a tide that had to be taken at the flood',

As the days count down to 1 April, I am intrigued at the silence from some who were initially very vocal, pressure from others who seek a certain result and the activity of others who just want to get on with their daily lives and not be bothered by such things as Treaty rights and governance. Whatever that means, they don't really care or want to know! In the scheme of things, that is perhaps an average response.

How can you get excited about invisible things like constitutional rights, customary laws and the challenges of making competing rights work in every day life? It can all seem too difficult and far away at times.

The reality is, we have a responsibility to care. It's what determines how you live on the Islands.

Our lives on the islands, are shaped by laws and regulations that govern the whole country, even though it maybe 800 km away.  We elect people to make laws, implement policies that regulate and and manage our nation.  They do so that we may have the privilege of life with a right to aspire to the highest levels as a human beings. The extent that we have our aspirations fulfilled depends upon the mix of decisions made by our elected representatives and the effort by ourselves, as we make our decisions each day, when we get up and put the kettle on.

Sometimes our efforts can seem as if we are pushing the proverbial load up hill.

The right can become overwhelmed by the sheer volume and complexity of things that you have to make decisions about. At some point we simply ' tip over' as the job of trying to satisfy the demands of everyday, outstrips our ability to meet those never ending demands.

At this point , we begin to make decisions about how to survive.  It is a normal human reaction to stress as we seek to meet the basic human needs of ourselves, our families and our homes.

The right to develop seems to have an insignificant place in the thinking of those who have the responsibility to manage our resources and us as humans on the island. Sometimes you get the feeling that life would be easier for others if we were not on the islands. As one who was responsible for writing a paper for Cabinet in the 1990's on options to relocate people from the Chatham Islands as a solution for replacing the transport subsidy, I am all too familiar with the unbridled power of those we elect. They play team well when they have to. It is a skill we have yet to learn.

There is no doubt that Chatham Island Maori have had fundamental rights denied over the past 2 decades as intellectuals, legal experts and political environments set different agenda, goals and proclaimed myths, legends and injustices as the legitimising and moral codes for their conduct.

Events of the 19 century were revisited, pummelled by the intellectual minds of the 20 century, judgment's were made and then brought down on people who had long gone, and the punishment delivered to descendants of those judged to be in the wrong. 160 years later, in the 21st century.

For me, that translates to mean, customary events that are now considered in the 21st century, as 'sins'. These 'sins' of my great, great grandfather, of the great, great, great, grandfather of my children and the great, great, great, great grandfather of my mokopuna, , are being judged and punishment is being brought down upon us in 2009.

There is something blatantly unjust in this whole phenomena.

I remember Justice Cooke saying at our Court of Appeal hearing in 1992, that the courts cannot bind future generations or its successors and that there is a fiduciary duty owed by Crown in regard to matters of the Treaty. A Tribunal report delivered 8 years after the event, was bound to be a political document, yet it delivered messages and energies from other places, not connected with the local lore and life. 

As Rodney Harrison QC warned Justice Cooke in 1992 when he stated that the Sealords deal was a tide that had to be taken at the flood',

The problem is ..the tide comes back in ...

In my opinion the current situation has triggered the prophetic words of Rodney Harrison and set dangerous foundations as seeds of unrest and disquiet lie germinating on the surface of an economic recession.

But were the events of war occurring only on the Chatham Islands in the 1830-1840's?

The implications and answers to these questions are determining what happens to you today.

Go find out what happened yourself.     You have a great Island - it deserves your support and care!

Cheers Evelyn

Feast or Famine? The Silence of the lambs....

FACING OURSELVES

The dilemma of being human is that we can never escape ourselves no matter what.

While others can tell us their view of stories about ourselves, only we can know the true story of what goes on inside our families. Silence is often a response. Sometimes the weight of indisputable and invisible authority silences the most vulnerable.

And so it is with the Islands. We all have family stories abut how life was and each generation has a different history.

Similarly, the Chatham Island customary tribal events of 19th century, have given rise to extra-ordinary political events in the 21st century, encoded by stories that touched the moral sensitivities of the 21st century.

