[ Pacific Women Speak Out for Independence and Denuclearisation , 1998, pp64-69]
WEAVING MAORI WOMEN'S LIVES
Pauline Tangiora - Aotearoa ( New Zealand )
Pauline Tangiora, Rongomaiwahine Tribe, is a Maori elder and has affiliations to many other tribes. She is a Justice of the Peace, a former President of WILPF Aotearoa, the Regional Women's Representative for the World Council for Indigenous Peoples, a member of the Earth Council and a life member of the Maori Women's Welfare League.
There have been several women from my tribal area of Rongomaiwahine Te Mahia on the East Coast of the North Island, who have had a major influence on my life – strong women, though they never spoke much.
On the marae (sacred gathering place) one used to sit between their legs under a blanket. You learnt you didn't want to get up to go to the toilet because if you got up they tugged your pigtails and you sat back down again. It was a way of not disturbing the flow of the tangihanga (time of mourning) or anything big. It always felt cosy, knowing there is a comfort in older people. It has been a good support growing up with older people, learning from them that there is a necessity in life to know who you are and that you can stand up for what you believe is right. We owe them so much.
My father used to bring me home frequently whenever there was a tangihanga , at Tuahuru Marae in Mahia. There were also many things going on at Kaiuku, Mahanga and Opoutama because, although we are a small peninsula, we have many marae . There was always something on at one marae or another.
There was talk in my early years of the wars that were caused in our area off the Coast and Waikaremoana about Te Kooti and the Pakeha (Europeans) chasing him through the bush. He wanted his land back but they got rid of him, imprisoning him down on Rekohu for two years. In Mahia, Toiroa the Prophet prophesied that the “Upraised Hand” would arise in the area. That was many years before Te Kooti Rikirangi returned from Rekohu with the Ringatu Religion.
Many our Maori men went overseas and were killed in the Second World War. Relations used to say, “What a waste of life. Why do we have to have war?”
In the late 1950s many issues concerned me, but being in the full blush of motherhood with a young family, there was little time. My main concern was that bombs were being tested in the Pacific and about what was going to happen to our land and the Pacific if the testing continued. We were brought up to be very careful with water – only to use enough for cooking, drinking and bathing – and although the early reports were not specific about the utter desecration of the land and water as a result of those tests, enough was said to make me think.
The issue of our self determination gained strength in the early 1960s. We became aware that we were being assimilated into a society which was not a part of Maori society. So we Maori in Taumaranui set up fundraising for the Maori Education Foundation and the Government matched us dollar for dollar.
Sir Apirana Ngata had said, “You take those things of the Pakeha , but hold on to those things of the Maori.” In the 1960s Maori began realizing we weren't holding onto very much – that we were losing so much. It was an oppression – “Well you don't have to be Maori, we're all the same in this country!”
Most of my children had been educated on Maori education scholarships so it was a case of standing up and being counted. If one wanted to take the money from the putea (collective funds) for my children's education it was beholden to me to take a stance about where we were as Maori in our own country. From there I became even more involved with the Maori Women's Welfare League.
The League has made, and continues to make very good submissions to the Government about testing in the South Pacific, the Maori language and many social issues to do with Maori. What is good for us as Maori is also very good for the rest of the country. People need to accept that what Maori do is a Maori decision under the Treaty of Waitangi, but it is also going to benefit all those around us. Many of us have grown up knowing that we don't own the environment – that we live within it and take care of it for the future.
My whanau (family) – eight children of my own (living) and six stepchildren and many, many mokopuna (grandchildren) and great mokopuna and whangai (children who have joined the family) – give me the strength to take responsibility to challenge decisions on many issues. The future generations will be the judge and jury.
In the 1970s, the focus became more on the issues of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Land March in 1975 started up North and went all the way down the North Island to Parliament. That focus on the land strengthened Maori. A whole lot of issues came back to the land. Let us remember Eva Rickard and her fight to retain her land at Raglan. Moe Mai e Whaea (May your spirit rest peacefully). The stake she planted for the land ignited the fire throughout the country, to reclaim Maori land.
Remember the continuing struggle of Nganeko Minhinnick who for years has been trying to replant her whole area in native trees and to protect the site behind the steel mill where the bones of her people have been bulldozed up. How she has had to sit there with her family. More recently she has been trying to draw attention to the sacrilege of putting a sewer pipeline through the Stonefields, one of Aotearoa's oldest known settlements, which is of equal significance to Stonehenge in England.
Earlier land confiscations – Parihaka land confiscation, and the raupatu (illegal seizure of tribal lands by Government) of Tainui, Tauranga, the Bay of Plenty and many others – were not taught in history at school. It's sad that even to this day children are taught about Julius Caesar and the Magna Carta but not the history of this country. One of the challenges we face as we go into the new millennium is to teach the children the history of this country, not what the parents or grandparents thought they knew of the history.
