Maori and other working people in Waitara and elsewhere have stepped forward to explain the increased harassment they face at the hands of the cops, including the increasingly routine use by police of firearms.

As politicians, news editors, and other ruling-class voices have moved to shore up the cops, divisions among them--sometimes sharp--over how to proceed have come to the surface. Meanwhile, voices on the right have sought to rally support for the cops and whip up a racist response to Maori protests at the shooting.

The polarized discussion has also spotlighted the situation facing working people who are Maori in many rural communities today, under the impact of the capitalist economic crisis. Maori, the indigenous people of New Zealand, are an oppressed nationality. They make up around 15 percent of the population, and are overwhelmingly working class and the most rural sector of society.

In the days following the shooting, Prime Minister Helen Clark, expressing "concern" about the "bad relations between Maori and police in Taranaki," dispatched Race Relations Conciliator Rajen Prasad to Waitara to come up with a "plan of action." An urgent report was demanded from the Ministry of Maori Development.

At meetings held with Prasad working people publicly spoke out against racist treatment by the police. Forty women attended one such special meeting held at their request, where they explained the treatment they and their families had received from the police. One described the conditions in which Maori live as a "collusion of evils," pointing also to the institutionalized racism practiced by other government agencies. When asked by Prasad why they had not told anybody about these events, they explained "because the people we're supposed to tell are the people doing these things to us."

The Ministry of Maori Development report gave some examples of what people had been raising, such as police subjecting a young Maori woman driver to a strip search and internal investigation after she questioned a breath testing procedure.

Tom Hunt, a member of the local Te Atiawa tribe, told the Militant in an interview of another case when a Maori youth, remanded on bail after pleading not guilty to several trumped-up charges, was placed under curfew by the police. For six months the cops came, at times every night, to his house and banged on doors and windows until the occupants confirmed he was at home. To escape this harassment he finally pleaded guilty.  
 
Institutional racism 'on endemic scale'
Hunt explained that such incidents were part of a broader problem. "From one end of Taranaki to another--and I don't think for a moment that it's any different anywhere else in this country--Maori report mistreatment of their people at the hands of the police. They get similar treatment at the hands of people in other agencies," he said. Hunt gave the example of how, in the early 1990s, the local high school was investigated by the Human Rights Commission for human rights abuses, with racism rife in the school.

The news media has made much of the police's identification of the cop who shot Wallace as "part Maori" to deflect charges of racism in the police force. Hunt explained, "You need to know what racism is. Racism is not just name-calling or referring to the color of your skin. There is a common thread where institutions on an endemic scale mistreat Maori." The cop who shot Wallace "was a police officer first, whatever else he was. He was a small piece of a huge machine that historically has been used to enforce the racist policies of the system and government."

The discussion around the shooting has also highlighted the growing loss of confidence in the Police Complaints Authority as a recourse to appeal against cop actions. The Authority currently investigating the shooting had its credibility further dented May 8 when a High Court judge awarded political activist David Small compensation for an illegal police search of his home in 1996. The investigation by the Police Complaints Authority at the time had concluded that there was no misconduct by the police.

Prime Minister Helen Clark has now turned to blaming differences within the Te Atiawa tribe over settlement of land claims as the cause of social problems in the area. The $NZ34 million offered by the government to the tribe for the settlement could be used for development in the area, Clark said. "The conflict delays a lot of things that could be happening. Our focus has to be to start to mend that conflict." ($NZ1.00=US 46 cents).  
 
Who should fund social needs
But such compensation for past losses should not be used to fund social needs that working people have won the right to expect from the government today, Hunt said. And he pointed to the glaring inadequacy of the offer, even to cover recovery of the language. He quoted comments made at a meeting about the claim by a young Maori woman, who studies Maori language at the local polytechnic institute. Her course fees are $3,000 per year. "They stole our language from us and kept it away from us for 100 years. Now if we want it we have to buy it back from the government," she said.

Hunt took Militant reporters on a tour of the Waitara area to explain the history of the British colonists' attempts to seize the land in the 19th century in face of fierce Maori resistance. Virtually all of Taranaki--1,244,930 acres--was finally confiscated by the colonial government. The area on which Waitara township now stands was part of the first area seized in 1860. Hunt explained that three judgments since then have ruled the Waitara land should be returned, but this has not occurred.

The land claimed by Taranaki tribes, and the adjacent continental shelf, is now the site of oil and gas exploitation and a billion dollar petrochemical industry. But the government is trying to exclude oil and gas resources from claims.

Maori are now also pursuing claims for a section of the radio spectrum used for mobile phone communications, which the government plans to sell. In the wake of the controversy over the shooting, the government decided to make available a greater share of the spectrum to Maori at a five percent discount to "close the gaps" between Maori and whites. The National Party opposition cried "discrimination," saying that Maori would next be claiming a share of "crown minerals, starlight and moonlight."  
 
Class attitude to working people of color
Their leader, former prime minister Jennifer Shipley, revealed her real class attitude to working people of color when she accused the government the next day of inconsistency in its "closing the gaps" policy, which the government presents as one that will deal with high crime statistics. Seizing this reactionary framework, Shipley asked, "Where's the 5 percent discount for Pacific Islands people if they are actually causing trouble as well? They climb in the windows of other New Zealanders at night. It's not only Maori."

Throughout the discussion around Steven Wallace's shooting, many commentators have said that "tensions" between Maori and the police are a result of the fact that "Maori commit criminal offenses way out of proportion to their numbers," as an editorial in the May 9 Christchurch Press claimed.

Tom Hunt said in reply: "They say it is a reality that Maori offend more. It is a reality, but who is the biggest threat in New Zealand? Is it our children committing petty crimes out of frustration and anger from despair at having nothing?" He pointed to a far greater thievery--the dispossession of Maori from their land, upheld by successive governments for more than 150 years.

Felicity Coggan is a member of the National Distribution Union.  
 
 
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