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Tupuna Awa
People and Politics of the Waikato River
By Marama Muru-Lanning Auckland University Press
Copyright © 2016 Marama Muru-Lanning
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-86940-850-3
CHAPTER 1
The Two-Headed Taniwha: Waikato River Co-Governance
The Waikato River has a long history of people making claims to it, including Treaty of Waitangi claims by Maori for ownership and guardianship rights. This claiming process culminated with Waikato-Tainui and the Crown signing a Deed of Settlement for the river in 2009. The deed established a new co-governance structure for the river, with equal Maori and Crown representation. But what has also transpired from the agreement is the emergence of a new guard of Maori decision-makers who have challenged and displaced the traditional Kingitanga leaders as the main power-brokers of the river.
My interest in debates about property rights in water and identity claims to natural resources is driven by an awareness that many Maori living at marae settlements along the Waikato River have become progressively alienated from the river. While much of this alienation is due to commercial developments and public works and planning legislation, over the past two decades, new methods of public management and Maori Treaty claims processes have also brought about marked changes in the way people relate to the Waikato River and one another (Ward, 1999: 141). Indeed, some Maori argue that they are being alienated from the Waikato River by their own tribal representatives who are unyielding in bureaucratising the river (Poata-Smith, 2004: 182–83; Durie, 1998: 164–65). This view is illustrated by the private ceremony that occurred in 2009 when Waikato-Tainui's revised Deed of Settlement for the Waikato River was signed, which will be discussed in this chapter. At the time of completing my PhD study in 2009, many Waikato tribal members were unaware that their river negotiators and the Crown had signed a new revised Deed of Settlement for the Waikato River. Tribal members have since raised questions regarding the detail of the agreement and the structure of the co-governance arrangement. More recently, too, they have questioned the implications of the co-governance arrangement in relation to the privatisation of Mighty River Power and Genesis Energy. An important question that some Waikato Maori have asked is, 'Could the National government have proceeded with the partial sale of these companies if there had not been a co-governance agreement in place between Waikato River iwi and the Crown?'
This book strives for a non-partisan treatment of the issues and focuses on local political processes that are often politicised to the point whereby impartiality is rarely achieved or valued. With this caveat in mind, this account will investigate the bureaucratic processes and the unique river discourses that have been created by Maori, the Crown and the electricity-generating company Mighty River Power. The work does this by examining the role played by the politics of language in transforming identities, power relations and socio-political hierarchies. My discussion of the competing discourses of the river provides a way to examine some of the cleavages and internal tensions within Waikato-Tainui, and also elucidates the contests for power between Maori and the state.
Different Maori groups comprehend their ancestral territories in iwi-specific ways. This point is exemplified in works by Matiu and Mutu (2003), Muru-Lanning (2010) and Evelyn Stokes (1994), and various Waitangi Tribunal Reports of which Whanganui iwi's concept of 'Te Awa Tupua' is a recent expression. 'Te Awa Tupua' is the term selected by Whanganui iwi that recognises the status of their river and tribal territory as an integrated, living, whole river system. The term comprises the Whanganui River as an indivisible and living whole, from the mountains to the sea, incorporating its tributaries and all its physical and metaphysical elements. In law, the Whanganui River is now recognised as a legal being and it is one of the first rivers in the world to attain this status. In translating the Maori words, the term 'Te Awa' means 'the river', and 'Tupua' is understood to be 'an expression of the spirit world'. Literally, the phrase means 'river with ancestral power' (Salmond, 2014: 286; Ruruku Whakatupua, 2014: 6–7). Similarly, throughout this work I will argue the significance and complexity of the term 'Tupuna Awa' for my iwi, Waikato, who are a kaitiaki (or guardian) of the Waikato River and who understand the river to be their River Ancestor. According to Tcherkezoff, Maori terminology distinguishes between spirit-imps or tupua, and ancestors properly called tupuna (2008: 143). A central argument of this work is that the Waikato River lies at the heart of Maori tribal identity and chiefly power and is a key focus of ongoing local struggles for prestige and mana. Recognition of Maori property rights in freshwater is the latest manifestation of these struggles.
Maori are key players in the social life and politics of the Waikato River, and it will become clear from this account that Maori identities in the Waikato River region are cut through with a number of kin, economic, political and ideological affiliations.
The Waikato Maori groups discussed here are as follows:
• Waikato River Maori is a group comprising Maori who live on marae and in traditional tribal settlements along the river. My research has identified more than sixty marae along the river. The most politically active tribes of the river today are: Ngati Tuwharetoa, Ngati Tahu-Ngati Whaoa, Ngati Raukawa, Ngati Koroki-Kahukura, Ngati Haua and Waikato iwi.
• The group known as Waikato iwi was formerly referred to as the Waikato Confederation, and is the tribal group located along the northern third of the river. (Map 1 shows this to be the area of the river spanning from Maungatautari to Port Waikato.) The people of Waikato iwi are the main supporters of the Kingitanga. Revealing the subtle differences between the iwi and hapu of the Waikato River, this work examines why Maori groups located along the northern third of the river have collectively embraced an identity emphasising the Waikato River. The assembly of smaller tribes that make up Waikato iwi are discussed in Chapters Three and Five.
