Ngāti Toa Rangatira have gathered near the peak of their sacred maunga, Whitireia, to celebrate its historic return to iwi ownership.

Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira has purchased 53 ha of land at Whitireia — just north of Tītahi Bay — from Radio New Zealand (RNZ) for just under $5 million — adjoining an earlier settlement acquisition on the peninsula.

Ngāti Toa have waited 177 years to get the whenua back. In 1848, the iwi gifted around 202 ha to the Anglican Church in exchange for the promise of a school to be built for Ngāti Toa tamariki.

The school was never built, but the land remained in church ownership.

That prompted Wiremu Te Kakakura Parata, a Ngāti Toa rangatira and MP, to take court action against the Bishop of Wellington who argued the whenua “ought to be given back to the donors” because the promise of a school was never fulfilled.

In his 1877 judgement, Chief Justice James Prendergast ruled that the Treaty of Waitangi was a “simple nullity” signed by “primitive barbarians”. It denied Ngāti Toa ownership of their maunga for decades and set a damaging precedent for other Māori seeking the return of their land.

Ngāti Toa kuia Karanga Wineera, 96, remembers listening to her elders discuss how her people had fought to reclaim Whitireia over the decades.

She told RNZ seeing the maunga finally returned was “wonderful”.

‘Wonderful gift’
“It’s a most wonderful, wonderful gift to Ngati Toa to have Whitireia come home after so many years of fighting for Whitireia and not getting anywhere, but today, oh, it’s wonderful,” she said.

In the early 1900s, Whitireia was vested in the Porirua College Trust Board, allowing the whenua to be sold. In 1935, the New Zealand Broadcasting Service purchased 40 ha for what would become Radio 2YA, now RNZ.

Iwi members, rūnanga chiefs and representatives from police, the Anglican Church and RNZ attended a formal ceremony to commemorate the sale.

In his speech, Ngāti Toa chair Callum Katene said the deal showed what a “Te Tiriti-centric” New Zealand could look like.

“The birds still sing here at dawn, the same winds sweep the hills and carry the scent of the sea. Beneath us, the earth remembers every footprint, every prayer — Whitireia holds these memories… in this morning, as the first light spills across the harbour, we are reminded that history is not carved in stone, it is living breath,” he said.

“As we look ahead, Whitireia can shine as a beacon of hope, a reminder that reconciliation is not about reclaiming the past so much, but about realising the future envisaged in 1848 — education, faith, unity, and enduring partnership.”

The rūnanga say all existing leases, easements, and public access agreements have been transferred to them as part of the acquisition and day-to-day operations for tenants, recreational users, and visitors will not change.

Lease back for AM
They will lease back 12 ha to RNZ to continue AM transmission operations.

Ngāti Toa Rangatira had a first right of refusal on the property under the Ngāti Toa Rangatira Claims Settlement Act 2014 and Public Works Act.

Speaking to media after the ceremony, Katene said he could not speak highly enough of how “accommodating” RNZ had been during the negotiation process, but admitted there were a few “hiccups”.

“There were a few hiccups when it came to the technical details of the exchanges, there always are in these sorts of things.

“The important distinction for us is this isn’t a financial transaction, it’s not economic for us — it’s returning the land,” he said.

Asked why the land could not be gifted back free of charge, RNZ chair Jim Mather said the possibility of gifting the land back was raised during negotiations.

“The return of the land recognised that Ngāti Toa Rangatira had been compensated previously as part of the settlement and were now in a position to actually effect that transaction,” he said.

“If it was up to us as a board we would have handed it over, but we have responsibilities as governors of assets held in the interest of the public of Aotearoa.”

Breach of the Treaty
Rūnanga chief executive Helmut Modlik said while the negotiations were “principled”, there was still a “conversation” worth “revisiting” at some time.

“As everybody has admitted, the loss of this land was as a result of a breach of the Treaty, and as everybody knows, Treaty settlement processes are a take it or leave it exercise, and we weren’t able to have this whenua returned at that point,” he said.

“To me, that’s a matter of principle that’s worth a future conversation.”

Ngā uri o Wi Parata spokesperson Kahu Ropata said because Wiremu Te Kakakura Parata had had the audacity to take the case up he was discriminated against by the “Pākehā propaganda machine”.

The whānau have had to grow up with that hara (offence) against their tūpuna, he said.