For instance, we know about Cheif Tamati Ngapora writing to Governor Grey in 1848, to ask for help in controlling his slaves so obviously things were still happening in NZ well after 1840. Have the descendants of Ngapora had judgments and punishments visited upon them in the 1990's, as has been done to Mutunga descendants?

We also know cannibalism, female infanticide and slavery were abolished in all tribes when the British Crown took over and thank goodness for that.

Contrary to learned opinion that Chatham Island Maori felt aggrieved when the British brought the Chathams into the fold in 1842, they did not - why would they?
In fact it was the Chiefs who were responsible for bringing many of the changes that were becoming available in NZ, for the Islands. They needed to keep up with the rapid changes. Who else was going to do it? Crown didn't get going until after the 1900's.

The critical point to get is that there was a war over territory, someone lost and someone won using the customs and weapons of the time. That 's it! We cannot change the past so that is has a different ending - it is not a Play Station game.

Settling the Past ...

The huge task of settling, developing and growing a thriving community, was the responsibility of the leaders of that time. They were tied to the international trade routes of the world, with whales and seal trades dominating economic activity. They also introduced the age of agriculture to the islands when our potato's were exported to NSW. In those days,natural food resources were abundant and access was governed by customary codes.

Lifespan's, however, was much shorter. Medical science had not reached our shores, dis-ease was usually tied to spiritual beliefs and tohunga, were the experts for tribes. This was no different on the Islands.
When the new diseases arrived with the whalers e.g they annihilated hundreds. There are areas on Island farms, that have the evidence of what can only be described as attempts to find relief from the raging temperatures - who really knows?
We can only speculate , we did not live then but what we can do is look after them as they rest now.


As happened with NZ tribes who fought territorial battles, the codes of war were customary. They were dynamic and legitimised by the ongoing post war relationships that developed between the defeated and the victors in the 1830-40's, the Colonial Office and the multitudes that were descending on NZ to claim a new lifestyle for themselves.
This also happened on the islands.
Today's tribal mix is a result of this dynamic process of human relationships that evolved from the changes wrought by global economic drivers, tribal wars, where ever they occured. The fundamental kinship relationships born from such customs, cannot be legislated away by vehicles developed to drive Treaty settlements. They are born of blood that carries the genetic codes of ancestors and are embedded in our DNA molecules. To do is to invite indictment of social engineering as the inevitable result will be to split families as they are placed in a no win situation of having to chose between which parent, grandparent they wish to claim, to enable access to services, benefits and assets of the new order.

The testimony of our kaumatua , Charlie Preece to the Waitangi tribunal hearings, clearly spell this out. Other kaumatua and kuia also gave testimonies to support.

" I am Charles Henry Preece and I am 75 years old. my mother was part Moriori and part Maori. My father was pakeha from London and. My mother never spoke Moriori only Maori. They are both buried at Manukanu. But we very definitely got on very well with everyone back then. There was no animosity between Maori and Moriori. the fact that Maori had come from Taranaki and taken Moriori was never discussed. People just accepted that the Maori had conquered Moriori.
That was in the past, we just got on with out lives. When they say these things
I feel they are talking about my wife. It upsets me . I know...I am the oldest Moriori on the Islands....
We never lived as tribes, we lived as one people... As fasr as I am concerned I am just a Chatham Islander....And me with more Moriori in me then most other people. I am a Chatham Islander. I have been that way all my life and I will stay that way. I was born here and I will stay here.."/em>

em>

" My name is Minnie Heni Tuuta (nee Pomare) of Wharekauri. I was born in the Chatham Islands in 1917 and until my 49th birthday, lived on the Chatham's. When I was born my pito was buried under a tree at Waitangi, that happened with all my children in my family. i cannot remember any divisions between Maori, Moriori or European during my school life. We were all one people and we basically lived as one big family. Uncle John Tuuta who worked for Tommy Solomon who use to supply meat for the fishermen. We all lived together. We lived off the land, there was plenty of fish and shell fish and meat. We had our own gardens."