• The Kingitanga, also referred to as the Maori King Movement, is a long-standing political grouping that was established in the 1850s to resist British appropriations of Maori land (Ward, 1999: 19, 54). The movement was the 'first effort to create a Maori nation and a new polity with which to confront the onslaught of colonisation' (Ballara, 1996: 1). The initiative of having a single paramount chief who assumed the role of Maori King representing all Maori tribal interests in the country saw the emergence of a unified pantribal identity. This new role altered the autonomy of many iwi and hapu in the central North Island. The movement has transformed considerably since its inception and these changes are examined throughout this work.
• Waikato-Tainui is Waikato iwi's modern corporate identity. This identity was formally established after Waikato iwi signed their 1995 Deed of Settlement with the Crown. Robert Mahuta's construction of Waikato-Tainui as a prominent super-iwi is discussed in Chapter Five.
Before addressing this work's conceptual and methodological issues, I give an account of an event in which Waikato-Tainui's revised Deed of Settlement for the river was officially and ceremonially confirmed. This ethnographic account serves two purposes. First, it introduces some of the main actors and protagonists in the story of Waikato Maori's ongoing negotiation processes in relation to the river; and, secondly, it provides an illustration of how power relations and social tensions within and between the different Waikato River stakeholders have played out in practice.
A 'Situational Analysis' of the Deed-Signing Ceremony
On 3 December 2009, a headline in New Zealand's largest daily newspaper, the New Zealand Herald, read 'Deal to streamline river management' (Tahana, 2009b, 2009d). For most Maori in the Waikato, this news came as a surprise, as it was only in the previous year that a major deed of settlement for the Waikato River, known as the Deed of Settlement in Relation to the Waikato River 2008, had been agreed to and signed off by the outgoing Deputy Prime Minister of the Labour-led government, Michael Cullen. The newspaper article explained that the Crown now believed that the proposed co-governance model for the river was unworkable, and therefore needed to be renegotiated. Earlier in the year, the National Party's new Minister for Treaty Negotiations, the Honourable Chris Finlayson, had commissioned an independent panel to assess the feasibility of the co-governance framework proposed in the 2008 agreement. For Tukoroirangi Morgan and Raiha Mahuta, Waikato-Tainui's river claim negotiators, the findings of the review were undoubtedly very disappointing. It is likely that the news was especially awkward for Tukoroirangi Morgan whose reputation as a Maori leader was staked on the agreement which sought to have Waikato-Tainui iwi legally recognised as key 'guardians' of the Waikato River. I note that the term 'guardian', which translates to mean kaitiaki in Maori, was frequently written in draft versions of the Agreement in Principle and other Waikato River policy leading up to the 2008 Deed of Settlement. 'Guardian' was also a word used in the name of the initial committee of Maori and Crown representatives for the Waikato River, that being the Guardians Establishment Committee, or GEC as it was more familiarly known.
Under the original Agreement in Principle to the 2008 Deed of Settlement, Waikato-Tainui had four representatives appointed to the GEC interim co-management board. However, this number was reduced to two appointees after the 2008 Deed of Settlement was signed (Te Aho, 2009: 17). A further reduction occurred in the 2009 revisions to the deed. Other adjustments to the 2008 deed included removing two sections of the deed, namely, Section 6 'The Guardians Statutory Board' (Government of New Zealand, 2008: 30–34) and Section 7 'The Waikato River Statutory Board' (ibid.: 35–36); and the addition of a different Section 7 to the 2009 deed, referred to as Governance Arrangements (Government of New Zealand, 2009: 30–34), with Waikato-Tainui's river negotiators agreeing to the Crown's new terms. The changes to the Deed of Settlement were ratified less than two weeks after they had been announced on 17 December 2009 at a low-key ceremony at the Waikato-Tainui Endowed College at Hopuhopu.
What is the issue here? The revised 2009 Deed of Settlement creates a stand-alone co-governance and co-management board referred to as the Waikato River Authority (WRA). One instruction for the new WRA was that its appointees be reduced from twelve to ten members. Thus, one Maori and one Crown position were removed (New Zealand Parliament, 2010: 2). The significance of this reduction in numbers is that, like the other four iwi represented on the WRA (Ngati Maniapoto, Ngati Raukawa, Te Arawa and Ngati Tuwharetoa), Waikato-Tainui were allowed to have only one representative appointed to the WRA. Currently that representative is Tukoroirangi Morgan who co-chairs the WRA with the Crown's representative, the Honourable John Luxton. While Karla Akuhata of the Waikato Times reported on 17 December 2009 that '[t]he [new] settlement deed [was] largely unchanged from the one signed between the tribe and the Government last year', my comparison and analysis of the 2008 and 2009 deeds reveal that this is not the case.
