Compromise will end impasse over maunga

Wairaka replanting dispute can learn from progress at Bastion Pt

Last week Ta¯maki Makaurau, and Aotearoa, reduced the level of severity for one of the most significant changes to our personal freedoms and our way of life. It has been a process that we have all, to different degrees and enduring different levels of loss, uncertainty and fear, entered willingly. We acted as one, sacrificing hopefully short-term financial loss to save lives and to provide better certainty for the long-term health of not only our people, but our economy.

There has been immense compromise and sacrifice by many. Our essential workers have worked tirelessly to keep key operations and services functioning, when many more have been required to stay at home. At Nga¯ti Wha¯tua ra¯kei, our people and our team have worked tirelessly, as have many iwi and Ma¯ori providers to do what they can to ease the fear and uncertainty, and to provide much-needed support across our peoples.

Checkpoints, which have been widespread across the motu, are a demonstration of the desire to protect the ones we love. It is a simple but immensely powerful demonstration of an effort to block foreign invaders to our lands.

These weeks of solitude, uncertainty, not knowing when the ra¯hui will end, has been a chance to reflect. In our isolation, we have allowed our environment to take some deep breaths, to see a city without almost constant congestion, of waterways where fish stocks have had no chance to replenish. We have been on better able to appreciate the simple pleasures of walking with our wha¯nau, of taking in the beauty we have to enjoy on across our many communities, to savour the remaining green spaces and the role they have cleansing and nurturing our wairua, the air we breathe. In adversity, it is natural to seek the familiarity and wisdom of the past and our whakapapa to help guide us forward. It is time for the dispute, which has seen ¯protesters to O block access wairaka, and which has led to repellent graffiti on buildings on the maunga, to end. The way forward is compromise. For the past 20 years, Nga¯ti Wha¯tua has worked tirelessly to repopulate Takaparawhau with close to one million native and fruit trees, which have slowed erosion, improved soil structure, provided habitat for native birds and insects, and created jobs — all while cleaning our air. We have sent a letter to the chair of the Tu¯puna Maunga Authority, Paul Majurey, to Mayor Phil Goff and to the head of the protest group on Owairaka, Anna Radford, seeking compromise so we can progress the essential mahi of replantingw Owairaka. We propose that Takaparawhau holds the solution to this deadlock. In 1991 with the return of our land at Bastion Pt we also earned the right to remove exotic trees. But we have left significant stands of gum trees and even noxious species to continue to provide benefits including slowing erosion until the native understorey grows or high canopy relief for manu escaping cats and other introduced predators.

The maunga authority has not acted decisively and as a result the chance to bring all in the community along with its solution has been lost.

Locals will be the ones who daily will need to care for the new trees. Like at Bastion Pt, our wider community has planted and weeded the trees with us, together, in friendship and understanding of the future we are trying to recreate.

Ngarimu Blair is deputy chairman, Nga¯ti Wha¯ ra¯kei, and a director of Nga¯ti ra¯kei Whai Rawa Ltd.