Speaker 1: Kilda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Altierowa's complicated
Speaker 2: history of land sales is the focus of a new
Speaker 2: series from the New Zealand Herald. Fenowa Our Land a
Speaker 2: History is an interactive map showing how Mauldi Land passed
Speaker 2: into Pakihart ownership and the stories surrounding it. It confronts
Speaker 2: questions some of us prefer not to ask because they
Speaker 2: raise uncomfortable issues about Altieroa's colonial legacy and how those
Speaker 2: impacts are still being felt today. Later we'll discuss the
Speaker 2: decision to make this series with Chief Content Officer for
Speaker 2: the Herald and ends at me Murray Kirkness. But first
Speaker 2: on the front Page we get to the story of
Speaker 2: Yati Batua Urake with their trust's deputy, chech Nari Mubled.
Speaker 2: Let's start in the early eighteen hundreds. Can you give
Speaker 2: us an idea of how much land was owned or
Speaker 2: controlled by Nyati fatua Uraki prior to the Treaty of
Speaker 2: White Hungi being signed?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 4: So?
Speaker 3: Our people, more correctly, are made up of three subtribes,
Speaker 3: the Tatou people, the Najor people and the Turning Nutu people,
Speaker 3: and between those three subtribes and the various chiefs and leaders,
Speaker 3: we had a network of major kainga or village complexes
Speaker 3: on both the northern shores of the Monoco Harbor and
Speaker 3: the Waa Mata and the White Mata. When we speak
Speaker 3: of that, we're talking between MoMA Uika which is north
Speaker 3: Head on the north shore in Takapartafo, boy Kelli, Tultan's
Speaker 3: on Tamiki Drive and all parts northwest of that. So
Speaker 3: we hit our network of major living complexes where all
Speaker 3: of those three subtribes would be based during the winter months,
Speaker 3: so about now. One of those was at Onni Hunger
Speaker 3: and mangade A Mangoda Bridge there he could walk across
Speaker 3: at low tide in those days not so much mud,
Speaker 3: and on the Waitamata all around Hodson Bay, which we
Speaker 3: call Waitatamah in Okahu Bay. So that's where all the
Speaker 3: people were living during the colder winter months. But in
Speaker 3: the summer months from spring onwards really right through to
Speaker 3: kind of April early May, all of the various leaders
Speaker 3: of each of the families and clans would be heading
Speaker 3: out all along those coastlines. Of the northern monuco from
Speaker 3: Mangade over to Afi to cross to Kadanga Hape which
Speaker 3: is Cornwallace, out to Fatipu and Huya on the west
Speaker 3: coast and then all up the way to Mata Harbor.
Speaker 3: In those months have just spent fishing and processing fish,
Speaker 3: mainly smoking them and also collecting seafood cockles to a
Speaker 3: tour pippy smoking them, preserving them and also going into
Speaker 3: the naheeded the bush. There's lots of bush then all
Speaker 3: through our region not so much now getting all of
Speaker 3: the birds and preserving them in their fats. And they
Speaker 3: would have done that out on these satellite fishing villages
Speaker 3: dotted across those coastlines, so we have names left to us.
Speaker 3: Way Paper which is in the eastern end of the
Speaker 3: CBD bottom of Stanley Street is a fishing village au
Speaker 3: or too at bottom of Queen Street, Fort Street now
Speaker 3: and over at Tetoor which is at Victoria Park and
Speaker 3: today who at the back of the zoo. So that
Speaker 3: all of these villagers teeming with people working industriously out
Speaker 3: harvesting all of those natural resources through the warmer month
Speaker 3: and then when winter comes around moving back to those
Speaker 3: base camps at way to the more Hobson Bay and
Speaker 3: over on the Monuco at Orni Hunger and Mangadere. So
Speaker 3: that really was the extent of the land in our
Speaker 3: tribal area of those people. Today we called the Nati
Speaker 3: Pa to Ki, but that's really a reflection of you know,
Speaker 3: we lost control of all of that area that I
Speaker 3: just described. With the fishing circuits and the hunting circuits
Speaker 3: for birds, we were whittled away down to one quarter
Speaker 3: of an acre, which was all we had left at Kae,
Speaker 3: which yeah, it was our name today, but I don't
Speaker 3: really like that name because it really highlights that we
Speaker 3: were actually the masters of the holessness and not just
Speaker 3: the ford of an acre land that we had left
Speaker 3: at dark. But acreage was maybe around eighty thousand acres,
Speaker 3: which isn't that big, probably a small farm or station
Speaker 3: in South Island.
Speaker 4: W oh Yea.
