Section:OBS 2N PaGe:28 Edition Date:190804 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 3/8/2019 12:51 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Observer
28 04.08.19 World
Dispatch
Auckland
Will Jacinda come? Māoris pin their
hopes on PM in fi ght for sacred site
The British crown
seized Ihumātao in- Now housing
developers are doing
the same. But, as
Eleanor Ainge Roy
discovers, New
Zealand’s indigenous
people are resisting
A winter storm has swept through
south Auckland and the protest
camp at Ihumātao is shin deep in
mud. Protesters ditch their shoes to
move across the squelchy ground
and huddle round camp fires. It’s
cold, windy and dirty, but the atmos-
phere at Ihumātoa remains buoyant.
Hundreds of Māori have travelled
from across New Zealand to join the
occupation and protect what they
consider to be sacred land from a pri-
vate developer. They describe them-
selves as kaitiaki – guardians.
“I just feel so alive, bro,” says one
young Māori man, wrapped in the
indigenous fl ag. “Me too, bro,” says
his friend, barefoot and alert.
Over the gentle green and golden
curves of Ihumātao, colourful tents
have spawned. To the west, glimpses
of blue water fl icker in the winter sun,
and to the south, jumbo jets land at
New Zealand’s largest airport, three
miles down the road. But the jet
engines fail to drown out the sing-
ing voices, the shouts of excited te reo(the Māori language) and the clatter
of cooking pots heaving with food.
Vegetable gardens fl ank the cen-
tral meeting house ; here protesters
are tasked with rubbish duty, build-
ing work or childcare.
“This isn’t a picnic you know,”
shouts an organiser at a bunch of
teenagers who have failed to join a
work squad. “We actually need help
here to look after the whenua [land].”
The settlement is both a rag-tag
festival collection of portable toilets,
tarpaulin and dented tea urns – and
a village that feels ancient and inde-
structible. For more than 10 days,
protesters have occupied land in the
suburb of Mangere which is slated for
housing development. Activists say
the land is too precious to lose, but the
authorities insist the deal has been
done and they won’t interfere.
Last week clashes between police
and activists led to arrests, but since
then the protest has remained peace-
ful and police have reduced their
numbers, though offi cers maintaina discreet presence. “Police remain
pleased with the relaxed atmosphere
and peaceful behaviour of protesters
at Ihumātao,” said Sup t Jill Rogers.
Family groups sit in the rich vol-
canic dirt like they’ve always been
there; cooking on open fi res, sleep-
ing under the stars, and letting their
children roam free among the ever-
green pohutukawa trees. For many,
Ihumātao means home more than
the thin, draughty walls of weather-
board houses. It means purpose more
than transient, low-paid jobs. And it
means family more than a fractured
and individualistic modern world.
For these people, Ihumātao means
to belong – and to survive.
The co-leader of Soul (Save Our
Unique Landscape), Pania Newton ,
29, says: “To me, this land is the very
essence of who I am, it’s where my
identity lies. How much more do we
have to sacrifi ce at the hands of cap-
italism, at the hands of the crown,
before it is all gone?”
Newton traces her ties to Ihumātaoto the fi rst Polynesian settlers to New
Zealand, who planted market gardens
to feed their people as early as the 14th
century. She has become the driving
force of the occupation. Dressed in
gumboots, a rainjacket and carrying
a fl ax-weave basket on her back, the
former medical and law student is fed
up : of land being taken from her peo-
ple, but also of the diseases of poverty
that claim Māori years before Pakeha
[European] New Zealanders ; of pris-
ons heaving with her people; and of
the record-high suicides of Māori
teens.
“We have experienced ongoing
injustices since Ihumātao was forci-
bly taken in 1863. Our ancestral lands
have been quarried, our waterways
polluted. We feel as though we have
sacrifi ced enough for the greater good
of Auckland, and all we’re asking for
now is that this small piece of land
is returned back to the guardians so
that we can hold it in trust for all New
Zealanders to enjoy as a cultural her-
itage landscape,” says Newton.
Ihumātao was s eized by the crown
in 1863 and sold to settler farmers. In
2016 it was sold again to developer
Fletcher Building, which plans about
500 homes on the prime site so close
to the airport – made even more valu-
able by Auckland’s well-documented
housing crisis.
The chief executive of Fletcher
Building’s residential division, Steve
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