John Roughan: Leader embodied the best of both nations

Last week the editor and I went to the tangi for Sir Hugh Kawharu and agreed afterwards our education had been sadly lacking.

Neither of us could speak enough Maori to be more than mute representatives of the newspaper, but it was not just that. We should have known that the Ngati Whatua of Orakei would warmly accommodate the clumsy attempts of monolingual Pakeha to honour their remarkable patriarch.

Gerry Brownlee knew. The National Party's deputy leader followed a succession of Maori orators and did the token tena koutou before reverting to English.

He spoke well, too, mentioning that when they last met, quite recently, Sir Hugh had firmly corrected him on one or two things. He said Sir Hugh had talked to him about the country's future, but did not elaborate.

Speakers from visiting iwi were accompanied by people who stood and sang waiata when they concluded. The people did the same for Pakeha speakers if they saw there was nobody standing with them.

I wished I had known the protocol. There was something I wanted to say about Sir Hugh, but you were supposed to sit in the speakers' row.

I wanted to say that, though I met him only twice, and briefly, once at Orakei and once when I called at his home, each time it truly felt like a privilege. He had an air of quiet, gentle authority, high intelligence, fatherly care and dignity. Every eulogy used the word dignity, and it defined him.

He lived in a modest house not far from mine and every time I drove in its vicinity I used to wish the whole of New Zealand knew what a treasure was largely hidden there.

He was nationally known as a Maori scholar and leader of Auckland's recognised tangata whenua, but we could have made so much more of him.

Sometimes since his death I have thought it deserved as much coverage as we gave the Maori Queen and the Australian crocodile larrikin, but he would not have wanted that. He never courted publicity and did not always welcome our feature writers.

He might have resisted a larger role in national life but as a rangatira he could not have refused a persistent call. He had all the qualities you wish somehow we could find in just one or two of those who offer themselves for national elections.

The day after Ngati Whatua buried their paramount chief last weekend the Herald on Sunday carried the view of Don Brash that Maori do not really exist if you examine their blood.

The National Party leader had been asked to comment on the opinion of a judge, David Baragwanath, that Maori might warrant special legal treatment.

The man who would be our next Prime Minister said: "He [Justice Baragwanath] continues to talk as if the Maori remain a distinct indigenous people. There are clearly many New Zealanders who do see themselves as distinctly and distinctively Maori - but it is also clear there are few, if any, fully Maori left here. There has been a lot of intermarriage and that has been welcome."

Later in the week, when the Maori Party had decided not to have anything more to do with National while Brash is leader, he was genuinely surprised that anyone could take exception to what he had said.

Brash has been described by his political opponents as an educated idiot and, much as I like him personally and admire his economic work, I am afraid they are right. Brash is a good, studious, well-intentioned statesman with his eye firmly on the national interest, but he has a serious blind spot.

Nobody with their eyes open at an event such as a tangi could deny Maori a distinct ethnic legitimacy. Nobody observing what their Maori heritage means to them could face them and say they are not what they think they are because they have mixed ancestry.

But Brash is nothing if not perilously courageous. Even in power it is possible to imagine him giving Maori in his guileless, goofy way, the ultimate insult that they do not exist in the law he proposes. He must not be Prime Minister.

Many of the public, of course, agree with him. Why do members of the ethnic majority find it so difficult to recognise the part ethnicity plays in everyone's identity? The majority are are the first to fear for their own identity when it appears to be threatened by immigration.

They do not mind immigrants retaining their distinctions as long as they remain a contained minority. But an indigenous minority puts the majority in denial.

A large part of the problem, I think, is that English lacks an accurate word for the allegiance. Ethnic is too anthropological - nobody thinks of themselves as ethnic; racial is too fearsome; cultural too superficial for the depth of identity we are talking about.

National comes closest to it, but most people still equate national identity with an indivisible allegiance to the state, and therein lies the fear of indigenous minorities. They need and demand more national identity than the majority thinks it safe to share.

Sir Hugh's vision of our future will be uncomfortable for National, which is probably why Brownlee did not enlighten us at the tangi.

Sir Hugh's showpiece was Okahu Bay, where the Maori heritage is acknowledged and pervasive but where nobody is barred on that account. Auckland's best volcanic landmarks will be similarly constituted under the Treaty settlement made by Ngati Whatua a few months before his death.

He would have smiled ruefully at the latest folly from Brash, remained calm and reminded his people that they need only continue living true to themselves.

With his conspicuous mana and his Oxbridge degrees, he embodied the best of both nations here. If only more could have met him. He was a model of the people we could be.