The Young Warriors

1

Four things to notice about Nga Tamatoa are their courage, their informed political lucidity, their hunger for the perpetuation of Maori culture, and the comparative youth of their membership. The term Nga Tamatoa itself means ‘The Young Warriors’. I knew about them only vaguely until I heard two of their leaders, Taura Eruera and Hana Jackson, address a student group in Dunedin, asking for pakeha understanding and support.

‘You need not ever pity me,’ Hana said to a somewhat inert though basically sympathetic pakeha audience. ‘Now I know who I am.’

It gripped my heart to see the Maori independence and courage of this young woman, a Judith of Bethulia if ever there was one, standing erect as a ramrod at the centre of the pakeha world. I did not know then that she came from the Taranaki people, whose share in the toa, or warrior element, of Maori culture is traditionally very deep and strong.

A woman of the local Maori community who was present at that gathering said to me, ‘They leave themselves so unprotected’. That is indeed true of Nga Tamatoa. Courage and vulnerability go together.

In the statements of Eruera and Hana there were nuances of anti-pakeha feeling. The true nature of that feeling may be very easily misinterpreted. At first I thought that they were rejecting pakehas in entirety. But I came to realise that the rejection was both just and discriminating. It resembled the page 263 attitude of a Maori veteran from Vietnam whom I knew at a time when he was being heavily harried by the police in Wellington.

‘I think I hate the cops because they are European,’ he said to me once.

‘But you don’t hate me,’ I replied.

‘No,’ he said. ‘That’s different. You’re my friend.’

Eruera and Hana were looking for an intelligent and sensitive pakeha support in their battle for the teaching of Maori language in the schools, the renovation of Maoritanga, and the establishment of Waitangi Day as a national holiday – for the pakehas perhaps a day of celebration, but for the Maoris a day of mourning on account of the lands that were taken from them. It is not for nothing that the name Waitangi can be interpreted as meaning the ‘Waters of Weeping’.

Eruera and Hana asked for pakeha support. They cut through the facade of vague hypocrisy that covers inter-racial and inter-cultural relations in this country, with words of steel. But what they desired was a friendship that was honest to the bone.

When a Maori friend who came out of borstal to join me at Jerusalem had paid a visit to another town he came back with a Tamatoa circular giving notice of their intention to meet on the evening of the 5th February at Te Rapunga Marae five miles south of Kawakawa. I decided immediately to go there and offer the support they had asked for in Dunedin. And my friend accompanied me, with the semi-tribal borstal cross tattooed on his cheek.

In Auckland I was invited to a meeting of Nga Tamatoa. I was impressed by the lucidity and moderation of their discussions. They were concerned to try out all possible legal avenues for the ratification of the Treaty of Waitangi, in spirit or in law, before engaging in any action of extreme militancy. And even the militants among them were far from being hotheads. There were Maori lawyers present, and much of the discussion turned on the meaning of the Treaty of Waitangi and of various laws enacted in regard to Maori lands. I understood that pakeha friends were welcome at their discussions and could become associate members of Nga Tamatoa. In that well informed gathering my education in the land laws of New Zealand went forward by leaps and bounds.

The journey to Te Rapunga Marae in a chartered bus was the time when I came to know the members of Nga Tamatoa personally. Most of them were young. What drew them together was a burning desire for the renewal of Maoritanga and a sense that the Treaty of Waitangi was an act of deception, by which the European Government had spoken soothing words to the Maori hen while stealing the eggs from under her. Those who had themselves no deep experience of Maori culture had a longing for that experience denied them by a pakeha mode of education.

To hurtle along winding roads in a dark bus is perhaps the best way to get to know one’s neighbours. The gentleness and courtesy displayed by members page 264 of Nga Tamatoa to myself and the one or two other pakehas present is an experience I will not forget till the hour I die.

I believe that at Te Rapunga Marae their deepest spiritual longings were fulfilled. One or two of our members came from the Ngapuhi. Some of the local people, Ngapuhi tribesmen, were at first in doubt regarding the motives and identity of their visitors. Nevertheless they welcomed them to the marae in traditional Maori fashion.

