I was chatting with a couple of guys in Murupara a while ago, waiting for an event to start. One of them was telling us that he farmed a piece of land that his father had been balloted after World War II. That is when land was given to returned soldiers, to rehabilitate them back into civilian life. The Government wanted to channel any discontent into hard work. And work hard they did.
I looked at our other companion. He was from Ngāti Manawa. I knew that his father had been maimed in that war and had returned home to Murupara to find his tribal lands taken and given to Pākehā soldiers. Māori were not eligible under the land scheme. I wondered what he was thinking. He showed no outward animosity and our farmer friend showed no awareness of what it might mean to him. He had no reason to feel guilty. He hadn’t stolen the land. His father hadn’t either and probably had no idea that it was even stolen. They had been given an opportunity and had used it to build a productive farm over generations by the sweat of their brows.
It was such a telling illustration of our country. One set of people dispossessed by a government that saw them as incapable and undeserving. Another set of people who had worked hard to make a good life but had no idea of the injustice that they had benefitted from. In that gulf between those worlds I see a huge amount of graciousness from tangata whenua, like the pōwhiri that we were attending, which welcomed everyone into the ancestral house and treated us all with respect and care.
Māori / Pākehā relationships in this country cannot be simplified into good guys / bad guys. Real life is more complex, interesting and rich. But it can be useful to step back and look at the broad picture. Waitangi Day gives us an opportunity to remember where we have come from and reaffirm where we want to go as a nation.
It is important to understand that Māori never did cede sovereignty in Te Tiriti. The Māori language version of the Treaty of Waitangi – the one signed by most Rangatira and the one that takes precedence under the international legal doctrine of contra proferentum – clearly affirms the sovereignty (tino rangatiratanga) of hapū. Hobson’s Choice and other groups can try to rewrite history but Governor Hobson’s own words at Waitangi in 1840, recorded by eyewitness William Colenso, state clearly that the British were not seeking to make laws to govern Māori. They were seeking only to govern their own unruly people that had come to this land.
It was only when large numbers of settlers arrived and a new Governor was appointed that an attempt was made to assert British authority over Māori communities. There are plenty of good history books, and Waitangi Tribunal reports, that document the way that successive Governments used legislation, debt and war to take Māori lands and resources, and destroy their political and economic structures to force them to come under the authority of the Crown.
Our own history in the Whakatāne District is full of terrible things that were done to local iwi and hapū. That includes the deliberate desecration of some of their most sacred places by previous incarnations of the Council. While there have been real efforts over the past few decades to acknowledge these wrongs and to stop adding to the list, we continue to deal with a legacy of local authority decisions that ignored Māori interests, concerns and authority. As mayor I am still grappling with some of these issues today. I am aware that although the population in our district is around 50% Māori, their voices have historically carried little weight in council decisions. We have made it a collective priority in the last few terms of council to address that.
Our Māori Relationships Strategy – Te Toi Waka Whakarei – outlines what we need to do as a council to build better relationships with iwi, hapū, and whānau. It starts with building our own capacity to engage and listen, and it means taking on board what we hear. It’s a journey but we are already seeing some progress. Instead of fighting – in court, in the media and around the table – we are starting to work together. At the end of the day, we all want the best outcomes for our communities.
We have an opportunity to do something really significant as a district. We can show how to live together with integrity as Tangata Whenua and Tangata Tiriti. We can create political and social processes and institutions that marry the best of Te Ao Māori and Te Ao Pākeha. We can demonstrate what it means to be bi-modal and multi-cultural by simple virtue of our demographics and the strength of our connections with each other. We can show the world an alternative to the hatred and fear being fostered to keep us all distracted and divided.
(Mayoral column in the Whakatāne Beacon 26 Feb 2026)
