Weinflamed race relation tensions
Our Truth, Ta¯ Ma¯tou Pono is a Stuff project investigating the history of racism. Part one has focused on Stuff and its newspapers, and how we have portrayed Ma¯ori.
Katarina Williams and Mandy Te looked at The Dominion Post
For 79 days in 1995, mana whenua occupied Pa¯kaitore, disputed Ma¯ori land in the centre of Whanganui, also known as Moutoa Gardens, a park of colonial statues, war memorials and roses.
The occupation became a flashpoint in New Zealand’s race relations, inflamed by relentless, one-sided news coverage from The Dominion Post’s predecessors, The Dominion and The Evening Post.
Whanganui iwi representatives claimed the gardens, established on Pa¯kaitore pa¯, had been excluded from land sales to the Crown in 1848. Whanganui District Council did not agree.
While Whanganui’s mayor at the time, Chas Poynter, was quoted day in, day out, readers of our papers barely saw any words uttered from iwi leaders, including Ken Mair.
When he was quoted, Mair’s comments were often relegated to the bottom of the story. We never fully explored the grievance claims made by Mair and his people.
A quarter of a century on, Mair says the media was biased in its reporting.
There was never any chance his side would be represented in a fair and balanced way because of the ‘‘white and anaemic’’ leaders of our newspapers.
‘‘They come from a particular background,’’ says Mair.
‘‘That background, in a sense, was always going to clash with our values, with our world view and anything that undermined or challenged that was never going to get reported.
‘‘Let’s say it as it is, and it is racist.’’
GOOD AND BAD JOURNALISM
The Evening Post, Wellington’s first newspaper, was published in 1865. It hoped ‘‘the inhabitants of Wellington will hail with pleasure the appearance of a journal devoted to their interests’’.
‘‘We feel assured the people of Wellington will kindly give us their support,’’ the paper said.
Launched in 1907, The Dominion advocated for aWhite New Zealand Immigration policy.
‘‘It is concerned, not with the past, but with the present and the future,’’ it said. ‘‘There is no profit but only heat and waste of time, in re-fighting the battles of an older period, in readjusting old rights and wrongs that are only closed controversies today.’’
Both papers merged in 2002, to become The Dominion Post of today.
Our investigation of those Wellington papers has revealed we prioritised Pa¯keha¯ views and authority figures, through a Eurocentric lens, at the expense of Ma¯ori.
We have not always practised good journalism. We failed to give Ma¯ori a voice.
These findings form part of the national Our Truth, Ta¯ Ma¯tou Pono project, which found Stuff and its newspapers have been racist, contributing to stigma and stereotypes against Ma¯ori.
We have apologised publicly and plans are in place to better represent Ma¯ori and all communities in Aotearoa.
BE PONO, BE TRUTHFUL
Dame Tariana Turia has been face to face with the news media for more than a quarter of a century. She says the media is ‘‘another organ of the state’’.
‘‘You’re never on our side, so why wouldn’t I think that you’re on their side,’’ Turia says.
When she walked away from Labour in protest over its proposed seabed and foreshore legislation in 2004, The Dominion Post got stuck in.
‘‘Short, round and enigmatic, dissident LabourMP Tariana Turia has been likened to a Russian babushka doll,’’ we said in April 2004.
‘‘No one, least of all her colleagues, is sure what she is capable of.’’
Turia believes she and Mair are disliked because they stand up for Ma¯ori and challenge Pa¯keha¯, upsetting the status quo.
‘‘That’s how they denigrate us, by telling us that we’re acting inappropriately, acting against the will of the people,’’ she says.
‘‘It’s interesting that they see all the rest of the people as part of the state but not us.’’
Turia has one simple request of the media: to report things ‘‘exactly as they are’’ forMa¯ori.
‘‘I don’t think it’s a big thing to ask you to be pono [truthful] and tika [just]. To be honest. To do the right thing at the right time – that’s all I ask,’’ Turia says.
