Tokoroa's Kinleith Mill closure is to be decided by the end of the month and politicians and family gather for the final day of Dame Tariana Turia’s tangihanga. Video / NZ Herald
Opinion by Audrey Young
Audrey Young, Senior Political Correspondent at the New Zealand Herald based at Parliament, specialises in writing about politics and power.
Māori Party founder Dame Tariana Turia died on Friday and will be buried tomorrow.
Tributes are flowing forth, with particular regard to her courage and integrity.
She faced plenty of hostility during her 18 years in Parliament.
Dame Tariana Turia, who will be buried tomorrow, was perhaps the most influential Māori politician so far this century in terms of shifting attitudes.
She had a significant influence on how Māori exercise their power and the state’s relationship with Māori.
The only other modern-day Māori politician whocomes close to matching her influence is Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, but his is seen through more general policies and portfolios, not the laser-like focus she had on whānau, hapū and iwi.
In fact, Turia was the first person to repeatedly use the terms “whānau, hapū and iwi” within government, as well as the term “mana whenua”.
Dame Tariana Turia during her interview with Audrey Young at Rātana in January 2023. Photo / Audrey Young
At the turn of the century, when governments put great store in big tribal Treaty of Waitangi settlements and pan-iwi settlements, Turia’s focus was on the local empowerment of those whānau, hapū and iwi, and she never lost that.
She brought her ideas to the heart of government “week after week after week after week”, changed people’s thinking and fundamentally shifted the relationship between Māori and the state to one of greater respect and “a more equal relationship”.
The words of English from almost 10 years ago are in marked contrast to the deteriorating relationship of the present National-led Government with Māori.
No one in Government today would be talking about Māori having a more equal relationship with government, as English did.
After Labour’s Helen Clark described Turia’s party as “the last cab off the rank”, it was not surprising the Māori Party agreed to work formally with National under Sir John Key and English for three terms from 2008, despite its votes not being needed.
Turia’s tangible legacies are the Māori Party she founded in 2004 over Labour’s response to the foreshore and seabed Court of Appeal decision; the law she worked on with Chris Finlayson to replace the Foreshore and Seabed Act; and Whānau Ora.
Māori Party co-leader Dame Tariana Turia with then-Prime Minister-elect Sir John Key in November 2008 at the announcement of a support deal for government. Photo / Ross Setford, NZPA
The work of Whānau Ora, a holistic social service designed to support and empower whānau, is largely unseen by the public but is perhaps the most important extension of rangatiratanga in recent times.
Whānau Ora married neatly with National’s emphasis on reducing dependence on the state. But it simply would not have happened without Turia.
And the powerful mobilisation of Māori in November against the Treaty Principles Bill would almost certainly not have happened without the party and policy foundations Turia laid during her 18 years in Parliament.
In my observation, she shifted her stance over time from wanting the Māori Party to be treated as the Treaty partner in Parliament, to desiring it be recognised as a representative of the Treaty partner. That came about through the party’s essential work with iwi leaders in government.
On policies with a large effect on Māori, it made sense for the Māori Party and iwi leaders to be simpatico.
It should not be forgotten that despite the huge respect being expressed about Turia at the moment for her courage and integrity, a lot of her Parliamentary work was conducted amid a large degree of hostility from those who felt Māori should align only with Labour, those who did not like the government dealing with Māori “elites”, and those who would sacrifice small advances because they were less than perfect.
Turia found strength in her own family, especially her husband George, and a loyal team within the party, especially her former chief of staff and principal adviser, Helen Leahy.
Turia’s strength of leadership endured well past her formal retirement from politics in 2014.
Māori Party co-leaders Dame Tariana Turia and Pita Sharples in July 2009 at a press conference to discuss a review of the Foreshore and Seabed Act. Photo / Mark Mitchell
I conducted many interviews with her over the years and she could always be relied on to be disarmingly frank.
She didn’t care much for or about co-governance; her focus remained on rangatiratanga for iwi.
“That’s what we were promised, and it has never happened,” she told me.
“When I think about iwi and the Crown, I think right down to my own marae, my own families, the river and all those marae up and down the river.
“Our kids need the opportunity to experience what it means to be who they are, and they don’t. They don’t get that chance.
“For me, rangatiratanga is about us determining what’s in our own best interests and living by that.”
When I said it sounded as though she were advocating separate systems, she insisted she was not.
“No, I’m not saying that because we are never going to be separate,” she said. “The majority of [the] world that we live in is not tikanga-driven, or it’s not Māori.
“What I am saying is that where we desire to practise particular things within our iwi, that’s our right, and we don’t need to have the permission of the state – or anyone else, for that matter – to do that.”
Taking the broader discussion back to the local and personal, she talked about the two little “blondinis” – two blonde mokopuna that lived with her and her son for four days a week, and with their mother three days a week.
She said they had been teased by other kids at kura for looking Pākeha, and the mokopuna insisted they were Māori, not Pākeha.
Turia had told them they were Pākehā and they should be proud of it, and that they were also Māori.
“I said, ‘You don’t need to be ashamed of that. Your mother is a Pākehā and we love her to bits. You just say to them, ‘Yes, I am, and I’m really proud of it … You look at them you say to them, ‘I’m really lucky. I’m both’.”
In a toxic and divided political environment, it was quite an inspiring vignette.
One suspects Turia’s sentiments from just two years ago might be harder to find in Te Pāti Māori today.
At Turia’s book launch, English said she had the courage to pursue a vision unchanged “through the dangerous jungle of partisan politics”.
With the unique set of political and personal skills and ideas she brought to Government, Turia had begun to fundamentally change the relationship between Māori and the state, English said.
“We have stronger iwi, stronger whānau and a concrete understanding of rangatiratanga, a practical understanding, much more than just a protest slogan.”
