Precious whenua worth defending

Kaore te aroha ki te kororia tapu. He mihi pouri ki nga mate i nga mate. Haere haere. Haere atu ra ki ta waahi o nga tupuna, ki Hawaiiki nui, Hawaiiki roa, Hawaiiki pamamao.

Imagine, whanau, if someone wanted to build a road right across your urupa. What would you do?

Well last week, our Rotorua district councillors all agreed to go ahead with the controversial eastern arterial route, a road that steals Maori land, cuts off access to ancestral whenua and turns a beautiful natural part of Rotorua into an ugly road. Well I was ropeable and wished that I could just kick our councillors up the bum.

At the same time, whoever drew the line across the eastern suburbs map back when this paper road was proposed, well they needed a telling off too.

Had they visited the people and understood the long-term relationship local hapu have with these precious lands, that pencil line may have avoided the negative impact it will have on many real lives today.

Because would you allow a small group of out-of-touch elites to all say "aye" as they casually agree to bulldoze over the bones of your old people?

Would you sit in silence as the only quiet sanctuary for precious flora, fauna and birds is pushed aside so that engineers can build a road over a dangerous geothermal area, which will probably sink anyway?

I know I wouldn't.

Instead, I would ask my whanau to support the local hapu as they face the Rotorua council - our local Goliath.

I would talk to my koroua kuia, asking them about their memories of Boot Hill, of Ngapuna, of Owatiura and the lands of Te Roro-o-te-Rangi and Uenukukopako, to bring out photos and talk about the history of these unique places.

I would approach my iwi, marae and land trust to show solidarity with the hapu along the east by sending letters to the editor and to the council.

I would also appeal to those same trusts to ask that they support the legal challenge needed in the Environment Court by the affected hapu because that's what the council does - it uses ratepayer money to bully landowners and buys them out, land banking properties until they get their way.

But importantly, we would push for the hope that a real effort to design a better plan that all of the community could live with would be developed.

The road will cost $90million and will not start for many years so there is still plenty of time to talk and to properly communicate.

The days of getting a hiding are over, just like the days of using the Public Works Act to steal land has passed.

This could be yet another positive example of iwi working with the city or it could be yet another lengthy legal battle that costs everyone.

Either way, kia kaha to those leaders, whanau and hapu who now stand to defend their precious tribal homelands.

You definitely have our support.

Potaua Biasiny-Tule is a member of the Rotorua District Council Te Arawa Standing Committee.