Speaker 3: Hits You Hiraki hits You Hiraki.
Speaker 4: Nah Naya my Tea it Chiku Dekotu Kuya Deo Cairo
Speaker 4: Kau katsu Yu.
Speaker 2: He Well, it was around eighteen forty when the Ewe
Speaker 2: made their first sale. Three thousand hectares were sold for
Speaker 2: fifty pounds in coins and goods amounting to around two
Speaker 2: hundred and fifteen pounds, which is twenty six thousand dollars
Speaker 2: in today's money. That's the land we were describing, hey,
Speaker 2: between Hobson Bay, Cox Bay and Mount Eden. What was
Speaker 2: the ewei's understandings of this sale.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we didn't have a word for sale. The only
Speaker 3: way you lost your manna, your authority and land forever
Speaker 3: endeavor was by traditional warfare. And traditional warfare you didn't
Speaker 3: really want to get into too much unless you had
Speaker 3: expansion plans, of course, and we didn't experience that here
Speaker 3: in Auckland with the settlers. There was no war here,
Speaker 3: and therefore our view of that transaction was just that
Speaker 3: a transaction. Our experience and our custom for well I
Speaker 3: guess five millennia through the Pacific and ultimately an altered
Speaker 3: or in the South Pacific was to exchange land rights
Speaker 3: and use rights with partners and parties external to you
Speaker 3: who you wanted to either maintain a relationship with or
Speaker 3: start a relationship with. And we had done that with
Speaker 3: our eastern border neighbors and anti power in the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 3: We wanted to start a relationship with them, so we
Speaker 3: had a good ally on our eastern border, one to
Speaker 3: avoid conflict, but also to have an ally in times
Speaker 3: of need. So land around Pamuir was given to them
Speaker 3: with the expectation that the underlying manna and title and
Speaker 3: authority stayed with the givers of the land, and that
Speaker 3: was us. So that was our custom, and there was
Speaker 3: certainly what was in our chief's minds. At eighteen forty.
Speaker 3: We had very little experience with Europeans. They were all
Speaker 3: based in the Bay of Islands in the South Island,
Speaker 3: hunting whales and seals and the light. We did have
Speaker 3: one visit from Samuel Marsden, Reverend Samuel Marsden in eighteen twenty.
Speaker 3: He had a look around. We tried our best to
Speaker 3: keep him here, but he ultimately left. So, yeah, we
Speaker 3: didn't have paker around here, a lot of them, so
Speaker 3: we didn't know what a cash economy was, and we
Speaker 3: certainly didn't know what you know, if he gave someone
Speaker 3: a use rights to something, that bit of paper with
Speaker 3: some ink on it written in Pakiha meant that you
Speaker 3: lost your authority and monere in it forever. So the
Speaker 3: first three thousand acres, the transaction We certainly don't call
Speaker 3: it a sale. We call it a takura or a
Speaker 3: taku fenoma, which is the traditional giving of land for
Speaker 3: someone to use whilst you were in a mutually beneficial relationship.
Speaker 3: And that was in our minds. We wanted pakiha here,
Speaker 3: and we wanted to trade, and we wanted to buy
Speaker 3: their good stuff, and in the early days we turned
Speaker 3: down their bad stuff like whiskey and beer. They would
Speaker 3: provide a market for us, and they would get to
Speaker 3: use the land unmolested and free to use as long
Speaker 3: as they wanted it. And that was certainly the early understanding,
Speaker 3: and obviously as time went on, our understanding of European
Speaker 3: thoughts of land tenure and ownership were quite different. By
Speaker 3: the close of the eighteen fifty we were definitely selling
Speaker 3: land by then with a greater understanding that we needed
Speaker 3: to get a good price because in the parker her eyes,
Speaker 3: it was their land forever and ever to do with
Speaker 3: whatever they so choose and wishful.
Speaker 2: I think some people reading this series or listening to
Speaker 2: this podcast will ask if the EWE knew or got
Speaker 2: the understanding of what those sales really meant. That the
Speaker 2: settlers were going to go on to sell that land
Speaker 2: to someone else. Why do you think that EWE kept
Speaker 2: engaging in these kind of deals. Was it a real
Speaker 2: effort to try and understand and live as one?
Speaker 3: I guess well, we were implementing our own survival strategy.
