The welcome ceremony for this year's Te Matatini – took a turn that got everyone talking. Video / Te Ao with Moana
OPINION:
For many of those who attended the pōwhiri marking the beginning of Te Matatini last month, my speech in reply to the young kaikorero of Ngaati Whaatua was perhaps regarded as “entertaining”, maybe even “provocative”.
For many others, however, that speech belies a widely held sense of frustration and anger at an increasingly avaricious hapuu intent on disrespecting, indeed dismissing, the mana whenua status of a number of Tainui and other iwi who occupied the Taamaki isthmus for centuries – Te Wai o Hua, Waikato, Ngaati Pāoa, Te Kawerau-a-Maki, Aki Tai, Ngati Te Ata, Ngati Maru, Ngaai Tai and others – before the arrival of Ngaati Whaatua to the area.
Their sense of growing entitlement and arrogance was perhaps foreshadowed when, a few years ago, Ngaati Whaatua ki Oorakei decided to call themselves Ngaati Whaatua Oorakei. The dropping of the ‘ki’ might seem trivial to the casual observer, but its consequences have been evident in the increasing willingness of this hapuu to use the Paakehaa courts in their attempts to obtain land that it never held sovereignty over.
The old warrior Winston Churchill once declared that, “history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it”. And on reading the recent op-ed from Ngaati Whaatua Oorakei, the history thus presented certainly is very kind to them.
Unfortunately for them, it is not true. Indeed, for Waikato-Tainui – and the many mana whenua iwi in this city – the Oorakei campaign not only distorts historical fact, but is also highly insulting and hypocritical. They claim to support “tikanga” – yet they drag other iwi – into prolonged Paakehaa court hearings.
They talk about whanaungatanga, but lecture and undermine the other iwi of Taamaki Makau-Rau. They demand we acknowledge them, while refusing to acknowledge others’ legitimate rights and interests.
We have never suggested Waikato has exclusive rights in Taamaki, yet what Ngaati Whaatua Oorakei has done is discard tikanga in favour of using the Paakehaa judicial system to extinguish our presence and rewrite history in their favour.
Our history in Taamaki Makau-Rau is an open book and well-traversed in historical narratives. That Ngaati Whaatua Oorakei even have a history beyond the nineteenth century is largely due to the mana and influence of the first Maaori King, Pootatau Te Wherowhero.
It was to Pootatau, then living at Pukekawa (the Auckland Domain), that Governor George Grey and the Ngaati Whaatua chief, Te Kawau, appealed for protection when northern iwi threatened the invasion of Auckland in the late 1840s.
Pootatau’s famous warning, “kia tupato ki te takahi i te remu o taku kahu” (Beware of trampling on the hem of my cloak) was a dire warning to anyone who would dare challenge his authority. The formal agreement signed between Governor Grey and Pootatau sealed the fate of Ngaati Whaatua – and Auckland – was thus saved from annihilation.
Last year Justice Palmer released his report on a claim brought by Ngaati Whaatua Oorakei seeking to establish sole mana whenua status in central Auckland. He declined the application and went further, ruling neither the Crown nor Parliament determines mana whenua or ahi kaa, that tikanga he said, is decided on by iwi.
Many see greed as the chief motivation for Ngaati Whaatua Oorakei’s claims.
Te Arataura Chair Tukoroirangi Morgan. Photo / Supplied
Their aim is to use the courts to assert that only they have rights in the heart of Auckland’s CBD, so that any surplus Crown land in the central area would have to be offered to them on an exclusive first-right-of-refusal basis.
This would give them a monopoly position over New Zealand’s prime real estate and they want more, even as other Taamaki iwi struggle to have their settlement claims acknowledged.
There is a deep irony too, in the fact that, when Joe Hawke led the historic land occupation at Bastion Point, the Ngaati Whaatua Rangatira once again called on other iwi for help, including his relatives from Waikato Tainui.
Some of those who had occupied the land for 506 days paid the price for that support and were forcibly removed by the Police on 25 May, 1978.
It is time Ngaati Whaatua Oorakei repaid the debt they owe to others, both historically and more recently.
The tragedy in all this is that the overlapping settlement policy does not have to be a zero-sum game, where one small hapuu seeks to prosper at the expense of other iwi.
It is time for the young ones of the Oorakei hapuu to stop fighting their whanaunga, and instead work towards a solution that benefits all the iwi of Taamaki Makau-Rau.
Regardless, it is our intention to settle our outstanding Treaty claim over Taamaki Makaurau with the Government. It’s nothing less than what our Tupuna (ancestors) would expect of us.
Tukoroirangi Morgan
Tukoroirangi Morgan is a former politician and broadcaster. He is the chair of Tainui Iwi and helped spearhead the Waikato River settlement claim with both the Labour and National governments alongside the late Lady Raiha Mahuta.