The Second Deed-Signing Ceremony
Unlike the elaborate public signing ceremony for the 2008 deed, which was held on the banks of the Waikato River at Turangawaewae Marae and attended by over a thousand Waikato tribal members and a large contingent of Crown officials, the 2009 ceremony was witnessed by only some 180 people. The main representative for the Crown was Chris Finlayson, who headed a party of around 25 people, including the National Party MPs Georgina Te Heuheu, Tau Henare, Wayne Mapp and David Bennett, various Crown legal and policy advisors, and employees from Te Puni Kokiri. Another significant figure in the Crown party was the Ngati Tuwharetoa paramount chief, Sir Tumu Te Heuheu. Ngahuia Dixon, a Tainui elder at the gathering, explained that his role in the Crown party was symbolic. He was the kaitiaki for the overall proceedings of the ceremony. A second kaitiaki present at the ceremony was the Tainui talisman, Korotangi, which was placed on the table next to the unsigned Deed of Settlement documents. Korotangi is the mythical bird that is said to have travelled with the Tainui canoe and crew on its maiden voyage from Hawaiki to Aotearoa-New Zealand. The stone bird, which was in museum storage in Wellington for many years, was given back to Waikato-Tainui by the Crown in a symbolic gesture of goodwill at the signing of the 1995 Deed of Settlement for unfair tribal land confiscations that occurred in the 1860s.
Other prominent figures attending the ceremony included Waikato's paramount chief and leader of the Kingitanga, King Tuheitia, the chairperson of Te Kauhanganui, Tom Roa, Ngati Maniapoto statesman Koro Wetere and the river negotiators Tukoroirangi Morgan and Raiha Mahuta. There were also officials from Mighty River Power, Genesis Energy, Environment Waikato, Federated Farmers and the Hamilton City Council in attendance. While the gathering drew together all the key leaders and stakeholders of the river, an absence of ordinary Waikato tribal members was noticeable. Holding the signing ceremony at the Waikato-Tainui Endowed College rather than a Waikato marae further contributed to the sense of exclusivity. The Waikato-Tainui Endowed College was established by Robert Mahuta with monies from the tribe's 1995 settlement. However, in 2001, not long after the college was completed, Robert Mahuta died and the college was taken over by Waikato Raupatu Lands Trust chief executive officer (CEO) Hemi Rau, who used the buildings as the tribe's administration centre. For many years Kingitanga loyalists disputed this change, particularly since Robert Mahuta is buried at the front of the college and it was his wish that the buildings be used only for postgraduate teaching and research.
Ultimately, the arrangement of people and space at the ceremony was indicative of the power relations between the various groups. As Max Gluckman illustrated through what he termed 'extended case method' (1953, 1958), and which others have labelled 'situational analysis', the seating and proceedings of rituals and ceremonial gatherings can be highly revealing of power relations (Van Velsen, 1967: 129). In a study that examined the ceremonial opening of the first bridge built in Zululand, Gluckman set out to show:
... how individuals in certain key positions could create and exploit social situations in terms of their power and their culture, and yet how certain other processes, arising from the larger society, led to standardized but unplanned relationships and associations. (1967: xx)
The social and political outcomes for individuals and groups participating in rituals and ceremonies are generally planned. Thus, the social drama played out in the staging and process of the Deed of Settlement signing ceremony was a modification of a traditional Maori encounter between tangata whenua (home people) and manuwhiri (guests) on marae. The ritual units of traditional Maori gatherings generally consist of a wero (ritual challenge), karanga (welcoming call), powhiri (action chant of welcome), whaikorero (oratory) and hongi (pressing of noses) (Salmond, 1996 [1975]: 115–78). On marae, encounters between hosts and guests involve the use of a meeting house and an open space. As there is no meeting house at the Waikato-Tainui Endowed College, the signing ceremony was held in the college's dining room from which the food-serving area had been covered leaving a large rectangular space with two entrances. The following diagram shows the designation of space for particular individuals and groups. As the Deed of Settlement emphasises the new co-governance arrangement for the river between Waikato-Tainui iwi and the Crown, the spatial arrangement of the ceremony must reflect something of an equal partnership between the two parties.
Who Sat Where and What Was Said?
As the diagram shows, the seating was arranged with five rows of chairs across the northern end of the room. Facing the chairs across an open space of about 6 metres were two banks of chairs, each with six rows that were separated by an aisle. The eastern bank of chairs was occupied before the ceremony started by a number of Waikato hosts, including King Tuheitia and his wife Atawhai, the King's younger brother, Maharaia Paki, and Raiha Mahuta. Tukoroirangi Morgan's seated position managed to illustrate the relationship between Waikato-Tainui and the Crown. The diagram shows that he chose to sit to the side with Timi Te Heuheu (who has since died), the younger brother of the paramount chief of Ngati Tuwharetoa. Tukoroirangi Morgan's position seated between the Waikato-Tainui and Crown groups. Prior to the Waikato River settlement, the role of mediating the relationship between Waikato tribal members and the Crown belonged to select senior Kingitanga members.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Tupuna Awa by Marama Muru-Lanning. Copyright © 2016 Marama Muru-Lanning. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
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