Community reflects on the Urewera raids
Along time ago, a bus full of children was driving to school through through a sleepy green valley. It was a quiet, simple place. Every pupil had grown up on the same soil that nourished their parents, grandparents and ancestors into the mists of time.
Yet none of them had that in mind. The boys and girls joked and talked like it was any other school day.
Cities and the powerful people whose laws ruled the land were a long way away. Or so they thought. For on this day, they came to their door.
Men dressed in black burst on to the bus.
Their guns were drawn. The children screamed in fear.
And, really, that was not so long ago. Just 10 years since the government ordered police to conduct the ‘‘Urewera terrorist raids’’.
The raids in the Ruatoki Valley and elsewhere on October 15, 2007, saw 17 people face a total of 291 charges under the Arms Act, including the illegal possession of an AK-47-style rifle, a doublebarrel sawn-off shotgun, other military-style semi-automatic firearms and Molotov cocktails.
Of those, most defendants had their charges dropped when evidence was ruled inadmissible in court. The ‘‘Urewera Four’’ – Tame Iti, Te Rangikaiwhiria Kemara, Urs Signer and Emily Bailey – were convicted in 2012
The Human Rights Commission received 31 complaints about police actions during the raids, including being stopped at a roadblock at Ruatoki and being photographed without consent, the negative implications of using the Terrorism Suppression Act, and the impact on children confined for several hours, some without food.
Iti and Kemara were sentenced to two-and-a-half years’ jail in May 2012, while Bailey and Signer were sentenced to nine months of home detention.
Iti, a long-time Tuhoe activist, was released from prison on February 27, 2013.
He has not forgotten, but he has moved on.
‘‘You don’t really want to take ownership of something that wasn’t really your f...-up. It wasn’t ours.
‘‘But they apologised and that is it. Put it down on the corner there. People can write stories about it, poetry about it, do a theatre, do a comedy show out of it.’’
We visited Iti a fortnight out from the 10-year anniversary of the raids and he didn’t want to talk about what happened on October 15, 2007.
As we pulled into the township of Taneatua, we got a text message saying ‘‘Tuhoe moving on.’’
He did eventually sit down with us for a few minutes later in the day.
‘‘It’s another date. When I say we’re moving on, we’ve moved on after 10 years. It’s just another day.
‘‘This will be the last time reporters come and talk to us about the raids.’’
Iti has accepted the apology Police Commissioner Mike Bush gave the people of Tuhoe and the community on August 13, 2014.
‘‘Many things have happened. I think we’ve gone through the process of the settlement.
‘‘So we’ve gone through that and we’ve gone through nearly 200 years of psychological abuse by the state and the Crown, so we’ve gone past all of that.’’
Iti has operated an art gallery on the main street of Taneatua for the past three years.
‘‘We create this space to keep communication open. Provoking thoughts and conversation is important. I think a part of what happened 10 years ago is something that people need to write a book about, do a movie about, do a comedy show.
‘‘Those things will carry on, but we don’t take that internally. I think people will always remember the 15th of October and it will always be in the memory of people, but can’t prevent the way it’s reported.
‘‘We write poetry and music, talk to our children about it. We can write books about what happened to nanny and papa. I think it’s a good time for people to be creative,’’ Iti said.
One community member who can’t forget that day and who hasn’t moved on is Huka Irene Williams.
Williams was detained at gunpoint on the lawn outside her workplace and told to lie facedown for three to four hours. She was neither arrested nor charged, nor told she was free to leave.
She said her husband and son were also detained, and although her son was charged with firearms offences, the charges were later dropped.
The 52-year-old is laid up with a broken hip after a car accident a few weeks before, but shares what October 15 means to her.
‘‘I think for our family, it’s still quite raw and it’s a bit of struggle sometimes,’’ Williams said.
There is still a stigma around it for her family. Her son has never bounced back from it.
‘‘But for the community, for some families, I think the apology helped in some ways. Some of the families who didn’t get an apology, they still have a lot of issues. I think the apologies were a good gesture, but it didn’t help the psychological stuff. It didn’t help our children and our relationship with the Crown,’’ Williams said.
It has had an effect on all her grandchildren who witnessed the raids.
‘‘They saw the whole thing. They would then go to school and hear the kids talking about saying you are the terrorists and stigmatised for it. I think it’s like how communities think of the Muslims living in our community - they were kind of treated like that in their community. Some of our grandchildren were bullied,’’ Williams said.
She herself has never recovered. She gets paranoid when she has to go out of the valley. After reading the reports and knowing that the residents were being monitored, she worries that people are still spying on her, especially when she goes to Auckland.
