Māori have shared an alternative to the Western world of listening, seeing and feeling the rhythms of life. This is something iwi, hapū, whānau throughout the country have always done and continue to do.
As I feel my feet in the soil of Papatūānuku, my body beneath the waves of Tangaroa, my face in the breeze of Tāwhirimātea, I wonder at the profound opportunity before us as New Zealanders. To learn and be guided by the mana whenua of where we reside.
This is why I am grateful to have been offered the opportunity to contribute this guest introduction to Ngā Kupu Wero. Reading some of the best work of Māori published in the last ten years demonstrates the power of written words to challenge colonialism and entrenched systems of governance to wield, forcefully and with determination, new just futures. I pay tribute to my peers in politics, law, the media, education, economics and the arts for their constant vigilance and, in particular, their wero.
I like to think the country is starting to listen.
Just as the contributors to Ngā Kupu Wero all have had their own ara, pathways, to their personal decolonisation or, rather, to achieving their own tino rangatiratanga, I have had mine. One of the milestones for me occurred in 2017. After more than a century of tautohetohe, years of struggle, Ngāi Tūhoe went public with their commitment to Te Urewera, now that the law finally recognised these forested lands: not as a national park but as Te Manawa o te Ika a Māui, the heart of the great fish of Māui.
The commitment, named Te Kawa o te Urewera, records in English:
‘Deliberatively, we are resetting our human relationship and behaviour towards nature. Our disconnection from Te Urewera has changed our humanness. We wish for its return.’
What’s profound to me in this journey of reconciliation and restitution is the bravery, openness and hope to ‘bring back our humanness’ that Ngāi Tūhoe, to which I have no whakapapa connection, has prepared to undertake. It sinks deep within me, every time I think of this Ngāi Tūhoe intent for their beloved home.
I believe it’s a commitment shared by all the contributors to Ngā Kupu Wero. I — we — want this too. For us and our whānau. But even beyond the ‘us’ of Māori to the ‘us’ of us all as a nation.
When the new law for Te Urewera passed through Parliament in 2014, politicians knew a poignant moment was being carved into our constitutional history. In the words of our then Minister of Māori Affairs, the Hon Sir Pita Sharples, the solution in recognising Te Urewera as not Crown-owned land but instead as a place that has its own legal personality offered us a ‘profound alternative to the human presumption of sovereignty over the natural world’.
Ngāi Tūhoe commitment to Te Urewera was an important realisation of what was now possible in law and power sharing. Legal personality of the environment as used in Aotearoa New Zealand presented a significant shift towards a return to the first laws that were known in these lands. The Māori legal system, with its base in the knowledge of kinship between one another and with the physical and spiritual worlds, was being permitted by the state legal system to resurface for all to see.
So, how do I, or we, pause to reset our lives? If we see and hear as a nation Māori environmental ancestors, what do we do in response? Especially in our unwell times when they (and we) weep.
More than that, how do we also reset our relationship Māori to Pākehā to all cultures in Aotearoa New Zealand?
Hundreds of years ago, European colonists dreamed up their desire to expand their empires across salt waters. They developed a new legal doctrine: the doctrine of discovery. It held that European countries could gain sovereignty of another’s land on the false basis of first discovery even if other people lived there. This is one colossal example of the magic of law perpetrated in the pursuit of colonialist goals.
I hope I might take a lawyer’s perspective in this introduction on some thoughts about any reset. Law can do anything. What now do we want law as a tool of society to do? By knowing that law is biased, we have agency to make real our new societal dreams in both a practical and constitutional manner. This excites me. But only if we can truly be brave. If we maintain the wero.
And we need to be brave. For it is in these ideas of humanness that one of our greatest hopes lies for survival and flourishing to navigate the storms of crises upon us as people as well as whenua and wai.
Incoming tides bring constitutional moments. Big waves flow in: Te Tiriti o Waitangi / the Treaty of Waitangi 1840; The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 2007. A smaller wave breaks: He Puapua, the report commissioned in 2019 by the Government on the appropriate measures to achieve the goals set out by the UN Declaration. It seeks a bold breakthrough in how our country must embed Te Tiriti and the Declaration into its power structures.
Along with eight other Government-appointed persons, over a period of a few months — a day here, a day there — I helped write the 106 pages of He Puapua. It puts ‘Papatūānuku at the forefront as we work to restore her rightful place to care for Ranginui, for humankind, for Māori, and for all living things’.
In writing He Puapua, we didn’t start from scratch. We drew on the researched and lived expertise of many, including the work of the Iwi Leaders Forum, the bicultural Waitangi Tribunal, and the work of the Government. Our document sets out a vision for 2040 — 200 years since committing to Te Tiriti — and a first-attempt draft roadmap to get there. At its core is a visualisation in change where the powers of kāwanatanga (state government) begin to decrease to enable the current tiny spheres of tino rangatiratanga (Māori self-determination) and joint authority to grow.
Resetting our humanness will enable us as New Zealanders, to hear, and see, that iwi, hapū and whānau matter.
He Puapua is filled with ideas. One simple one: by 2040, New Zealanders will know and appreciate iwi tribal nation boundaries, where the practice of mana whakahaere is evident. Imagine moving through lands, with pou whenua and dialect-specific te reo prominently welcoming and farewelling us, reminding us and enabling us all to appreciate the hopes and aspirations of iwi, their ancestors and descendants.
We can do this, and more.
The late Pākehā author Michael King wrote similarly with hope in 1975 in his opening to Te Ao Hurihuri / The World Moves On — a book of Māori studies essays by Māori authors1. The intent of that work was to convey an introduction to the richness and diversity of Māori history, laws and dialect. He wrote:
For Pakehas with little previous contact with Maoritanga, new educational opportunities coupled with the establishment of institutions such as urban marae and Polynesian radio stations present an opportunity to participate in what one writer has called ‘a psychologically rich culture, from which for one hundred years Europeans have taken nothing but a few place names and a great deal of plunder’.
And so we come to 2023 and Ngā Kupu Wero. It is, in its own way, a Declaration, a Forum, a document that carries on the great work of the reset by collectivising our strong aspirations to make everything that has gone before, all the commitments and documentation of a vigilant past, right.
It shows that there is still much to do to advance our ancestors’ dreams and our grandchildren’s aspirations, but we will get there. Papatūānuku, our earth mother, expects nothing less of us, her children. I like to think that the heartbeat of the great fish of Māui is beating with us in this, our one big journey of humanness.
1 Te Ao Hurihuri: aspects of Māoritanga, Wellington, 1975