As old Treaty grievances are settled, will today's generation pass the latest acid test?

Tuesday, 20 December 2022

The Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua settlement bill passes its third reading in Parliament.

K (Guru) Gurunathan is a former Mayor of Kāpiti and a long-time campaigner for Māori causes.

OPINION: Ngāti Kahungunu Ki Wairarapa recently settled their Treaty claims. The Crown will give them $175m in assets and cash.

Haami Te Whaiti, the man who led the “long and tortuous road”, starting with the first claims filed in the late 1980s, noted that the most important component of the settlement was the cultural redress, a sentiment common with other successful claimants.

On December 15, the Waitangi Tribunal released its final report and recommendations on the 17 claims of the Te Atiawa/Ngāti Awa people of Kāpiti, urging the relevant ministers to start urgent negotiations.

These and other final tribunal reports and recommendations on claims across the country are backed by scholarly and forensic research. In a sense, they are moral glass houses within which the politics of national reconciliation has an opportunity to be negotiated in good faith.

Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa Tāmaki nui-a-Rua Settlement Trust chairperson Haami Te Whaiti has noted that the most important component of the settlement was the cultural redress.

* Parliament agrees to pass disputed Ngāti Kahungunu settlement

* Waitangi Tribunal process 'healing' for Māori

A new approach to teaching the history of Aotearoa New Zealand will give students the opportunity to connect with their local whānau, hāpu and iwi, and explore the historical significance of local places and people.

While this reconciliation between tribal claimants and the Crown is at a high level, recent developments offer more intimate opportunities at local community level.

The compulsory Te Takanga o Te Wa and the Aotearoa New Zealand History curriculum, starting in primary schools next year, create opportunities for local Māori and communities to contribute to the development of localised curriculum. And for students to know and connect with whānau, hapū and iwi, exploring the historical significance of local places and people.

The heavily researched tribunal reports, findings and recommendations offer a rich source of data for the critical thinking the new curriculum envisions. The schools, elected boards and respective community catchments are drawn into this conversation.

How will creating and teaching the local curriculum manage the tribunal’s finding on the systematic dispossession of the traditional communal lands of local Māori through the legalisation of individual ownership?

The Kāpiti expressway has provided the catalyst for an acid test of the local community’s preparedness to embrace the experiences of its mana whenua.

In the case of Te Atiawa/Ngāti Awa, it resulted in mana whenua becoming largely landless. The 992-paged report makes specific mention of the history of the Waikanae township.

Rangatira and member of Parliament Wiremu Te Kakakura Parata had a vision to create a native township under the Native Townships Act. A town controlled by Māori to benefit Māori.

In reality, the act was used to extend Pākehā settlements on Māori-owned lands in strategic areas.

K (Guru) Gurunathan, whose earliest memories of New Zealand include a decent smattering of embarrassments.

The tribunal found 47 acres of Māori land strategically set aside by the railway suffered the same fate.

The town came under the administration of the Crown and Crown-controlled bodies.

Something more about this Wiremu Parata: he famously took the Anglican Church to court for a breach of contract in 1877 only for Justice James Prendergast to infamously declare the Treaty a “simple nullity” having been signed by “primitive barbarians”.

Now, here’s an acid test. In 2017, the Kāpiti council with input from local iwi and a local historian, presented the option of giving Māori names to seven sections of the old State Highway 1. With the opening of the new Kāpiti Expressway there will be a revocation of the old highway, making it a local road with a new name or names.

Consultation saw significant opposition, with objections to the cost of changing addresses, to the simplicity of just having one name.

The objections that caught media attention were claims the Māori names were too difficult to pronounce.

The council decided to delay the renaming until the physical works to redesign the old highway as a local road were completed.

That will happen next year, and the controversial renaming decision will resurface before local councillors.

For that section of the old highway running through Waikanae township, local mana whenua had proposed “Kakakura”, in memory of their rangatira. The all-Pākehā members of the local community board had voted to retain it as “Main Road”.

Given the findings of the tribunal on how the whole Waikanae township was legally stolen from local Māori aspirations, will the mainstream opposition to Māori names be reconsidered? Especially with two Waikanae primary schools having a front seat to the unfolding of the critical thinking around local history.

Or will those living in this glass house continue to throw stones?