>Wars in the 1830's between tribes were not waged with the cloak of the British Crown hovering over the principles and policies of the customary codes. They weren't interested! In NZ, it wasn't until the 1860's that the contining lack of interest by
the settlor government problems associated with customary codes, lead to armed conflict. the contining coflict lead to the Native Land Act in 1862. while some progection was aforded by this Act, in reality, it created property rights in the form of a title that vested defined areas of land in indviduals who were then able to act independantly of their whanau, hapu and tribe. While the Act afforded some protection of the customary title, the operation of the legislation undermined the cloak of protection.

On the Islands, it wasn't until that astute German tried to buy us that the British, not the Crown, moved to bring the Islands into its paddock and thereby under its rule,in 1842. The Chathams had it's own version and there are dolcuments available to you from the Waitangi Tribunal hearings , should you wish to learn more.

As Micheal Belgrave argues, this time in our history was driven by a response to deal pragmatically with problems and disputes between the Colonial Office, the New Zealand Company, who was out from Britain acquiring land as fast as they could for sales to settlors still to arrive, the new settlors and Maori tribes , between Sydney speculators in Maori land and Governor Gipps of NSW. (Belgrave Maori Customary Law')
Grant Young explains,

" The Treaty itself was a necessary expedient, a product of recognition of the Declaration of Independence of 1835, the military strength of Maori ( generic term referring to tribes) and the political influence of missionaries and other hunitarians."

These post war relationships remain today and create the foundations of powerful tribal networks, that operate in the 21st century. It is the stuff that underpins the foundations of the NZ Maori Party - a party born of its time and for its time.

We live in a new Time. We have to find new ways of doing things as theold ways are no longer working.

So what place do the inter generational models have in the legitimised codes accepted by Crown and intellectuals, as they bring down judgments and implement rewards - 2009 style?
Does whakapapa still have significance in law or lore?

And what do the new intellectuals give as an explanation for our predicament? Our place, Our Rohe that

"..place so remote and neglected place ...beyond the gaze of officials.. They were so remote and valueless they were seen to be a perfect place for Maori rebels from Ngati Porou"

Gosh! what an interesting history we have!


SO ! HOW DEEP THE PUTEA OF PEACE AND COMPENSATION?

How deep is the putea for compensation already dished out? What has been given so far - to the aggrieved party? What deals will still be done to protect a now well entrenched myth?

I already know Steve has been busy in this area !
Have you been given the official nod by the Treaty Office have you , Steve? What about the rest of us?

How long will the teat be kept ready for milking?

Now the sensitive, emotionally and politically correct amongst us might say

'That's cruel and crass Evelyn, !

Really ? Its the truth!

What's happening to Chatham Maori is a fiscal scandal ! Would you prefer I was silent? to be lead like a lamb to the slaughter?

How come Crown gave 6 million dollars to a small sector of our island community to find peace and refused to fund $100,000 to do a feasibility study that would bring economic benefit to the whole Island, stimulate growth and bring employment?

When over $300,000 was spent on research & development and included reports from the Crown Research institute, Ag Research and initial niche market research reports, that Crown preferred to walk away from innovative economic development initiatives from the farmers and to give $6 million dollars to Moriori to go find themselves ?

What are they trying to find? peace? a new brand for marketing the islands?

What about the local people who are responsible for the care of the primary resources, the land? For the Manaakitanga ? Kaitiakitanga? Our families ? Our schools.

Something is not right somewhere !

BUT IS OUR FUTURE ABOUT THE PUTEA?

Where we are at is the a result of where we have been. Actions of the past have created an economic climte that is making our families leave the islands for work , old people running the farms, social services running down and generally a tough time for all.

It did not have to be like this.!

We have the resources, you have the capacity to work . You need a vision for the future.

Part of the 2005 economic project plan was to grow a green model of development. You have all the ingredients to succeed.

To do that, all you need is a pen and paper and a group of committed people.

Watch this ! Our 70 year old Kuia & Kaumatua doing their own crutching.
Is this what you want for you or your parents when you or they reach 70 ?

Fire of Wharekauri