Ma¯ ori stories merit protection too
Standoff over Ihuma¯ tao challenges how New Zealand views heritage
Across the nation, many Kiwis now appreciate the contested land at Ihuma¯ tao is special and deserves heritage protection. Heritage laws should have protected it and the stories it has to tell. So, from a heritage perspective, how did we get here?
Soul’s last chance to stop the housing development at Ihuma¯ tao through heritage avenues was an appeal to the Environment Court in mid-2018.
The appeal aimed to invalidate the Archaeological Authority that permitted the development to proceed but failed. This outcome was unsurprising.
The cumulative effects of all these changes meant there was no effective legislative framework to protect the contested land at Ihuma¯ tao.
The framework for deciding if heritage places, and particularly Ma¯ ori heritage places, should be protected, has been steadily eroding over recent decades. Currently less than 20 per cent of the national heritage register includes “Ma¯ ori heritage” (wa¯ hi tapu, wa¯ hi tupuna) sites.
The capacity of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (HNZPT), the national body set up to protect our nation’s heritage, is significantly constrained by the legislation that created it. The HNZPT Act 2014 sought to make development easier and strengthen private property rights at the expense of public values like Te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations, heritage and environmental protection.
One of the costs of these changes included limiting the ability of HNZPT to do more than “promote” the idea of protecting heritage. Since the act’s introduction the agency has approved 97 per cent of applications for authorities to modify or destroy archaeology.
Court decisions have reinforced the Crown’s position that Ma¯ ori heritage on private property can only practicably be protected by agreement with the landowner. HNZPT has to broker the best deal it can, rather than require protection.
Back in 1983, the Historic Places Trust, which preceded HNZPT, played a far more proactive and effective role.
In the case of the Ihuma¯ tao peninsular, part of this rare¯heritage landscape was protected, the Otuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve. But what makes the contested land so special is it is a contiguous part of this last remnant of stonefields in Auckland but also offers evidence of all the phases of Ma¯ ori gardening practices. The contested land is part of this story sitting together with the reserve as one contiguous landscape.
The lack of meaningful protection for Ma¯ ori heritage, our oldest and rarest, must be seen in light of the much stronger protections for colonial heritage, particularly buildings. Some buildings cannot be demolished.
Heritage landscapes like Ihuma¯ tao have no such protection. With more than 80 per cent of the heritage list consisting of built colonial heritage, our legislative framework seems at the very least weighted in favour of non-Ma¯ ori heritage and at worst a case of systemic racism.
The Human Rights Commission, in its report “International Human Rights Perspectives on Ihuma¯ tao” published in August, identified the imbalance of heritage protections as a barrier to the rights of Ma¯ ori to their culture.
Not only law changes have limited the protection of our nation’s heritage, the courts have played their part too.
In a legal precedent set by the 2016 Greymouth Petroleum case, the High Court found HNZPT could only consider specific archaeological sites, not the heritage landscape as a whole.
The real teeth of heritage protection sits with the local, regional and unitary councils. But Auckland Council does not have Ihuma¯ tao as an important heritage place because it is on private land.
In 2016, the Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel recommended withdrawal of all Ma¯ ori heritage sites on private land from the heritage schedule. The intention was to add them later, which council accepted, but in the case of Ihuma¯ tao this still hasn’t happened.
There is a common belief NZ is good at looking after its heritage. Historic heritage and wa¯ hi tapu are “matters of national importance” according to the Resource Management Act (1991). The struggle to #protectihumatao illustrates how these important treasures fare when placed against private property rights.
It also shows the inequities built into the way we protect places that tell the stories of our past. Changes to heritage protection may reflect broader political agendas, but what is happening at Ihuma¯ tao challenges how we do heritage in NZ. The cumulative effects of all these changes meant there was no effective framework to protect Ihuma¯ tao.
The recent announcement that teaching New Zealand history in schools will be compulsory redoubles the value of protecting places that show us how we lived over the entire span of human habitation of this land.
Now is the time for Government and the council to work together with the ahi kaa to protect what remains of this precious heritage landscape so future generations can know and respect its rich histories — Ma¯ ori and Pa¯ keha¯ .