FRAMING RACIAL DISCORD
Stuff’s Wellington mastheads played a part in framing a narrative of racial discord festering between Ma¯ori and Pa¯keha¯, while giving prominence to Pa¯keha¯ points of view.
Words like ‘‘tensions’’, ‘‘civil war’’, ‘‘factions’’ and ‘‘anger’’ made consistent appearances in foreshore and seabed reporting, stoking this concept of division.
An editorial from The Dominion published in March 1999 under the headline Honour the Law minimised the legitimacy of Ma¯ori Treaty claims.
‘‘The tactics of Maori groups who want to take action over real or imagined grievances outside the Treaty of Waitangi process are becoming irksome as they are boring,’’ said the editorial, the voice of the paper.
‘‘Many people have had enough of certain Maori groups who seem to take the view that if they want something, they must be given it.’’
In June 2000, an Evening Post columnist publicly questioned Mair’s cultural identity.
‘‘Ken Mair, for instance, looks more white than Maori,’’ he wrote. ‘‘I find this intriguing, because it means he’s descended from white immigrants along with the Maori whose cause he champions.’’
and its predecessors’ coverage of Treaty of Waitangi rights for Ma¯ori.
‘A WHITE, MALE PERSPECTIVE’
Former Dominion reporter Jon Morgan won an award for his coverage of Pa¯kaitore but admits the news was told, at the time, ‘‘very much from awhite, male perspective’’.
Covering the occupation thrust him into uncharted territory.
‘‘I felt a bit at a loss at first because I had no training [in tikanga Ma¯ori],’’ he said.
‘‘I’m not Ma¯ori. I had never been on amarae ... I was certain there were finer points of Ma¯ori protocol that were lost on me.
‘‘When I look back on it, there were story angles there that completely escaped me at first and it took me awhile to catch up,’’ Morgan said.
Who gets voice? is a Victoria University study published in the
Ken Mair announces the intentions of Pa¯kaitore occupiers to remain at the Whanganui park in 1995.
Dominion Post editor Anna Fifield says the Our Truth project is about reckoning with Stuff’s past.
Psychology in June 2003. It analysed how The Dominion and New Zealand Herald represented the voices of different groups in their coverage of Pa¯kaitore throughout the occupation.
It found the volume of voice afforded to Ma¯ori ‘‘to be more consistent with status as a minority under multiculturalism, than with their status as equal partners under the Treaty of Waitangi (and biculturalism)’’.
Non-Ma¯ori MPs were twice as likely to be quoted than any other group, including Ma¯ori MPs, it said.
‘‘While Ma¯ori interests were given a similar amount of voice to any other group, the collective voice of official interest groups outweighed the voice of the occupiers,’’ the paper continued.
For Mair, the Pa¯kaitore occupation could be distilled down to one thing: ‘‘It was our land. We were fighting for the health and wellbeing of the
Ken Mair says the media were biased when it came to the reporting of Pa¯kaitore because ‘‘they come from a particular background . . . that was always going to clash with our values’’.
[Whanganui] river.’’
On March 14, 1995, the day the Pa¯kaitore sit-in began, The Evening Post offered a dramatically different take.
‘‘The Ma¯ori squatters who have taken possession of this public park are making a laughing stock of the police, the Government and the Wanganui District Council ... the law is the foundation of an ordered society,’’ the paper wrote in an editorial.
‘‘When one group is permitted to act with total contempt for the law and the rights of others, the whole basis of civilised society is undermined.
‘‘That is precisely what is happening at Moutoa Gardens ... authorities should realise by now that humouring these arrogant bullies only encourages them. It is time to end this scandalous occupation.’’
The next day, The Dominion published a similar sentiment.
‘‘The illegal Ma¯ori
occupation of Wanganui’s Moutoa Gardens is an explosion waiting to happen. It must be defused before damage is done,’’ it wrote.
