Vol. 71/No. 20      May 21, 2007

“Whakakoro is the sacred maunga [mountain] of our ancestors that has always watched over our hapu [subtribe] as we practice our traditional customs like gathering seafood, but greedy land-grabbers think it is just a commodity,” said Richard Murray. He is a spokesperson for the Ngati Haua hapu who began their most recent occupation at Whakakoro January 16. About 15 people have established themselves in the former homestead on the land. A Maori sovereignty flag flies on top of the house.

Murray and other hapu members spoke to Militant reporters during an April 28 visit to the site, a 2,200-acre block of land bounded by the Whangape Harbour on one side and the Tasman Sea on the other. Murray pointed to the spot outside the gate where they had staged an occupation in 1992, when a family that had farmed the land for three generations sold it to a property speculator. Since then, Whakakoro has passed through the hands of two further owners. Their schemes of subdividing it and making huge profits from its sale have stalled in the face of Ngati Haua opposition. At present, the land, which last sold for NZ $10 million (NZ $1 = US 73 cents), is being put up for tender by financial institutions that hold mortgages over it.

Ngati Haua have lodged a claim with the Waitangi Tribunal, a government body set up to investigate Maori land grievances, more than 10 years ago. “Our immediate aim is to stop the mortgagee sale, but we are prepared to go down any path to get our land back,” said Murray. “We have even discussed buying it back, but not at these wildly inflated prices which put it beyond our reach.”

A little further north, several members of the Ngati Kahu iwi (tribe) continue to occupy a farmhouse on the state-owned Rangiputa Station. In February 80 Maori occupied the land, over which Ngati Kahu has long-standing claims, when the government put it on the market. On February 23 several hundred people marched through the nearby town of Kaitaia to protest the planned sale. At the same time, Hauraki Maori occupied the Whenuakite block in the Coromandel peninsula that was also under threat of sale by the government (see April 2 Militant).

In March, in an attempt to defuse the situation, the government announced it would defer the sale of land at Rangiputa and Whenuakite for a year. “We don’t want to just wait around,” Mallory Hetaraka told the Militant at the Rangiputa site. “We don’t want their money. We don’t want compensation. We just want our land back.”

For more information on the occupation at Whakakoro, or to send a message to the occupiers, visit www.whangape.co.nz.

Baskaran Appu and Bob Aiken contributed to this article.  
 
 
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