Bitter history of sewage spills, land grabs and broken graves
To celebrate International Women’s Day on Friday, the Herald and online magazine E-Tangata tell the video stories of six inspirational Ma¯ ori and Pasifika women. Today: Kaitiaki (land protector) Pania Newton
It was 2015, and Pania Newton was in her final year of law school at the University of Auckland. She’d planned to move to Rotorua as soon as she graduated, to join her boyfriend and work at his dad’s law firm.
But then the survey pegs appeared on the land next door to her village at Ihuma¯ tao in Ma¯ ngere, not far from Auckland Airport — and everything changed.
“A man came down to my cousin’s house and told her that there were survey pegs on the land,” she told Dale Husband in an interview for E-Tangata.
“And so she sent out a message on our wha¯ nau Facebook page, and immediately we went up there and we started to take them out.”
That was the first many Ihuma¯ tao people knew of the Fletcher housing development that was planned for the 33-hectare piece of land known as the O¯ ruarangi block.
Six cousins who’d grown up in the papaka¯ inga at Ihuma¯ tao — Qiane Matata-Sipu, Bobbi-Jo Pihema, Waimarie McFarland, Moana Waa, Haki Wilson, and Pania, the youngest of them — met soon after and decided to take on the Government, the Auckland Council, and the developer, Fletcher Building.
They formed the protest group called Soul — Save Our Unique Landscape — to stop the nearly 500 homes being built near their village, their ancient burial caves, the O¯ tuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve, and their ancestral maunga, Puketa¯ papatanga-a-Hape and O¯ tuataua.
And although Pania made the move to Rotorua at the end of that year as planned, she “didn’t last not one month”. The fight at Ihuma¯ tao was too important — and “I missed the whenua”.
In the nearly four years since, there’ve been numerous appeals, protests, marches, and three trips to the United Nations in New York.
And Pania, who’s now 28, has emerged as the face of the Ihuma¯ tao protest — a determined and articulate spokeswoman who’s been pushed into the spotlight despite her discomfort with the idea that she’s leading the campaign.
“I don’t see myself as a leader. I’m really just doing what I was raised to do, what I was born to do, and what feels right. And that’s being a kaitiaki, exercising my responsibility to the whenua and my wha¯ nau and to the next generations to come.”
Not everyone is a fan. Te Warena Taua, who chairs both the Makaurau Marae Trust and Te Kawerau a¯ Maki Tribal Authority, has been openly dismissive, questioning her legitimacy and status.
But it’s clear there’s a split among mana whenua — those with historic and territorial rights to the land — not all of whom belong to Te Kawerau a¯ Maki. Even the marae is divided: the Makaurau Marae Committee supports the protest, but the Makaurau Marae Ma¯ ori Trust does not.
Soul rejects the path of compromise taken by Te Warena Taua and the iwi body, arguing that any development will destroy the land’s special character, and its tapu status. This was the first area of human settlement in Aotearoa — the place where Polynesians became Ma¯ ori, says Pania.
It’s been one injustice after another for the people of Ihuma¯ tao, beginning with their eviction in 1863, after Governor George Grey’s cynical ultimatum to Ma¯ ori: pledge allegiance to the Crown or lose your land. After the Waikato War ended in 1864, about 450ha of land was formally confiscated.
The iwi Ma¯ ori community that clung on to what was left of their land at the papaka¯ inga in Ihuma¯ tao then had to face the degradations imposed by various official bodies, as outlined in this piece by Wena Harawira.
“In the 1900s, their ancestral maunga, Maungataketake, Puketutu (Te Motu a Hiaroa), O¯ tuataua, and Puketa¯ papa were quarried to build the Auckland Airport and the city’s roads.
“Today, Auckland Watercare Services is ‘rehabilitating’ Puketutu with bio-solids or recycled human sewage to recreate its conical state.
“In 1956, 25 million litres of industrial waste and nearly 700,000 litres of untreated wastewater were being pumped into the Manukau Harbour every day through the Ma¯ ngere Inlet.
“That allowed the council to think it wouldn’t matter much if they built the Ma¯ ngere sewage ponds over the tribe’s fishing grounds, which had already been ruined by pollution.
“O¯ ruarangi Creek, where the people fished and collected kaimoana, was reduced to a trickle because of the sewerage works. Flow was restored in 2005. But, in 2013, the villagers’ efforts to regenerate the creek were cancelled out by an accidental spill of a thousand litres of purple dye which killed off all the aquatic life.
“When the Auckland Airport second runway was built, bulldozers ploughed through one of the tribe’s urupa¯ in 2008 and unearthed 89 graves. Some of the remains, estimated to be at least 600 years old, were kept in a storage container at the airport while the authorities, not the tribe, figured out what should be done with them. They were eventually re-interred. That was two years later,” Harawira wrote.
“Given this history, the patience and strength of Ihuma¯ tao’s people has been remarkable.”
A major obstacle to reclaiming the land is that it’s been in private ownership since it was granted to the Wallace family after confiscation in the 1860s. The family sold some of that land back to the Manukau City Council — and, in 2001, it became the O¯ tuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve.
The council attempted to buy the remaining 33ha to add to the reserve, but, after it was designated a Special Housing Area under 2013 legislation intended to fast-track development — ostensibly to meet Auckland’s housing shortage — it was sold to Fletcher Building in 2016.
“Growing up in Ihuma¯ tao, there was always this culture of just having to accept these injustices, adapt and move on the best way that we can,” says Pania.
“When is enough, enough?”
I don’t see myself as a leader. I’m really just doing what I was raised to do, what I was born to do, and what feels right. And that’s being a kaitiaki.
Pania Newton