BY FELICITY COGGAN
OPOTIKI, New Zealand - Members of the Maori protest group
Te Tatau Pounamu o Mataatua ended their five-week occupation
of the vacant post office in this small Bay of Plenty town
March 17 in order to negotiate with the government for the
use of the building. The post office and other town
buildings, including the police station, stand on land
claimed by the Whakatohea tribe for compensation from the
government.
A proposed $40 million (NZ$1.00 = US$0.53) "full and final" settlement of their claim was voted down by the tribe in 1997. Hinehau Campbell, a leader of the group, said the settlement would have obliged the tribe to buy back some of the properties at today's value and deduct the amount sent from the $40 million. "How many times do I have to buy it back? Just give it back," she said.
The Opotiki protest was one of four organized by Te Tatau Pounamu o Mataatua since January, beginning with a two-week occupation at Ohiwa Harbour (see February 8 Militant). On March 10 the group ended a four-week occupation at nearby Whakatane that had protested dredging of the harbor mouth and dumping of waste on an adjacent burial ground. In February they set up an overnight camp at nearby Matahina Dam to protest lack of progress on the local subtribe's claim to the dam.
The television news program Holmes reported March 17 on a protest by another group of Maori at Te Kaha, east of Opotiki. In the presence of 200 supporters, they fenced off the whole beach, part of their ancestral land, in protest at the local council's continuing encroachment on their land. "We began to wonder when they were going to stop," spokesperson Reuben Parkinson told the reporter. "The only possible way we could see to counteract it was to stick a fence up, put a gate on it, and then see who was going to come to the meeting."
Meanwhile, Maori farther south at Wanganui commemorated the fourth anniversary of their 79-day occupation of the city's Moutoa Gardens (Pakaitore). They reoccupied it for three days in late March, again to highlight their claim to ownership of the gardens, the Whanganui River, and other lands. The group was outraged when a memorial statue they had just erected to a young boy drowned during the 1995 occupation was removed by the council.
And school students in Auckland have been demanding their right to be taught in the Maori language. Thirteen teenagers who have spent the early years of their education in the Maori-language unit at Finlayson Park began a sit-in at their classrooms in late January to press for a Maori-language secondary school where they can continue studying.
These protest actions come on the heels of the government's promotion of a "dawn of reconciliation" between Maori and the government and the "end of an era" of protest at the official Waitangi Day celebrations February 6. On that date in 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between the British Crown and a number of Maori chiefs.
The day's events this year at Waitangi saw a prominent leader of past protests, Titewhai Harawira, perform the role of official escort for Prime Minister Jennifer Shipley, whom she praised for her willingness to listen to Maori people. Te Kawariki, a group that has organized annual marches and protests at Waitangi for the past 12 years, announced it would not organize any further actions.
Shipley then ended the day on her return to Wellington with a speech ruling out demands for Maori sovereignty.
Felicity Coggan is a member of the Engineers Union.