‘Rationality’ hits oppression narrative
Spare a thought for the trials of Xero co-founder Hamish Edwards and his company Grenadier Ltd. Edwards (worth an NBR-estimated $265 million) is determined to create the $50m, 18-hole, Douglas Links Golf Course on the coast north of Wellington.
A tough ask, but I have big dreams too – like one day purchasing my own SodaStream maker.
The course proposed at Ō hau, near Levin, is going through the consent process, where it has met opposition to its use of an area called Tirotirowhetu on land bought for the course.
Tirotirowhetu is a wā hi tapu, a deeply sacred area to local iwi Ngā ti Tukorehe, near the Ō hau River mouth and the sea.
The iwi thinks the wā hi tapu area ‘‘should be left alone’’. Grenadier ‘‘respectfully . . . disagrees’’, says its position ‘‘is not based on ethnocentric colonisation’’, and says iwi demands would force a nine-hole course.
Meanwhile Grenadier and its cultural adviser, Philip Tataurangi (yes, the former golf star, PGA Tour player etc), were previously consulting another local iwi as mana whenua.
Ngā ti Tukorehe members were enraged to find they were only belatedly consulted by Grenadier – and then only because the company was told to by the regional council; this was a ‘‘cultural slur’’.
Then you have Grenadier lawyer John Maassen’s submission to the hearing panel – so dripping with condescension that each of these condescension droplets was crying its own tears of contempt.
‘‘The ideological filters of some of the current representatives of Ngā ti Tukorohe [sic] frame a strong oppression narrative along racial lines,’’ he writes. ‘‘That has not proved to be a good foundation for rational discourse on resource management matters.’’
So, rationally speaking, Grenadier (the historic name for European and English grenade-lobbing soldiers) is a bit sensitive about being called a coloniser, just because it wants to absorb sacred land into a golf course, against iwi wishes, and call it Douglas.
As reported by Stuff, Maassen says the course (links traditionally set on coastal dunes) must have ‘‘intimacy’’ with the coastline.
I’m not sure about the level of closeness required. About 25 minutes to the south, you can find a world-famous links course – in Paraparaumu – where Tiger Woods once played. That course sits a couple of blocks back from the sea.
It lacks intimacy with the shoreline and seems to have a cosy interpersonal arrangement with a nearby car dealership, several blocks of houses and some top-notch accommodation facilities.
Maybe this is some kind of coursemeasuring competition from Grenadier?
Evidence to the hearing from Ngā ti Tukorehe includes a quote from late reo champion and iwi member Sean BennettOgden: ‘‘If you stay in a place long enough it becomes an intrinsic part of you, and you become a reflection of it.’’
I remember ‘‘Papa’’ Sean. He was a kaiako at Te Wā nanga o Raukawa where I learned te reo Mā ori. A sharp mind, with a breathtaking knowledge of the language and wickedly pointy – but human – sense of humour. I avoided sitting beside him at tea breaks because I was intimidated. I wish I could have spoken better reo while he was still alive, simply to have engaged in a half-decent conversation with him. I never did get to prove myself.
It was another example of how we live an incomplete existence – unlike books and movies, we are robbed of proper conclusions, left with gaps; extraordinary people and events beginning and ending at a distance, witnessed on the horizon like birds aflight, heading somewhere else.
Edwards will perhaps seek to prove that with enough ‘‘rationality’’ – but mostly, money – we can bend reality to our will, create our own narrative, oppressive or otherwise.
I would ask him and his counsel to take off their ideological filters and simply respect the mana of Ngā ti Tukorehe.
Joel Maxwell is a senior writer at Stuff.