Mana Moana Mana Tangata begins on the beach. In a beautifully shot sequence, members of local iwi approach a huge sperm whale that has washed up on the Taranaki coast. They are there to pay their respects and begin a modern version of the traditional process of butchering the carcass to take and use what it offers.
It’s not the only time the film turns from the talk (there is a lot of talking) to simply gaze at the ocean or follow the bucking of a fishing vessel, anchoring a strikingly complex story to its essential core. Even most of its interviews are shot with the ocean as a backdrop.
The Treaty of Waitangi fisheries settlement of 1992, better known then and now as “the Sealord deal”, was not the first treaty settlement – technically, that was the transfer of land around Waitomo Caves to two hapū in 1989 – but it is undoubtedly the most consequential. It represented a full and final settlement of Māori fishing rights that essentially created the foundation of a new Māori economy.
It was also nigh-impenetrable to anyone outside the legal battles and high-stakes negotiations that both led to and followed the 1992 agreement. It was, as human rights lawyer Annette Sykes observes at one point “a good time to be a Māori lawyer”. That’s the story the film tells.
“The challenge for us was to make a film that could tell the story but not get bogged down in the legal jargon and legal terminology,” Julian Arahanga, who produced and directed the film with Toby Mills, told Julian Wilcox on RNZ recently. “Then you lose people because they don’t understand.”
Even though it largely avoids getting bogged down, Mana Moana Mana Tangata is still a demanding watch, simply because the story it tells is so epic and features so many characters. Successive generations of Māori leaders, from Matiu Rata, Sir Graham Latimer and Sir Tipene O’Regan to Sykes and the urban upstart John Tamihere, played their roles in a drama that went all the way to the Privy Council in London – where the judges concluded it was a dispute for us to settle ourselves and sent it back.
The closing credits list 32 interview subjects, most of whom were part of the story at the time it was happening and/or now play a role in the contemporary fishing industry that emerged from 1992. Many other protagonists, including the then-National Party leadership, which was prepared to step into a new world, appear in archive footage. That a meaningful story emerges from it all seems like a kind of miracle. That it emerges so soulfully, even more so.
The film premiered to an audience full of its own characters in Wellington this year, then featured in the Doc Edge Festival and now comes to Whakaata Māori, for which it was originally produced. It will stand there less as a TV programme than an accessible work of history. Even for those who followed the headlines at the time, it’s the kind of gathering of the threads that is only possible in retrospect.
The last word in a film of many words goes to Sir Tipene. “Māori now have opportunities and possibilities that were not there in 1986,” he concludes. “If we haven’t done justice for our mokopuna, it’s not from a want of trying.”
Mana Moana Mana Tangata screens on Whakaata Māori, Monday, August 18, 8.30pm, and will stream on Māori+