It's still happening in this day and age. In Tamaki Makaurau ( Auckland ), Bastion Point is a good example. Here was a piece of land handed over by the tribal people, Ngati Whatua, for the use of the people of Auckland . Then the Government of the day ordains that it was such an exclusive piece of land that they could make millions out of it if they sold it. Well, where is the justice in that? There was a sadness when delivering kai (food). You couldn't do anything other than support the people who occupied the Point protesting that sale. The strength of Maori who stopped the injustice but at such a cost to the people. But, the ordinary person in the street said, “Those Maoris again! Here they are wanting their land back!”
We've got to be honest about how we teach these issues. The occupation of Pakaitore at Whanganui challenged Pakeha about their claim of “non-Maori land.” Yet most New Zealanders only believe what they read in the paper.
The environment is another issue – heavy topdressing and emptying of bilge water from ships into the ocean. We're pouring so much poison into the oceans and waterways in Aotearoa, it's causing destruction. Plantings of pine trees have replaced forests that have been cut down unilaterally. The pine trees are exported to the Asian market. We've really not thought it through because the logs are being exported, not processed here. Now we've got a back-up of logs in many ports. If we want to plant forest why don't we plant forest that will regenerate, and look at a long term system of native reafforestation?
There is also the issue of flora and fauna which is the WAI262 claim to the Waitangi Tribunal launched by Del Wihongi. That's one the government doesn't want to move on. They know the whole world is watching and whatever the Government and Maori come out with is going to have an impact on the biodiversity laws of the whole world and decide who has the responsibility to be custodians of the fauna and flora.
One cannot really separate one issue from another because every issue overlaps or is woven into the next issue. From the Maori perspective everything is within the circle of the holistic worldview. Once you start pulling one thing apart you disturb the others.
The fishing issue has become a real thorn in the sides of many people. Suddenly in the 1980s and 1990s it's become worth so much money. With the destruction of the fisheries in the northern hemisphere the ships are moving down here and are fishing out some species. No one knows whether they'll recover. In 1987-88 the Maori Council put an injunction in to the Government that Maori own the fisheries. It was going through court on and off, then suddenly, in 1992, we were called to a meeting in the Maori Affairs Office in Wellington and presented with a document – the Sealord agreement – and asked to sign it. I remember standing up and saying, “Hey we can't do this, we haven't discussed this with our people back home. We can't put signatures on this. Rongomaiwahine won't be signing this deal.” Tribal areas didn't know what was going on and if we are true to ourselves as communities – Maori communities – we don't give that authority to anybody else. Many people were upset with this decision, Tipene O'Regan was one of them, but someone had to stand up and be counted on behalf of our people.
When walking out of Parliament I decided to travel around the world to let governments know that this wasn't a deal since you couldn't even say half of the Maori tribes agreed to it. My visit took me to the office of the Commonwealth Secretary-General and one of the Lords in the British Parliament. A few tribes have gone to the United Nations and asked for the UN Human Rights Commission to look into this situation.
In the discussion leading up to that deal we were told that buying a half share of the Sealord fishing company was a good proposition for Maori, and that getting into a multi-national deal was what Maori should be doing. But one needs to question whether we should be in multinational deals when it's multinationals which, at the end of the day, are oppressing not only Maori but many Indigenous people around the world. Sealord says it gives scholarships for Maori for education and for this, that and the other, but it's not the issue – where will the multinationals take us if they buy us out? Factory ships may still wipe out sustainable fishing.
We must acknowledge those people who have motivated a resurgence of Indigenous peoples – Nga Wahine Toa, Nga Tama Toa, Waitangi Action Group, Titewhai Harawira in the 1970s with the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement, the Pakeha Treaty Action – and the support of Reverend Maurice Gray for his people.
Maori are great weavers. The many strands in our history will tell of dedicated Pakeha people who have been being woven into our history by being there for us, obtaining resources to make things happen. Pakeha who have challenged their own people to seek the truth – among those are Helen Yensen, Joan Macdonald and Kate Dewes. Today's struggle is still very much alive. Mana Motuhake is ever strong. Self determination will succeed. One only has to look at the dedication of Maori in raising up Kohanga Reo (Maori language nests) and Kura Kaupapa (total immersion learning centres in Maori). The dedication of urban Maori, who have been living in cities for the past two or three generations.
We have an overflowing basket of young people, coming forward strong and dedicated, too numerous to name – amongst whom are Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, Joseph Te Rito, Annette Sykes and others not so young, but with wisdom, such as Moana Jackson, Tariana Turia, Peter Sharples and Mereana Pitman, to whom this chapter is dedicated.
Kia Kaha, Kia Maia, Kia Manawanui
(Have strength, uplift your spirit and hold firm).