Te Karanga a Tainui Awhiro

Kaea, Issue 1, 1 December 1979, Page 16

Te Karanga a Tainui Awhiro

Eva Rickard

Eva Rickard has aroused the admiration or the exasperation (or even both at once) of Maori and Pakeha people up and down New Zealand in her fight for the return of the land occupied by the Raglan Golf Club to Tainui Awhiro. As the issue nears resolution, Eva here airs her views on an important and, to many people, an emotional struggle.

The story of my people’s struggle would fill not just a magazine article but a whole book, and its contents would echo that book already written, Aureretanga. For the “groans” of the Maori people 150 years ago are still the same today. Struggles for the land started a long time ago, which some people seem to forget, and my own struggle for Raglan is no new story either. It has been a long pursuit. Whaingaroa is the Maori name for Raglan. Many years ago, after their long haul across the land at Otahuhu, the people of Tainui canoe arrived at Raglan Harbour and called it Whaingaroa: “the long pursuit”.

When the Government acquired our land under the Public Works Act 1923 for an emergency landing field, our people sincerely believed that it would be returned to them at the cessation of the Second World War. This was substantiated by the ex-Director of Civil Aviation, Mr E. Gobson, in an affidavit should we finally find ourselves in the Supreme Court.

As it now stands, it could now be the legal representatives of the Raglan Golf Club who find themselves in the Supreme Court, to have their lease validated. It was found invalid on 16 June 1978 (Soweto Day) at the Hamilton Magistrate’s Court when seventeen people were tried for trespass on our urupa (burial grounds). They had been arrested while attempting to conduct a service. With the return of the land we intend to finish that service and recall to Raglan the twelve tohunga who were going to dedicate the land back to Tane. But that is another story ....

Te Matakite o Aotearoa, the movement born out of the great land march, gathered in Raglan in April 1976 to support the Tainui Awhiro people in staking out the area of the urupa on the golf course. The solidarity shown by the Maori people then was unique; we are divided as a people, but the Raglan take brought us together from all over Ngapuhi, Te Arawa, Waikato, Tuwharetoa, Tuhoe and many others, including Pakehas who lent strength to the struggle. It is encouraging for our future to know that we can stand solid against injustice.

Throughout the struggle Tainui Awhiro stood firm behind whatever decision the appointed negotiators made. But as the only negotiator who was also one of the tangata whenua, I saw how easy it can be to divide a people. With no apology to my own people or to the Maori in general, I must say that we are our own worst enemies. I don’t mind the Pakeha running me down I can handle that kind of persecution and ignorance but I get angry when I have to take it from my own race.

Even now that the final order has been made by the Judge of the Maori Land Court to vest the title in its real owners and their descendants, I am still unsettled at the workings of the

law.

If the law is justice, then the lands are safe. But if the law is as it is sometimes seen, working against the principles of natural justice, then I have grave misgivings. We believe that the Maori Land Court is there to provide justice, but it is well to remember that the establishment of the Court was not primarily for the protection of Maori land; its object was to facilitate the alienation of land to the colonial settlers.

As a member of the committee appointed by the New Zealand Maori Council to make submissions on the Maori Land Court, I opposed the Justice Department taking over many functions from the Maori Land Court. I still have this dream, along with many other dreams, that one day the Maori Land Court will be the instrument for us as a people to right the many wrongs done to us in the name of the Crown.

The Raglan issue is far from over, and many questions remain unanswered. I know the answers the Government has failed to give publicly; its representatives have written them to each other in letters which I hold. One day I must write the story of our struggle, to give hope and strength to those who have been involved in the fight. There have been many: the Grahams, the Alexanders, the Murrays, Witi McMath, Te Ata Witihana, Liz Marsden ... and many others, strong warriors who emerged out of the tragedy of the land march, a breed who will stand as leaders of the future.

I write as one of fifteen children who lived in the beautiful Maori world with my tupuna: no money and sometimes no clothes but with plenty of aroha, and whitebait eaten like porridge. We knew as children who we were and where we belonged. But in the Pakeha world it’s Eva Rickard militant activist, stirrer, gang-member, trouble-maker and all the other names thrown at me since the battle began. But I know that the battle was fought with the blessing of another dimension and the great spirit of Maoridom, and that those who sleep beyond the veil were whispering: “Kia kaha, kia manawanui kare koe e mate.”