We can’t change past but we can fix future
As a child, I spent a lot of time sitting in hui. To be honest, I didn’t always know what was going on around me. I was 6when my grandmother took me down to the Court of Appeal as iwi won the right to argue for customary title of the seabed and foreshore.
I understood that the government – at the time Helen Clark and her henchman-like figures Parekura Horomia and Michael Cullen – was trying to take away Ma¯ori rights. That seemed (and was) abjectly unfair. Rules are rules, and yet the prime minister and her mates wanted to change the rules because they seemed to have something against Ma¯ori.
That was my assessment of the heated situation, about 17 years ago. On the television shows I was watching at the time, there were always clear villains and heroes. The villains were beyond redemption and the heroes would save the day.
So it surprised me, when Imet Cullen and Horomia at hui in the years ahead, that they seemed fairly nice. They and their army of blandsuit-wearing servants had fitted the archetype of villains. But instead Cullen shook my hand, told me a tale about what a hard negotiator my grandmother was, and didn’t hesitate to pose for photos with others walking past.
By the time we met, at Wellington’s Pipitea Marae in 2008, the relationships between the government ministers and my wha¯nau seemed positively jubilant. I’m sure there was more going on beyond the surface, but the warm welcome they received shows the power of forgiveness.
Cullen, the legislator behind the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 that triggered huge protest across the country, was embraced with hongi and hugs like anyone else at Pipitea Marae that day. It was the signing of a ‘‘deed of settlement’’, a document outlining the wrongs done by the Crown to Taranaki Wha¯nui in Te Whanganui-a-Tara.
To many in New Zealand, these deals made little sense. The Treaty claims settlements are a flawed process, but not for the reasons many believe. They are particularly problematic because the process pits iwi against iwi.
The Stuff investigation into itself, Ta¯ Ma¯tou
Pono, found this organisation was unable to communicate a balanced view of race relations in Aotearoa, and instead opted to report conflict without context.
The Dominion Post was a fan of hyperbole in its reporting on the seabed and foreshore. Its Ta¯ Ma¯tou Pono report notes it stoked fear with discussion of ‘‘civil war’’, and its editorials told Ma¯ori to ‘‘honour the law’’. Ironically, Ma¯ori were protesting because the government was, in fact, not honouring the law.
Reading the report from that day on Pipitea Marae, you can see why there was confusion. The report, titled ‘‘Treaty deal in dispute to the last’’, discussed conflict between Nga¯ti Toa and Taranaki Wha¯nui, but was unable to explain why that conflict existed.
It existed because of a flawed government process. The report also didn’t communicate why the settlement was reached, the history behind it, and what it meant forMa¯ori. It didn’t look to the future, or past, and focused only on conflict and cash. Sadly, no tangata whenua were quoted.
While readers of The Dominion Post would have been left with more questions than answers after reading that report, at the marae itself the importance of the occasion was clear. There are no iwi that left the Treaty claims process having got a good deal. The Crown gave crumbs, often using the deals to try to get rid of derelict buildings, and yet iwi leaders were expected to turn rubble into gold.
This is well acknowledged, yet I saw Cullen and his successor Chris Finlayson welcomed with open arms and generosity at marae. I think that’s because these ministers were doing something few others at the time would: acknowledging that the state had done harm to Ma¯ori. Their tokens of compensation came with a promise, that they would work to try to right wrongs.
Although the claims were about the history of colonisation, and the apologies were for what had been done in the past, discussions which followed were about one thing only: what to do next.
As a teenager it wouldn’t be unusual that I’d find myself having to defend these claims and Te Tiriti. Pa¯keha¯ schoolmates and adults would say something like, ‘‘Why should I pay if I didn’t do it?’’ They’d complain about having to bear the brunt of their forefathers’ actions because ‘‘I wasn’t alive then’’. And, ‘‘Ma¯ori should just move on’’.
But apologies aren’t about trying to rewrite history.
Apologies, such as that made by Stuff to Ma¯ori this week, are about acknowledging that some have benefited from doing harm to others. They’re the first step towards mending a broken relationship, with the intention of fixing it for the future.
The Treaty claims settlements are a flawed process ... [that] pits iwi against iwi.