‘‘My anxiety has increased and I get a bit paranoid about it, and even my children – I wonder what are they up to and are they being spied on,’’ Williams said.
She will never move from Ruatoki. Her parents were fullblooded Tuhoe and they lived there their entire lives.
There needs to be more thought about that day, Williams said. It should be a day ‘‘to celebrate our people or a day dedicated to Tuhoe’’ instead of focusing on the negativity.
‘‘I don’t blame the police. It wasn’t the police – it was the special armed forces. I have a lot of anger towards the Labour Party. I will never support them again,’’ Williams said.
She doesn’t think there is anything the government can do now – the damage is done. It’s just time that’s needed.
‘‘Apologies can always be broken. It’s not a treaty, it’s not a binding thing. You can apologise tomorrow and be different the next day,’’ Williams said.
Deputy Chief Executive Ma¯ori/ Assistant Commissioner Wally Haumaha was responsible for restoring the relationship between Tuhoe and the police on behalf of the police commissioner at the time of the raids.
‘‘It’s important to note that following that day – October 15, 2007 – we immediately engaged with Tuhoe the very next day in response to the issues that were starting to come through as a result of that operation.
‘‘The police were generally concerned about the events that took place on that day,’’ Haumaha said.
He said that it took from 2007 to 2014 for the police to win back the trust and confidence of the Tuhoe people.
‘‘We’ve learned some significant lessons in terms of the community. We now have in place a community impact assessment report which requires the police to undertake certain things before we go into a community. It makes sure we are engaging with the right people.
‘‘A lot of our time now we continue to dialogue with Tuhoe leaders on a regular basis, building trust and confidence, heading up annual meetings together, running search-and-rescue operations.’’
The police are thankful that Tuhoe were open and willing to work reciprocally with them.
This has enabled the two parties to reach their current point, which is to focus on working both nationally and locally to build that greater relationship between police and Tuhoe and all iwi Ma¯ori across the country.
Tuhoe leader Tamati Kruger said that while the raids are these days seen as a non-event there is no desire for those directly affected by them to commemorate the day in anyway.
‘‘It is largely seen by people as a disruption and interruption. It’s something that happened and we’ve gone past that I think that is the general view.
‘‘Also the satisfaction that we were able to repair as best as we could the damage to the relationship between the Tuhoe community and the police,’’ Kruger said.
Kruger acknowledges that the government acted on the advice of the police commissioner at the time, Howard Broad. What he is disappointed in is that after the raids no government group came in concerned about the welfare of the Taneatua and Ruatoki community.
‘‘It was regarded as a crime scene for weeks. There was no government group that said, we should go in there and see if the people are well mentally, emotionally – what about the children? What about the families of those whose partners had been arrested? Can they still afford food, pay bills? What about the trauma to children and to older people? What about questions around their rights?
‘‘Tuhoe were left to their own devices, to save themselves. So that was no different to what happened to us in 1867. The [2007] raid is not a landmark event that we use within Tuhoe to measure how far we have come and how far we have improved. The real marker we use is 1867, when the collisions and the warfare between us and the Crown started. That is our time-frame measurement,’’ Kruger said.
Tuhoe had to wait for two police commissioners to vacate their positions before they got an apology, Kruger said. Current Police Commissioner Mike Bush understood quickly that a relationship had to be established and was open and filled with goodwill towards that aim and that is why it was done.
Tuhoe know that waiting something like five years in order to have the conversation was unnecessarily long, but they’re grateful it wasn’t 170 years.
‘‘The marking of a new relationship improving and rebuilding trust and confidence and goodwill and openness I would say is on track since 10 years ago.
‘‘But does that mean that we are not expecting any trouble between Tuhoe and the police? Of course not.
‘‘There will be events and incidents and of course there will be trouble. But what has happened with the experience now that we’ve had on fixing and repairing relationships, we are a lot more open and prepared to fix up glitches that may occur.
‘‘We now have the confidence we can do that. We are not delusional that everything is sweet-as forever and ever – no. We are all human beings and things happen that are beyond our control, but we accept that but we are now more prepared to come together and resolve those. I have reminded the police that Tuhoe is similarly an anti-criminal organisation as well,’’
Kruger accepts that the trauma and suffering from October 2007 has affected some people forever and that hurt cannot be cured.
‘‘As a community, as a tribal community, we have got over it and that we are pleased with the fact that we were part of a solution of rebuilding the relationship. All the system could do was criminalise and adjudicate blame and guilt. That is all the justice system can do and that is what it was built to do.
‘‘It was not built to repair relationships. The justice systems are not in the business of love and care. People and communities are, so only they can do that.’’