranaki culture and heritage.
Te Whiti o Rongomai's former home and grand meeting house, named Te Raukura, had tragically burned down in 1960. But fortunately, the equally historic dining room Te Niho o te Atiawa had escaped the blaze.
So Aunty Marj started on the restoration and transformation of this building. And she invited, cajoled, and hood-winked anyone within speaking distance to come and help her out with her determination.
(above) Kuia Sally Karena
(below) Kuia Ina Okeroa and Neta Wharehoka
The main support came from three Parihaka women whom Marj respectfully described as her own Aunts – the kuia Ina Okeroa, Sally Karena and Neta Wharehoka. They were primarily supported by Te Ru Koriri Richard Wharehoka, who later became one of the more prominent kaumatua of the Parihaka community. Between them, with various husbands and wives, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, cousins and friends of these families ... they were all drafted in to help with the restoration.
In addition to this, Aunty Marj also had a very wide and eclectic network of Pakeha friends ... local artists, writers, musicians, historians, museum workers, church ministers, spiritualists, teachers, carpenters, farmers and gardeners, young hippies, and high school students like myself. Any of whom might just wander into Parihaka to tentatively see what Marj and the Aunts were up to ... and then be given a job to do.
Aunty Marj was an activist whose main instruments for change were friendship and the weaving of connections. Anyone who knew her quickly came to understand that it would be a fierce friendship. She was curious and kind, and she was also a strict disciplinarian around matters of decency and tikanga, and she did not suffer fools lightly.
She drew her guidance from the Taranaki symbol of peace - the three white feathers of an albatross, known as Te Raukura. These feathers signified the Christmas message that was at the heart of the teachings of the Parihaka prophets ... and it was not a sentimental message. It had been an enduring guide for behaviour and action towards peace and reconciliation in the face of the destruction of Maori communities and assets throughout the late 19th century.
He kororia ki te atua i runga rawa
He maungarongo ki runga i te whenua
He whakaaro pai ki nga tangata katoa
Glory to God on High
Peace on Earth
and Goodwill to all Mankind
Te Niho o Te Atiawa Meeting House 1977
In restoring Te Niho and turning it into a new meeting house, Aunty Marj also wanted to create the space for a different type of conversation to take place.
She was one of the first kuia to invite groups of school children onto the marae so that they could experience a Maori world on its own terms.
She also reached out to a wider Pakeha community – to reintroduce them to their own wilfully forgotten histories of war, colonisation and the thefts of land. And in doing so, she wanted to create a place for the sorts of conversations that could lead to real peace and reconciliation.
She established some innovations – especially in setting up the interior of Te Niho o te Atiawa as if it was a lounge in your own home, complete with couches and carpet on the floor. This was quite a different meeting place from the usual style on marae at the time.
(left to right) Pat Brophy, Wai Uatuku, Alwyn Owen, Te Miringa Hohaia, Katerina Hohaia, Ngahina Hohaia, Dr Huirangi Waikerepuru, vivian Hutchinson, Aunty Marj Raumati Rau, and Hilary Baxter, in Te Niho o Te Atiawa 1977.
The restoration of Te Niho took nearly five years. When the house was re-opened, and in line with her vision of the thousands of people that she was expecting, Aunty Marj symbolically gave the key to its front door to “the students and teachers of the world”.
If you looked at Parihaka in the 1970s, you may have thought that such a vision and its mission was close to being delusional. But Aunty Marj was not trying to recreate some nostalgia amidst a toothless ghost-town.
She knew well that Parihaka had not just been a village of peace, but also of prophecy. And, as her own participation in the Maori Land March had shown ... the guidance of these prophecies and the practice of non-violence was very much alive and still shaping the life of our nation.
So amidst the cooking, and cleaning and hosting of a steady stream of visitors to the refurbished Te Niho, I stepped outside to photograph the Parihaka of 1977. I was looking for images that might capture a seemingly ghosted village on the cusp of its own renewal.
If Marj and the other kuia of Te Niho were right, then this was a place that was going to look very different in the decades to come.
vivian Hutchinson
Winter 2018