Whakapapa Ski Field. Photo / Mt Ruapehu
OPINION
In the past few weeks, increasing media interest has highlighted with intrigue the current status of the Ruapehu Ski fields.
“Community members” have been interviewed and a significant proportion of those have been business owners praising the virtues of when Whakapapa and Tūroa will open.
My view is some motives are tied to the “moola” they hope to attract in the door. However, significantly missing from the conversation is the views from mana whenua, namely Ngāti Rangi and Ngāti Tūwharetoa.
I bring this up because as a person of Tūwharetoa heritage, who has whakapapa to the kaitiaki hapū of those maunga, the core essence of me wishes for the maunga to remain closed. For good!
The creation narrative of the Tōngariro National Park exalts a kind of coming together for the better good of the nation and its people to create a radical concept at the time being – a national park.
The key point of this colonial narrative is that the then ariki of Tūwharetoa, Horonuku te Heuheu, “gifted” the maunga to the nation.
However, anything historical told by the point of view of the coloniser should be taken with a grain of salt. Such a narrative ignores the overwhelming evidence that it was not the case.
In a short form, this is what happened. The Crown created a scenario where it chased Te Kooti Arikirangi across the North island in what is known as “Te whai a te motu”. The last battle in the land wars took place at Te Pōrere in Tūwharetoa country.
Horonuku stood on the side of Te Kooti against the Crown.
The Crown, years after the fact, used this as an “excuse” to imprison Horonuku. As a result, to secure his freedom, and tired of being in isolation, he agreed to “sign over” the maunga when “invited” to meet with the Crown in Auckland.
The presence of a ski field, at least on the Tūwharetoa side of the maunga, defeats the true intention of what Horonuku was trying to achieve which was to create “he whenua rahui mo ngā iwi o Tōngariro” (a rahui on that land for the peoples of Tōngariro – meaning the two iwi) which the Crown changed to “he rahui pāka mo ngā iwi katoa” when it passed the legislation.
Thus it is considered that the creation of the Tōngariro National Park was an act of legislative confiscation – not a “gift”.
It questions the continued presence of the national park on those maunga and the idea that they should be ski fields in the first place.
All this was done before title was to be determined in the Native Land Court – sly happenings going on here - as Horonuku would have most likely never been awarded title.
Secondly, the iwi’s commercial arms would not point this history out as in more recent years prior to Covid they created a consortium and invested that money into Ruapehu Alpine Lift’s (RAL) scheme, Skywaka, which put a gondola on the maunga.
I would argue without due diligence as no assessment of climate change impact was ever undertaken on Aotearoa’s most northern ski field. To which I would ask – what has changed since we lost $20 million due to bad decision-making and dodgy “investments”?
The problem here is that of perception. In that there are those of us who view those maunga as literal ancestors, the complete source of our mana as a people, the place where the interned remains of my ancestors are exaltingly respected and the desire of some to utilise such an area for what can generally be described as a middle-class playground.
Yes this is an issue of race and class. This is because below those maunga are Māori from both iwi who have have been dispossessed of their land. Not everything in relation to the Ruapehu ski fields should be about profit. So next time perhaps the media or the “community” promote the idea of reopening Whakapapa or Tūroa that they undertake some critical reflection and ethical remembrance.
Hemopereki Simon is a research fellow at the University of Waikato. He is one of the researchers working on the Working to End Racial Oppression Project.