That was the day NZ cried . . . I thought it was the day that I was going to die: Sharon Hawke
On May 25 1978 an historic Maori land protest on Bastion Pt ended in arrests and property destruction. Remarkable scenes unfolded as scores of police dragged away hundreds of protesters. Martin Johnston recounts the divisive — yet ultimately successful —
Destructive fires, including one that took a little girl’s life, have branded themselves into the history of Nga¯ti Wha¯tua ra¯kei, marking out historical waypoints of despair as they struggled to retain their land.
But fires also marked turning points for the Auckland hapu¯ which, with the city and nation, today remembers the end of the divisive — yet ultimately successful — occupation of Takaparawhau/Bastion Point at ra¯kei 40 years ago, on May 25, 1978.
The occupation began on January 5, 1977, when protesters moved on to the land after dark, put up tents and waited for the bulldozers which were to subdivide the area.
The place that was occupied was the elevated area behind the Michael Joseph Savage Memorial Park and above the ra¯kei Domain and kahu Bay, near the present ra¯kei marae. It offers commanding views over the Waitemata¯ Harbour entrance with Rangitoto Island as the backdrop.
Some Nga¯ti Wha¯tua ra¯kei people and their supporters occupied the site for 506 days, until forced out by about 500 police.
Led by Joe Hawke, they were protesting the Government’s plan for high-cost housing on the land. Takaparawhau had been Nga¯ti Wha¯tua land.
In 1840, Apihai Te Kawau and other Nga¯ti Wha¯tua chiefs invited Lieutenant Governor William Hobson to shift his infant colonial government from the Bay of Islands to the Waitemata¯.
The crown paid £341 for about 1200ha of land that would become the Auckland settlement, the Waitangi Tribunal says, although Nga¯ti Wha¯tua notes the transaction was intended as sharing the land rather than its alienation. The tribunal says that just six months later, 18ha was resold by the Government to settlers for £24,275. The income was used to build roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
By the 1860s, the hapu¯’s last remaining land in the area was the ¯ O ¯ O ¯ OO O¯ ¯ O ¯ O O¯ O¯ 283ha at ra¯kei. This was confirmed by the Native Land Court, but the court also made things worse by naming individuals, rather than the hapu¯, as the owners.
Over following decades, individual owners sold some blocks and other sites were purchased compulsorily under the Public Works Act, and authorities imposed a disruptive, contaminating sewerage system on ra¯kei.
In a 1978 court hearing in which the Government was setting the legal groundwork for the removal of the protesters, a Department of Lands and Survey official said ra¯kei block owners came and offered to sell and were eventually paid.
But he also agreed with his questioner Joe Hawke, a defendant in the court case, that some owners would not sell. There had been several compulsory acquisitions by the Crown, the official said, but only three blocks were affected where owners were opposed to sale.
In 1910-11, over the objections of after another and left us”. confirmed to the that his late Nga¯ti Wha¯tua, a large sewer and During the occupation in 1977, great-uncle Hemi Poara had struck concrete retaining wall were built Hawke, according to a report the match. across the kahu Bay foreshore, leadof a speech he gave to a church Citing the report, the triing to flooding and cutting off the meeting, recalled the fiery end of the bunal later explained the building hapu¯’s normal access to the sea from kahu Bay settlement. had been partly deconstructed. The their village at the bay. “As I look back,” he said, “I can see Crown had proposed its re-erection
Auckland began discharging raw my mother and father on their knees at Helensville, “but the people knew sewage at the harbour entrance from crying because the Government had where the ancestral house belonged 1914, polluting the hapu¯’s shellfish burned their house and taken away and there is a custom of burning such beds. their dignity and lifestyle.” houses when threatened with de
“There could have been no greater He also said the Government had secration by a foe”. insult to a Ma¯ori tribeO¯even if one were burned down the marae meeting Then in 1990, the ra¯kei marae intended,” the tribunal said in its house. that had been built further up the hill landmark report¯ontheO ra¯kei claim At the tribunal hearings in 1986, from the state houses in Kitemoana in 1987. John Broadbent, of Mt Wellington, St was gutted by fire. It was later
Many people left the village and gave a vivid description of having restored. the hapu¯ began to break up. By the witnessed the fire from his vantage “Fire seems to be in our history early 1950s,¯tuaONga¯tiWha¯ ra¯kei was point on a boat in the bay, where he quite a bit,” says Sharon Hawke, landless, apart from the cemetery in lived at the time. daughter of Joe and an elected mem¯kahutuaOBay.“Itis35longyearsagobutitisstillberoftheNga¯tiWha¯ ra¯kei Trust
Some left willingly for state houses a wound in my side when I remember Board. up the hill towards the Bastion Pt the smoke drifting across Tamaki Fire can be laced with tragedy and land. Others didn’t want to go. The Drive ... I remember vividly the regret, but Sharon also finds new tribunal was told by one woman of wailing of the wa¯hine and confused beginnings and “another chance to how she had forced her aunt to leave, shouts of the rangatahi . . . I have get it right”. only to have her die hours later in never forgotten that infamy.” “We used fire to maintain ourher new home. And just months The burning of the meeting house selves through the winter [of the later her own mother died “and then remained mysterious until during the occupation] to have heat. We needed all our old people started dying one 1977 occupation, when Prince Rewiti it to cook. And yet it took a life away.”