“We grew up with the kōrero that it cost him his health and his wealth fighting this case.

“And so for many years, we grew up in that, I suppose, for some of my uncles and aunties, in that trauma of a loss of mana, I suppose you could say, and for a rangatira of his ilk, it would have been quite damaging knowing that he was to go to the grave and the case actually not settled in his name.”

Ropata said RNZ returning the whenua was a “great step” towards reconciliation.

“We’re still in discussions with the Anglican Church in terms of the whānau and the iwi about reconciliation and moving forward.

“Fifty-three-odd hectares, there’s still another . . .  450-odd acres that we still need to reconcile [and we’re] looking at discussions around how we can accomplish that.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Last month The Daily Blog offered its New Year infamous news media gongs — and blasts — for 2022. In this extract, editor and publisher Martyn Bradbury names the mainstream media “blind spots”.

Graham Adams over at The Platform made the argument this year that the failure of mainstream media to engage with the debates occurring online is a threat to democracy.

With trust in New Zealand media at an all time low, I wondered what is the list of topics that you simply are NOT allowed to discuss on NZ mainstream media.

Here is my list of 17 topics over 30 years in New Zealand media:

1. Palestine: You cannot talk about the brutal occupation of Palestine by Israel in NZ media. It’s just not allowed, any discussion has to be framed as “Poor Israelis being terrorised by evil angry Muslims”. There is never focus on the brutal occupation and when it ever does emerge in the media it’s always insinuated that any criticism is anti-Semitism.
2. Child Poverty NEVER adult poverty: We only talk about child poverty because they deserve our pity. Adults in poverty can go screw themselves. Despite numbering around 800,000, adults in poverty are there because they “choose” to be there. The most important myth of neoliberalism is that your success is all your own, as is your failure. If an adult is in poverty, neoliberal cultural mythology states that is all on them and we have no obligation to help. That’s why we only ever talk endlessly about children in poverty because the vast majority of hard-hearted New Zealanders want to blame adults in poverty on them so we can pretend to be egalitarian without actually having to implement any policy.
3. The Neoliberal NZ experiment: You are never allowed to question the de-unionised work force that amputated wages, you can never question selling off our assets, you can never criticise the growth über alles mentality, you are never allowed to attack the free market outcomes and you can’t step back and evaluate the 35-year neoliberal experiment in New Zealand because you remind the wage slaves of the horror of it all.
4. Class: You cannot point out that the demarcation line in a capitalist democracy like New Zealand is the 1 percent richest plus their 9 percent enablers vs the 90 percent rest of us. Oh, you can wank on and on about your identity and your feelings about your identity in a never ending intersectionist diversity pronoun word salad, but you can’t point out that it’s really the 90 percent us vs the 10 percent them class break down because that would be effective and we can’t have effective on mainstream media when feelings are the currency to audience solidarity in an ever diminishing pie of attention.
5. Immigration: It must always be framed as positive. It can never be argued that it is a cheap and lazy growth model that pushes down wages and places domestic poor in competition with International student language school scams and exploited migrant workers. Any criticism of Immigration makes you a xenophobe and because the Middle Classes like travelling and have global skills for sale, they see any criticism of migrants as an attack on their economic privileges.
6. Hypertourism: We are never allowed to ask “how many is too many, you greedies”. The tourism industry that doesn’t give a shit about us locals, live for the 4 million tourists who visit annually. We are not allowed to ask why that amount of air travel is sustainable, we are not allowed to ask why selling Red Bull and V at tourist stops is somehow an economic miracle and we are certainly not allowed to question why these tourists aren’t directly being taxed meaningfully for the infrastructure they clog.
7. Dairy as a Sunset Industry: We are never allowed to point out that the millisecond the manufactured food industry can make synthetic milk powder, they will dump us as a base ingredient and the entire dairy industry overnight will collapse. With synthetic milks and meats here within a decade, it is time to radically cull herds, focus on only organic and free range sustainable herds and move away from mass production dairy forever. No one is allowed to mention the iceberg that is looming up in front of the Fonteera Titanic.
8. B-E-L-I-E-V-E victims: It’s like How to Kill a MockingBird was never written. People making serious allegations should be taken seriously, not B-E-L-I-E-V-E-D. That’s a tad fanatical Christian for me. It’s led to a change in our sexual assault laws where the Greens and Labour removed the only defence to rape so as to get more convictions, which when you think about it, is cult like and terrifying. Gerrymandering the law to ensure conviction isn’t justice, but in the current B-E-L-I-E-V-E victims culture it sure is and anyone saying otherwise is probably a rape apologist who should be put in prison immediately.