Reflecting on the reporting at the time, Mair’s chief concern revolves around ‘‘the lack of understanding, research and analysis’’ by reporters on why the protesters were there. They also failed to understand the ‘‘fiscal envelope’’ – the government limit on Ma¯ori land claims under Te Tiriti o Waitangi.
‘‘I don’t know if much has really changed,’’ Mair says.
‘‘I know there are genuine attempts to change but until you deal with the institution [of media], the systemic power and who decides and who controls, then we’ll continue to have that oppression, racism and racist behaviour.
‘‘Real change only comes when the system is either tipped upside down, or we begin to see things from our lens, aMa¯ori lens.
Dame Tariana Turia says the media should be pono (truthful) and tika ( just).
‘‘I’m not seeing that shift in any way whatsoever with the pace it should be happening.’’
An obvious, and provocative, example of The Dominion’s refusal to consider Ma¯ori perspectives was in its insistence in pluralising Ma¯ori by adding the letter ‘‘s’’.
Repeated pleas from Ma¯ori, including from Professor Whatarangi Winiata of Te Wa¯nanga o Raukawa, to abandon the practice were often dismissed because it was the paper’s official style to pluralise words assimilated into English from other languages.
Richard Long, the editor of The Dominion from 1991 and the inaugural editor of The Dominion Post in 2002, says these plurals ‘‘took a bit of sorting out’’.
‘‘Stylistically, wewould have been worried about what our readers would have thought – and that’s non-Ma¯ori readers – would have thought not using the plural for the word,’’ Long says.
‘‘Initially, we would have probably run the ‘s’ because that was sort of accepted form, then I think we probably mellowed and moved with the times on the Ma¯ori issue and Ma¯ori correctness.’’
Long says he doesn’t recall the precise details regarding Pa¯kaitore coverage at the time, but can’t immediately think of anything he would have done differently.
Jon Morgan has a different view.
He says there is quite a bit he would do differently now ‘‘but that’s because I know the issue pretty thoroughly now’’.
Covering Moutoa Gardens made him ‘‘conscious and sympathetic’’ towards Ma¯ori and Ma¯ori issues in stories he wrote in the months and years to follow.
‘‘My appreciation for a Ma¯ori point of view just broadened completely. It didn’t exist before and then it did. I became very sympathetic and it is reflected in my stories,’’ he says.
‘‘There’s a hell of a lot of wrong things that were done to Ma¯ori and I didn’t feel the need to try and be balanced in any way. I just thought, ‘s…, people need to know about this’.’’
Morgan said that in 2020, Moutoa Gardens would be framed in the context of all the otherMa¯ori issues being reported on. ‘‘We know more about [these issues] and I know more about them.’’
IT’S NOT WOKE OR VIRTUE SIGNALLING
The Dominion Post’s new editor, Anna Fifield, is still settling into her role but already recognises the need to better represent Ma¯ori voices. She acknowledges the paper doesn’t have an exemplary record.
This includes ensuring editorial staff are armed with knowledge of Ma¯ori tikanga and language, instilling a commitment to diversity, and ‘‘walking the talk’’ to ensure Our Truth doesn’t become a box-checking exercise.
‘‘I think this is an extremely important project for us to do to reckon with our past and our role in creating or perpetuating some of the divisions in New Zealand society,’’ Fifield says.
‘‘I dismiss the idea that this is just being woke. It is not that at all. It is not about virtue signalling, it’s not about tokenism ... this is part of a broader effort to look, from an institutional perspective, at how New Zealand has dealt with its biculturalism over decades.’’
As amouthpiece for society, the newspaper has a strong part to play in shaping today’s narrative.
‘‘It is absolutely right that now we are paying attention to all sides of a story and all perspectives, and that we try to reflect our community as a whole, and thatwe are not just catering for one part of our readership,’’ Fifield says.
Our Truth, Ta¯ Ma¯tou Pono is a Stuff project investigating the history of racism. In 2021, part two of the series will focus on Aotearoa and how our racist past has made us who we are today.