The Ngapuhi elders belonged to a country area and their visitors came from the town. There was also another factor which meant that each group had a gap to cross. Many of Nga Tamatoa had little knowledge of the Maori language and of the protocol governing the behaviour of visitors.

After greeting the elders we sat on the mats at the end of the old meeting house, while the tangata whenua or home tribe sat on benches on either side of the hall. Perhaps because at that time I had been fasting for twenty-five days, I had a most powerful sense of the presence of the tribal dead. My son Hoani had given me a greenstone pendant to wear. It carried with it the spirits of the Taranaki tribe to which half of his mother’s people belong. It seemed that these spirits and the spirits of the Ngapuhi dead remembered old conflicts. But the Ngapuhi spirits were not truly hostile. There was a mocking, humorous quality in their invisible greeting, as in a haka there is both aggression and a violent sense of humour. These things belong to matewa, the area of Maori thought and feeling that lies at the edge of reason.

I had explained to Nga Tamatoa that I came with them fasting, because – ‘Kua whakanui te puku o te pakeha’ – because the pakeha’s belly had grown big with swallowing the land; and since I am a pakeha, this act of spiritual reparation is necessary.

And I saw the thing happen that I had hardly dared to hope for. As the lawyers of Maori descent who came with Nga Tamatoa explained with great lucidity their view of the land laws to the tangata whenua, the Ngapuhi elders realised that the land itself was in question, the land who is the mother of the Maori people, but whom the pakeha settlers and Government have turned into an old prostitute to be bought and sold. I think their souls wakened and their hearts began to burn inside them.

Then the gap which had made them at first unable to recognise these cigarette-smoking and mainly non-Maori-speaking young people as their own children counted for nothing, and their tribal love leapt like fire across the gap in a spiritual embrace of acceptance. At that moment it seemed to me that the head and heart of Nga Tamatoa were joined together – the head of the young Maoris educated in a town culture, and the heart that remains wherever a Maori pa is still standing. The elders of the tangata whenua pledged their support to Nga Tamatoa.

That night we slept on the mats in the meeting house. The next day we journeyed to Waitangi. We visited the flagpole. In a moment of aggressive page 265 militancy one of the Maori friends of Nga Tamatoa, not himself an official member, tried to burn the Naval ensign which was about to be hoisted. The flag was only singed. There was discussion about the value and suitability of this event. The majority opinion of Nga Tamatoa seemed to be that such extreme militancy was premature, and that the act should not in any case have been carried out without full group approval.

Later, at the Treaty House, at the invitation of the Maori Council, a lawyer spokesman of Nga Tamatoa presented their point of view. There were speeches by elders. There were interruptions from the floor, in itself a breach of marae protocol, yet perhaps inevitable in the circumstances.

Mr McIntyre, the Minister for Maori Affairs, made a speech addressed primarily to the elders. He mentioned the episode of the singeing of the flag, stressing the virtue of patriotism. The interruptions from the floor were frequent and forcible, and these appeared to have the support of some of the members of the tangata whenua, despite the breach of protocol. Yet again the elder Maoris were recognising in Nga Tamatoa their own fighting spirit reincarnate in their warrior children.

At Mr McIntyre’s invitation, Nga Tamatoa met him outside the Waitangi Hotel. Rain had begun to fall. It was near to evening. Mr McIntyre spoke with the accents of liberal persuasion, stressing his personal friendship for Maori people, and the achievements already made in matters relating to the land question. Members of Nga Tamatoa replied. They followed him step by step, as a dog follows a pig it has seized by the ear. They were not conciliatory. Mr McIntyre offered to meet them at another time.

That evening the rain fell heavily. Nga Tamatoa assembled on the marae near the flagpole, at a time when speeches were being made. I had the very great privilege of participating in their demonstration. We wore green leaves round our heads or in the lapels of our coats, as a sign of mourning for the loss of the land. Some of us pressed through the police cordon. Hana began to express the views of Nga Tamatoa through the public address system. As they led her off her cry of triumph – ‘Tihei mauri ora!’ – rang out across the marae.

