By AUDREY YOUNG political reporter
Derek Fox combined front-row fighting talk with prayer in Hawkes Bay yesterday as his embryonic party took a step towards becoming a political entity which is likely to be called simply the Maori Party.
At a blessing for the party at Waipatu Marae near Hastings, he talked of Maori "shoulder-charging" their way into Parliament with his party to share power and to "assert our authority."
The resources that Maori needed lay in the hands of Parliament, he said. "The reality is that Maori lack authority in their own land and we are entitled to our share of the power. That's what the Treaty of Waitangi talked about."
Mr Fox said later that the Maori Party was the suggested name.
"It's simple. It's what it's going to be called anyway at the end of the day. In its simplicity, it's got a lot of power within it."
In Maori it could be called Te Maori Paati.
Supporters were up at dawn yesterday for a blessing of the party at Waipatu, in Ngati Kahungunu territory. They were locals mainly, with visitors from Northland, the Waikato and Taranaki taking the total to about 60.
In the two hours of prayers, waiata and advice proffered, not all of it was positive.
One speaker, musician Billy Te Kahika, formerly of The Human Instinct, wondered why Mr Fox wanted to join someone else's political system instead of creating a separate one for Maori.
Mr Fox's response: "It belongs to us, but for too long others have been squatting in it.
"The first step is to shoulder-charge our way in there to release those resources to our people. There is no other entry way to doing that at this time." Margaret Manuka-Sullivan, a member of the pre-party steering committee, spoke of a movement sweeping across the country: "It's like a virus and it's spreading."
Politics is synonymous with Waipatu. It was the historic site of the first meeting in 1892 of the Maori parliament in the Kotahitanga movement that sought control for Maori over their own affairs.
Five years later the movement evolved into the Young Maori Party of Apirana Ngata, Maui Pomare and Peter Buck. All three legendary leaders were later knighted.
After breakfast, a hikoi began. Armed with tino rangatiratanga flags, banners and Kelly Brown-type T-shirts, a small fit group marched 10km to the Clive River to join the Ngati Kahungunu festival.
"Let's have a Maori party" read the front of one T-shirt. "Where? At Derek Fox's place," said the back.
"Derek's having a party," read another.
The numbers swelled on arrival and the entrance of the visitors afforded them a formal and rousing welcome from a group of waka paddlers in front of a captive, politely receptive audience of several thousand.
A welcome demands a reply and Mr Fox took the stage. He began by poking fun at Prime Minister Helen Clark, suggesting she had lost her copy of the Treaty of Waitangi.
Then the serious message: "If you are fed up with being treated the way you are being treated politically, if you think there should be a better way, if you are tired of putting your faith in somebody who hangs on to somebody else's [petticoat] and goes into Parliament then changes the story when they get there, we are offering something different - a Maori party standing on our own feet."
Labour MP Rick Barker did not believe Mr Fox had hijacked the occasion. "He respected the day by not getting overly political."
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