9. The Trans debate: This debate is so toxic and anyone asking any question gets immediately decried as transphobic. I’ve seen nuclear reactor meltdowns that are less radioactive than this debate. I’m so terrified I’m not going to say anything other than “please don’t hurt my family” for even mentioning it.
10. It’s never climate change for this catastrophic weather event: Catastrophic weather event after catastrophic weather event but it’s never connected to global warming! It’s like the weather is changing cataclysmically around us but because it’s not 100 percent sure that that cigarette you are smoking right now is the one that causes that lump inside you to become cancer, so we can’t connect this catastrophic weather event with a climate warming model that states clearly that we will see more and more catastrophic weather events.
11. Scoops: No New Zealand media will never acknowledge another media’s scoop in spite of a united front being able to generate more exposure and better journalism.
12. Te Reo fanaticism: You are not allowed to point out that barely 5 percent of the population speak Te Reo and that everyone who militantly fires up about it being an “official language” never seem that antagonistic about the lack of sign language use. Look, my daughter goes to a Māori immersion class and when she speaks Te Reo it makes me cry joyfully and I feel more connected to NZ than any other single moment. But endlessly ramming it down people’s throats seems woke language policing rather than a shared cultural treasure. You can still be an OK human being and not speak Te Reo.
13. Māori land confiscation: Māori suffered losing 95 percent of their land in less than a century, they were almost decimated by disease and technology brought via colonisation, they endured the 1863 Settlements Act, they survived blatant lies and falsehoods devised to create the pretext for confiscation, and saw violence in the Waikato. Māori have lived throughout that entire experience and still get told to be grateful because Pākehā brought blankets, tobacco and “technology”.
14. The Disabled: Almost 25 percent of New Zealand is disabled, yet for such a staggeringly huge number of people, their interests get little mention in the mainstream media.
15. Corporate Iwi: You can’t bring up that that the corporate model used for Iwi to negotiate settlements is outrageous and has created a Māori capitalist elite who are as venal as Pākehā capitalists.
16. Police worship: One of the most embarrassing parts about living in New Zealand is the disgusting manner in which so many acquiesce to the police. It’s never the cop’s fault when they shoot someone, it’s never the cop’s fault when they chase people to their death, it’s never the cop’s fault for planting evidence, it’s never the cops fault for using interrogation methods that bully false confessions out of vulnerable people. I think there is a settler cultural chip on our shoulders that always asks the mounted constabulary to bash those scary Māori at the edge of town because we are frightened of what goes bump in the night. We willingly give police total desecration to kill and maim and frame as long as long as they keep us safe. It’s sickening.
17. House prices will increase FOREVER! Too many middle class folk are now property speculators and they must see their values climb to afford the extra credit cards the bank sends them. We can never talk about house prices coming down. They must never fall. Screw the homeless, scre the generations locked out of home ownership and screw the working poor. Buying a house is only for the children of the middle classes now. Screw everyone else. Boomer cradle to the grave subsidisations that didn’t extend to any other generation. Free Ben and Jerry Ice Cream for every Boomer forever! ME! ME! ME!

You’ll also note that because so many media are dependent on real estate advertising, there’s never been a better time to buy!

Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury is a New Zealand media commentator, former radio and TV host, and former executive producer of Alt TV — a now-defunct alternative music and culture channel. He is publisher of The Daily Blog and writes blogs at Tumeke! and TDB. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

If there’s one thing Matthew Tukaki thought he and the protesters at Parliament might agree on, it’s the right to free speech. But after starting a campaign to end the occupation, he discovered that wasn’t quite the case.

“I started a campaign on Sunday, which kind of went viral, called #endtheprotest, via social media,” the Wellington-based chair of the National Māori Authority said.

The hashtag is now one of the top trending topics for New Zealand Twitter users and has been shared by close to 60,0000 people on Facebook, hitting a reach of 2.3 million accounts.

Tutaki said the backlash, which had included physical threats and racial abuse, was initially just online but it quickly escalated once protesters realised he was behind the campaign.