While Mr Muldoon spoke at length about the freedom of dissent in New Zealand, and we saluted him with prolonged ironic handclapping, men in Navy uniforms pushed us back from the enclosure, stamping with their boots on our feet and kicking at our shins. My daughter Hilary and several others were injured. Prudently, since I am accustomed to go barefooted, I had kept near the middle of the group. It was not in any case my intention to make myself prominent, since a pakeha who has the great privilege of being permitted to participate in the events of Maoritanga should remember that the Maori is the elder spiritual brother, by virtue of his sufferings and his insight, and strive to follow rather than to lead. For the same reason, I would not dream of speaking on the marae while in the company of Nga Tamatoa, though I do not withhold my opinion from any friend if asked for it.

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My reticence did not help me. One sailor managed to push his boots through the legs of the others and stamp on my feet a couple of times and kick my shins with his toecaps. I was most grateful to receive this minor injury on behalf of Nga Tamatoa.

Another sailor, a Maori, wore on his face an expression of intense bewilderment and anguish. I think he was troubled by the contradiction of being obliged to assault his own people. When I saw that face it occurred to me that the singeing of the Navy ensign had in fact been a suitable expression of Maori militancy, since the flag was the symbol of the contradiction the Maori sailor had to endure.

Nga Tamatoa performed a brief haka after being forced out of the enclosure. We returned by bus through the rain to Te Rapunga marae. Our clothes and hair were soaked but our hearts were very high. At the marae a man expressed to me what may have been the view of many of the local people. He said – ‘For half an hour after the burning of the flag, I thought Nga Tamatoa were in the wrong. Then I realised they were in the right. I joined in the demonstration. It was the proudest moment of my life.’

I think many Maori people will not be content until there are massive reparations both in land and in money for the wholesale seizures of the Land Wars. That wound has never healed in the Maori mind. Head and heart have already met in Nga Tamatoa. Perhaps the stomach of the group will come most of all from the young Maoris who are being hammered flat in the streets of our towns like iron on the anvil. I think that what one sees now of Nga Tamatoa is the back of a fish rising in the water. It is not the back of a terakihi or barracouta. It is the back of a whale. Maori militancy is here to stay.

2

Outside the bookshop at the Varsity
I sit on the concrete and finger my beads

Slowly, meditating on the Crown of Thorns
The students have to wear – but soon, from nowhere,

Te Atua sends his angels to my side,
Sid and Hana, my friends of Nga Tamatoa,

Whose faces are his hidden Maori face
Scarred with blows, grieving for the loss

Of the land that belongs to Him and not to us,
The land whom the Maoris love as a mother

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Whom we have turned into an old hacked whore
For the sake of profit – now I can rejoice

And go with them to the marae at Te Rapunga,
Fasting, for the sake of my own people,

The pakeha, whose belly is fat
With the land he has swallowed. It is good to fast. (Uncollected)

3

The foregoing account of happenings at Waitangi did not get the approval of the newspaper for which it was originally written. The criticisms of the man who made the decision whether or not it should be published were twofold – that the account was too subjective and that it raised more questions than it solved. I replied that Maori political views were necessarily subjective, in the sense that a number of the core factors in Maori thinking were not represented in pakeha social or political manoeuvres, and that militancy was not like moving pieces on a chessboard. Moreover, I was unwilling to castrate what seemed to me a coherent and honest account, likely to make sense at least to Maori readers of the newspaper. My views did not convince the editor in question that he should publish the article as it stood. In fact I think he felt that the article was a hot potato and feared the controversy it might provoke both with his readers and with his bosses.

A member of the Maori Establishment with whom I discussed the actions of Nga Tamatoa at Waitangi, was sharp in his criticism both of them and of me for identifying myself with them.

‘A speaker is given his say on the marae,’ he told me. ‘It’s a breach of marae protocol to interrupt him. I could have wept when I saw the demonstration.’

‘Perhaps it was the only way they could make their point,’ I said.

‘That’s not the way to do it. And they smoke on the marae. A man is judged by what comes out of his mouth, not by the cigarette hanging from it. There’s no need for them to try to get attention that way.’

‘You underestimate their ignorance of marae etiquette,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you should help them instead of criticising. Show them your love. They represent the feelings of a great many Maori people, especially those who are afraid of losing all their Maoritanga along with the land.’

