Anger mars Waitangi Day on Peninsula

Press, 7 February 1986, Page 1

Anger mars Waitangi Day on Peninsula

By

SARAH SANDS

A confrontation between protesters and a ceremonial war canoe party marred the otherwise peaceful Waitangi Day celebrations at Okains Bay yesterday.

One male protester was arrested, after the war canoe landed at 2.30 p.m.

About 20 Maori warriors from the canoe and about 70 protesters contested an area of raised ground with a flagpole that was to be used as a stage during the landing ceremony. When asked to leave the mound, the protesters replied, “If you want us to move, you’ll have to move us.”

The warriors then lifted their ceremonial spears and pushed the protesters backwards off the mound.

The police moved in and arrested and removed a struggling protester.

The warriors reclaimed the mound and chanted a loud, angry haka. Several protesters were visibly upset and called out: “Maori fighting Maori — isn’t that what you want, pakeha people?”, “Shame, you call yourselves warriors but you attack pregnant women and children — children of your ancestors,” and “pakeha slaves.” The protesters then moved outside the area where the ceremony was being held. The Rev. Rob Ritchie, a spokesman for the Waitangi Action and Learning Coalition, which organised the protest, later accused the Okains Bay Maori and Colonial Museum Board of setting up a situation similar to that of Bastion Point where Maori people were put against Maori people. The protesters had not been told that the mound was to be used in the ceremony “and it may be that they deliberately did not tell us.” “The canoeists were primed up for what they

were going to do,” he said.

“I believe we have been subjected to a very mischievous piece of entertainment where Maori people faced Maori people while the pakeha people stood round and clapped.” A Christchurch Maori elder, Mr Hori Brennan, said that the warriors in the canoe had been told before they started that they were expected to protect the canoe and all it represented. The confrontation followed from that, he said. Every year the tapu covering the canoe voyage was lifted in a ceremony on the mound, said Mr Brennan. “We told them to get off so we could get the ceremony done but they didn’t, so we pushed.” The police later released the arrested protester without charging him.

Earlier in the day, Mr Brennan and other Maori elders had successfully diffused a tense occurrence soon after the protesters arrived about 12.30 p.m.

Protesters had walked in front of a police car that had driven alongside them as they had marched into the Okains Bay settlement. They had then asked to be welcomed on to the Tini Ara Pata marae. Mr Brennan did so, asking that the protesters observe Maori protocol during their time at the marae. He emphasised that the Treaty of Waitangi was not only a Maori issue but a New Zealand issue; and asked that it be tackled by the Maori as one

people. “I don’t want it to be a situation where they are on one side of the fence and we are on this side of the fence,” Mr Brennan said. After the welcoming speech, Mr Ritchie said he was ashamed and disappointed at the ignorance of many pakeha who during the welcome had walked between the two parties eating food. The Akaroa Silver Band had been playing “Hello Dolly” in the background until asked by Mr Ritchie to stop, in respect to the seriousness of the occasion. In a statement to “The Press” last evening, the Waitangi Action and Learning Coalition said it had withdrawn its protest from the foreshore when it became apparent that there was no pakeha dignitary in the canoe. “In the past, a special event at Okains Bay on February 6 has been the arrival of a pakeha dignitary in the Maori war canoe. This person was to be a particular focus of our protest,” the statement said..

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