“I came out of a hotel on Sunday and someone recognised me, they grabbed me by the arm, and the force was so great, they ripped the sleeve off my anorak and left a bruise,” he said.

Never one to let a single incident perturb him, Tukaki passed the protests on his way to lunch a few days later.

“I was down there on my way to get some sushi and a group of about eight of them piled in, shouting verbal abuse and trying to physically intimidate me. One of them was about to lunge and if it wasn’t for the police, it could have turned into something much more brutal.”

No self-respect
He said the protesters seemed to have no self-respect, either for their own space or the environment they were occupying, given the amount of human waste that was swirling around Parliament grounds.

“It’s like someone has turned up at your house, put a tent in your lounge, and then shat in your sink. It’s another level of disrespect out there and these people have no respect for the whenua.”

Having attended many protests over his life as well as having many friends and family involved in different types of activism, he said the difference in how a Māori-led campaign operated was stark.

“Ihumātao was totally different, hīkoi to parliament are different,” he said. “With Māori, when we have a protest, our people will go down to Wellington, we prosecute our kaupapa, present our petition and members of parliament will often come out to greet you.

“It’s always well-organised, and it’s safe and then we clean up after ourselves and we continue to prosecute the kaupapa back home from our marae.

“This is completely different. It’s violent, it’s aggressive and they have no respect for the whenua.”

He noted that even after protesters sent out a press release welcoming visitors, “a reporter from Wellington Live went down there, and was beaten up”.

Māori culture appropriated
He said it was particularly concerning to see both Māori culture and New Zealand’s wartime history being appropriated.

“Unfortunately our Māori whānau are being used as clickbait by those in the alternative right, who are pushing messages from the United States,” he said.

“We’re being used, our symbols are being appropriated. Our tino rangatiraranga flag is flying next to the Trump flag, next to where a Nazi swastika symbol was painted on a war memorial.”

He said the prime minister had made the right call not engaging and he felt some blame could be laid at the feet of politicians who had helped stoke racist conspiracies.

“Many politicians have used Māori issues as a political football over the last 12 months,” he said.

“What they have done is they have set free the sorts of racist attitudes that have been hiding in dark corners, and look at what those same politicians have done now — blame the government for it all.”

Peddling of racist ideas ‘normalised’
This wasn’t the first time Tukaki had received abuse, given his role with the National Māori Authority, which advocated for iwi and Māori business and community service organisations around New Zealand, but he was concerned by how normalised the peddling of racist ideas was becoming.

“I was getting racist and threatening messages before the protest, but what this has taught me is the issue of racism is out there more, because people are now emboldened to show their names and faces.

“And to be frank, people like [David] Seymour and [Judith] Collins, [Winston] Peters and Matt King all need to take responsibility for the beast in the cave they have conveniently let loose.”

Justin Latif is a Local Democracy Reporting project journalist. Read more of his stories here. Asia Pacific Report is a community partner.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Wellington iwi leaders have called for an end to Aotearoa New Zealand’s 10-day-old anti-covid mandates protest in Parliament grounds and condemned comparisons made by protesters to the 1881 colonial assault at Parihaka.

The parliament complex and surrounding streets form part of the historic Pipitea Pā.

Port Nicholson Block Settlement Trust chairperson Kara Puketapu-Dentice said the ongoing occupation required a political solution.

“Our political leaders need to find a way out of this and stop the harm that’s happening on our ancestral lands, with some protesters having threatened our people and property,” he said in a statement.

“We’ve already had smashed windows and threats made against some of our kuia and kaumātua and uri involved in the Covid response.”

Puketapu-Dentice said comparisons to the assault at Parihaka were wrong, and amounted to cultural misappropriation.

On 5 November 1881, about 1600 colonial troops invaded the western Taranaki rural settlement of Parihaka, which had come to symbolise peaceful resistance to the confiscation of Māori land.

Native Minister John Bryce ordered the arrest of Parihaka’s leaders — who were detained without trial for 16 months, the destruction of much of the village, and the dispersal of most of its inhabitants.

Ngāti Toa said it, too, wanted an end to the scenes in Thorndon, condemning threatening behaviour and describing aspects of the protest as deplorable.

Te Rūnanga o Toa Rangatira supported the people’s right to protest but added that its offices, marae and uri had been the target of intimidating and threatening behaviour for trying to support their communities.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz