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Maori and the State: Crown-Māori relations in New Zealand/Aotearoa, 1950-2000

Direct Action

Direct Action

By the early 1980s, the Waitangi Action Committee had taken over from Nga Tamatoa at the ‘radical cutting edge of Maori politics’, both in its methods and its demands. Formed in 1979, it headed Waitangi Day protests and called for a boycott of official celebrations of the national day. In 1981, some of its protesters were arrested for ‘rioting’ at Waitangi. WAC’s rhetoric was ‘couched in terms of revolutionary struggle’, condemning colonisation and the exploitation and oppression of indigenous peoples. It sought to ‘expose the nature of the Capitalist state’, to free Maori from the ‘yoke of Capitalism’ and to defend the ‘[r] ight of all indigenous peoples to self-determination’ as part of the ongoing ‘struggle against imperialism’. While it took a broad ‘international perspective’, central to its New Zealand agenda was the belief that the Treaty was ‘a fraud’. WAC aimed to educate people about the nature of that fraud, and the actual rather than mythical history of New Zealand. It circulated newsletters, networked with other activist groups, and organised many protests and demonstrations. Increasingly, WAC activists ‘carried their activism to the edge of the law’.34

The Bastion Point, Raglan and other direct-action protesters, and organisations such as Nga Tamatoa and WAC, with their actual or implicit criticism of the cautiousness of much of the traditional Maori leadership, aroused the ire of many elders and those working inside the official and quasi-official committee systems. But as an increasingly-embattled Muldoon government chased the ‘redneck’ vote with its Maori policies and stances, protesters were able to draw upon the support of more conservative figures within Maoridom. There were also increasing numbers of pakeha who identified with, or participated in, Maori activist causes. The combining of discourses of class and exploitation with those of ethnicity assisted the building of solidarities between Maori and pakeha.

Sometimes, however, rifts developed, especially when Maori placed aspects of ‘traditional culture’ in a position of primacy over matters dear to the hearts of ‘progressive’ pakeha. On 1 May 1979, pakeha engineering students in Auckland were doing a rehearsal for their usual mock haka in capping week,page 177 despite escalating opposition over recent years by the Maori Club and others. They were attacked by a group of young Maori, spearheaded by activists from WAC, this ‘raiding party’ subsequently adopting the name of He Taua, the avengers. The physical nature of the attack shocked many pakeha liberals who believed in dialogue or peaceful protest rather than violence. There was further consternation when established Maori leaders, including those from conservative organisations such as the NZMC and the MWWL, refused to condemn He Taua’s actions and spoke up in defence of the accused in the legal processes that followed. Vocal Maori commentators such as Ranginui Walker placed the kaupapa of the ‘haka party incident’ in the same category as causes many pakeha had supported, such as the land march and reclaiming the Raglan Golf Course. Walker spoke for many activist and other Maori in seeing all such phenomena, along with the activities of Maori gangs, as ‘manifestations of the stifled desire of the Maori people for self-determination in the suffocating atmosphere of political domination and pakeha paternalism’.35

Alliances between pakeha and Maori became even more troubled when pakeha in general, rather than simply ‘the pakeha capitalist class’, were seen as the oppressors. The emphasis on the commonalities between Maori and working-class pakeha that had once marked much radical discourse declined in the 1980s. One Maori radical organisation castigated ‘Pakeha people, who … try to tell us what the Maori struggle should be about’ for their ‘shamelessness’. ‘They tell us to fight for a change in our material conditions [and] that our struggle is the struggle of the working class’, whereas ‘Pakehas are racist, regardless of class’. Maori activists rebelling against monocultural pakeha institutions, and nearly a century and a half of pakeha domination, saw their struggle as rooted in a Maori past and considered their present (and future) as lying in Maori culture and polity: ‘Contemporary Maori Activism is a product of generations of Maori struggle, fuelled by the continued injustice against Maori people and sustained by the Wairua of our Tipuna.’36

Activists were increasingly affirming, in particular, that a vibrant Maori culture was an essential part of any political expression of autonomy. In the late 1970s, it was widely agreed, the immediate task was to ‘retain our cultural identity as Maori’ as a prerequisite for a New Zealand in which ‘our future was our business and our responsibility’. Many people who had subsumed their Maoriness, or who had only a small amount of ‘Maori blood’, were rediscovering and identifying with that part of their heritage, encouraged by the sanctioning, from 1975, of self-identification for electoral purposes. By 1980, with Crown–Maori relations remaining tense, no New Zealanders could ignore the fact that Maoridom was resurgent. Maori were affirming, ever more vehemently, that their culture would not disappear as officials and pakeha had once believed (and often hoped). ‘What we did in the past was topage 178 go underground and to hibernate until the moment was right to re-emerge’, one commentator later wrote. Indigenous peoples elsewhere in the world (the Ainu of Japan, for example) were similarly reasserting themselves by the 1980s. After such long histories of coercive and hegemonic subjugation, however, it was not surprising that the pathways towards autonomy would be contested internally as well as externally, and take many and varied courses.

It is clear, nonetheless, that those who chose to identify themselves as Maori were increasingly inclined to lend active or passive support to protest organisations. By late 1983, with its focus on the Treaty of Waitangi and its action-orientation, WAC had gained such support within Maoridom that it could convene a national hui at Tainui’s key Waahi Pa and bring the Kotahitanga and Kingitanga movements together in the course of planning a hikoi/march to Waitangi. Eventually, a wide range of people set off for Waitangi, proclaiming Maori unity and pakeha/Maori solidarity, in an attempt to stop the 1984 Waitangi celebrations. Along with Maori rights activists and pakeha from ACORD, CARE and HART were representatives of the NZMC and MWWL, members of the Labour Party, and even some National supporters. The police forcibly stopped the main section of the protest, which had swollen to 4000 people, from crossing the bridge to the Waitangi Treaty grounds to meet the Governor General, adding extra layers of symbolism to the events.37

34 Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou, p 220 (for ‘radical cutting edge’, ‘couched in terms’ and ‘carried their activism’ quotes); Waitangi Action Committee, Te Tiriti (especially p 7 for ‘[r] ight of all indigenous peoples’ quote – emphasis removed, p 13 for ‘expose the nature’ quote, p 18 for ‘yoke of Capitalism’ quote); Poata-Smith, ‘He ‘Pokeke Uenuku I Tu Ai’, p 105; King, Nga Iwi, p 97; Walker, ‘The Treaty of Waitangi’, p 60.

35 Rapson, Bevan, ‘Extremist Makeover’, Metro, Nov 2004, p 58; Tauroa, Hiwi, Race Against Time, Wellington, 1982, p 9; Harris, Hīkoi, pp 95–8; Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou, pp 221–5; Hazlehurst, Kayleen M, Racial Conflict and Resolution in New Zealand: The Haka Party Incident and its Aftermath, 1979–1980, Canberra, 1988; Walker, Ranginui J, ‘A Maori Parliament’, in Amoamo (ed), Nga Tau Tohetohe (originally published in New Zealand Listener, 29 Sept 1979) p 104 (for ‘manifestations of the stifled desire’ quote). As well as being uncomfortable with Maori leaders endorsing extreme activity, many sympathetic pakeha (and many Maori engaged in radical action) found (and find) equally problematic various refusals by Maori leaders to give women speaking rights on marae – including on ‘new’ marae where protocols could be more flexible; see Philip, Matt, ‘Female trouble’, Listener, 29 Jan 2000.

36 Maori Peoples Liberation Movement of Aotearoa, ‘Critique’ (p 2 for ‘Pakeha people, who … try to tell us’ and following quotes, emphasis removed).

37 Mead, Sidney Moko, ‘The Rebirth of a Dream’, in Landmarks, Bridges and Visions: Aspects of Maori Culture, Wellington, 1997 (original article 1980), pp 130–131 (for ‘What we did in the past’ quote), p 145 (for ‘retain our cultural identity’ quote); Stewart-Harawira, Margaret, ‘Maori, Who Owns the Definition? The Politics of Cultural Identity’, Te Pua, 2(1–2), 1993; Williams, The Too-Hard Basket, p 11; Walker, Ka Whawhai Tonu Matou, pp 234–5; Harris, Hīkoi, p 112.