‘They can acquire their Maoritanga easily enough. Let them keep the marae protocol and then I’ll listen to them. There’s a right way of going about things.’

‘You mean petitions? When Ratana presented a petition with forty thousand signatures, the Government just wiped their backside on it and laughed. That’s the weakness of the liberal approach. You should realise Nga page 268 Tamatoa, as you see them, are the back of a very big fish that’s rising in the water.’

He rebuked me for using this Maori image. ‘Our images have often got a deeper meaning,’ he said. When the fish rises it is always to grab something, and then shoot back to its own place.’

I think he was a divided man. On one level he recognised the basic validity of the protest of Nga Tamatoa. On another level he felt that his mana and security had been attacked. Perhaps at the deepest level his reactions were those of an older man who felt hurt that the young did not come to him to give him respect and follow his lead. What he did not realise was that the soul of the movement could be strangled by a liberal approach. And the young would only respect a militant elder.

The relation of Nga Tamatoa to the Maori Establishment is a delicate one. Traditionally among the Maoris the young people have had to sit quiet and accept their elders’ commentary on events, whether or not they obeyed their elders in practice. But the generation of Nga Tamatoa have had in measure to split with tradition because of new problems and new experiences. Nevertheless they have retained a tenderness of feeling for the elders which has no parallel in pakeha society. It took great courage for them to dare to contradict those who were both authorities and beloved persons.

I think the rapport of Nga Tamatoa might well be greater with the elders of a country marae than with the elders of the Maori Establishment. At the grassroots level, the Maori people, already robbed and passed over, have little to lose by militant action. It is harder for the elders of the Maori Establishment, who have made their own peace with the pakeha, and who are men of substance and property standing high in public respect both on the Maori and the pakeha side of the fence. They favour the liberalism which will maintain a status quo which is not too disadvantageous to them. It is not their children who will grow up to sit on a bench in Vulcan Lane and suffer the harrying of the pakeha police, or have to accept jobs that involve the delicate procedure of licking the anus of a pakeha boss. However, they pay for their security with a certain deadness of spirit. And the militants of Nga Tamatoa are closer in heart to the grassroots maoritanga of a country marae than those members of their generation who have made what seems a necessary adjustment of pakeha modes of thought and action.

There is a creature that swims in the sea until the middle of its curious life cycle. It then settles on a rock and grows a shell and becomes a barnacle. Its later position may seem more settled and secure, but it has lost its mobility. The fish can be militant. The barnacle is obliged to be liberal.

If ever a member of the Maori Establishment were to wrest himself free of his place on the rock of security, and ally himself with Maori militancy, I think it likely he would get a good reception from Nga Tamatoa. I am an older man myself, and pakeha by descent, though my relatives by marriage page 269 have Maori blood. Yet Nga Tamatoa gave me their affection and respect when they recognised that my own approach was militant and flexible, and that I was prepared to identify myself with the aims of the dispossessed. It is one thing to be dispossessed of property. It is another to be dispossessed of freedom. The land is both property and freedom when it is held on a communal basis. Perhaps the deepest reaction of Nga Tamatoa is against the dead hand of reliance on material security, rather than the living reliance of an individual on the community of free men to which he belongs.

The episode of the singeing of the Navy flag has powerful symbolic importance. The Queen is a key figure in the pakeha Establishment. She represents a mystical solidarity of all classes and all races in the unity of British patriotism. Yet there are various contradictions in this type of blanket political mysticism. Maori blood has been shed in support of the Queen and the Flag in two World Wars. But the same Flag was soaked in Maori blood in the Land Wars of the last century despite the alleged protection of the Maori race by the Queen of England. It is the last battles of the Land Wars that are being fought today by Nga Tamatoa. And the dispossessed pakehas to whom the pakeha Establishment has little or nothing to offer are free to give support to Nga Tamatoa, as in the Land Wars some pakehas, who had themselves suffered at the hands of the Establishment, or who identified by marriage or friendship with the Maori people, decided to fight on the Maori side.

The wheel of history has turned round. In a society incapable of understanding itself, on account of its obsessive attachment to material security, it is a section of the Maori population who are teaching their fellow New Zealanders what it is to be free. There is still time for the lesson to be learned.

1971 (641)