The Labour government introduced the Foreshore and Seabed Bill into parliament in April. It would strip Maori of their right to file claims in court registering customary rights to sections of the foreshore and seabed, while leaving untouched the one-third of such areas currently under private ownership. The foreshore is defined as the part of beach between the high and low water marks.

“We’re here to show that the last hikoi wasn’t a fluke. It was a reality—the issue won’t go away,” said Te Ohu Mokai Wi Kingi. Earlier this year, thousands rallied in towns and cities to greet the hikoi, or national march, as it traveled down the North Island, culminating May 5 in a rally of 20,000 people outside parliament.

Wi Kingi, a former timber worker and unionist, came with others from Rotorua. Marchers hailed from Northland, Wellington, Hamilton, and elsewhere, as well as Auckland itself. James Seetai and Bismark Salatielu, both 17, had come with a group of 12 from their Auckland high school.

Led by a group outfitted with traditional warrior clothing and weapons, the hikoi took four hours to reach its rallying point near Bastion Point, the site of a historic land protest in the late 1970s. A number of boats accompanied it, including two waka, or Maori canoes.

Efforts to regain land and prevent ongoing theft have been at the center of the struggle by Maori for their national rights for 160 years. About 15 percent of New Zealand’s 4 million people are Maori, the country’s indigenous people.

The government’s new law is a response to a Court of Appeals decision allowing Maori in the Nelson-Marlborough area to present claims to the Maori Land Court for freehold title to areas of the foreshore and seabed. The decision recognized that Maori customary rights had never been legally extinguished.

Eight Maori tribes had appealed to the court because local authorities had repeatedly turned down their application for licenses to set up fish and shellfish farms.

The proposed legislation would prevent Maori from applying for such licenses to the courts, instead placing these areas of foreshore and seabed under government ownership. “We totally reject this legislation,” said Harry Mikaere, a mussel farmer from the Hauraki district. “We are denied due process that other private landowners get. It’s legitimizing the ongoing theft of Maori land.”

A select committee of parliament has been taking public testimony on the bill. In a typical submission, Hauraki’s Maori Trust Board underlined the importance of foreshore rights by explaining that its people were among the most landless in the North Island, with only 2.6 percent of dry land remaining in their hands.

Joe Slade, one of the hikoi’s organizers, had attended the government hearings in Auckland. Highlighting the slanted nature of the hearings, Slade, who is a truck driver, said at an October 8 Militant Labor Forum here that private port companies were the only ones whose concerns were addressed. The government has indicated that when the law is returned to parliament it may introduce amendments to allow these companies longer leases and security of investments in reclaimed land.

Mirinia Hakaraia carried a handmade sign in the October 16 march saying, “Stop the confiscation bill” in English and Maori. “This foreshore and seabed issue is the final insult,” she said in an interview. “They’ve taken so much before.” Hararaia, 44, described herself as part of a “lost generation” who had not learnt the Maori language as children because of efforts by previous governments to suppress it.

“My mother’s mouth was washed out in soap,” when she spoke Maori at school, she said. Now, at universities, Maori language courses “cost $600 a paper, to learn what was stolen from us.” Along with land, language has been a key question in the Maori national struggle.

At the rally at the march’s conclusion, the theme of a number of the speeches was for Maori to focus on voting at the next parliamentary elections, with the Maori Party being promoted in particular. This party was formed when Tariana Turia, a member of the Labour government’s Cabinet, resigned in opposition to the foreshore and seabed legislation. She won the resulting by-election as a candidate for the Maori Party.

A similar protest held the same day in Dunedin attracted 100 people.
 
 
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