Speaker 3: Someone armed the northern tribes to the teeth with a
Speaker 3: huge arsenal of muskets and guns, gained in Sydney, but
Speaker 3: funded somehow through England. So we were ravaged by wars
Speaker 3: in the eighteen twenties and early eighteen thirties. War swept
Speaker 3: up from the south as well, every now and then
Speaker 3: again with the introduction of muskets, which had been around
Speaker 3: for a few generations but at that period really took
Speaker 3: on a life of its own. So the whole island
Speaker 3: was in a state of calamity really just before the
Speaker 3: treaty was signed, and I guess when the Empire decided
Speaker 3: to officially annex the country. Noting also before the treaty
Speaker 3: there were a lot of entrepreneurs coming out of Europe
Speaker 3: down here looking to make their fortunes in the entipities.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, really it was a very unsettled period.
Speaker 3: We're looking for new allies, old allies and Martydom had
Speaker 3: become less so given the musket wars that had just happened,
Speaker 3: And so we were definitely an ew that sought a
Speaker 3: new future and one with a new great power to
Speaker 3: British Empire, the greatest empire the earth is known, really,
Speaker 3: and how best could we engage with it to ensure
Speaker 3: our survival And part of that was to treat with
Speaker 3: them as much as we could as equals and to
Speaker 3: open up our lands for European settlement. Who knows what
Speaker 3: our ancestors were thinking, but perhaps they saw the riding
Speaker 3: on the wall that if we didn't engage the way
Speaker 3: we did, perhaps we'd be wiped off the face of
Speaker 3: the planet, as I'm sure they were hearing by then
Speaker 3: stories of other indigenous peoples across the world suffering that
Speaker 3: kind of fate. So yeah, glass half full. We wanted
Speaker 3: to make people feel welcome, of course, but we wanted
Speaker 3: to trade. We can see that our chiefs of that
Speaker 3: era being very proactive in terms of trading, trying to
Speaker 3: drive an income that they could then plow back into
Speaker 3: the future of their people. Noting that these ships kept
Speaker 3: arriving and people kept pouring off them and moving into
Speaker 3: the lands that we had given, gifted, transacted and and
Speaker 3: later sold some of the blocks.
Speaker 2: If you had to put a figure on it, how
Speaker 2: much do you think the land sold in the nineteenth
Speaker 2: century is worth today?
Speaker 3: Well, I actually did a calculation recently. The first transaction
Speaker 3: in September eighteen forty. The boundaries we actually agreed on
Speaker 3: went from Cox's Bay to Saint George's Bay. Now that's
Speaker 3: all po to Kicker to Matajade Judde St George's Bay
Speaker 3: along where the Staratzi's building is, and both of those
Speaker 3: points into mona Pho Mount Eden the summit. That's three
Speaker 3: thousand acres. However, when the deed was finally drafted up
Speaker 3: nearly a year later, the officials of the crown had
Speaker 3: said that Matahudi Hudder was further east over at the
Speaker 3: bottom of air Street and New Market, and with the
Speaker 3: stroke of a pen we lost five hundred acres through
Speaker 3: that clerical era, it would be the nice way to
Speaker 3: put it, so that five hundred acres three thousand and
Speaker 3: four thousand dollars a square meter. Today my rudimentary calculator
Speaker 3: on my phone, it only came up with letters, so
Speaker 3: it must be a big number.
Speaker 2: So that was what twenty six thousand dollars today. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's just astronomical how much it would cost today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so you know it's a big number. We
Speaker 3: all know, everyone knows it, but we won't dwell on it,
Speaker 3: otherwise we might cry too much. Well, Bestian Point was
Speaker 3: sleeping this morning. The police were on the move.
Speaker 1: And by this time next week they'll be off Bastian Point.
Speaker 3: I promise you that that.
Speaker 5: Rob Muldoon, who was Prime Minister at the time, had
Speaker 5: plans to develop the Fenua for the purpose of housing
Speaker 5: the wealthy, had nothing to do with housing mighty people.
Speaker 3: Nazi fast through it.
Speaker 6: The aim was to maintain the last peas of land
Speaker 6: in Naeti fat for the people of Auraki. It led
Speaker 6: to the tribunal, It led to the treaty settlement claims process.
Speaker 2: Nati Phatua Uraki has turned their fortunes around in recent decades. Right,
Speaker 2: I believe the EWE had around one point six billion
Speaker 2: dollars in assets as of twenty twenty two. How do
Speaker 2: you feel about this reversal of four watunes in the
Speaker 2: context of what has actually happened to your eat Wee
Speaker 2: in the past.
Speaker 3: Feels like the strategy employed seven generations ago, which was
Speaker 3: to survive as best we could, knowing the onslaught about
Speaker 3: to come, to make the best of it that we could.
Speaker 3: That there will be a lot of suffering and pain,
Speaker 3: and there certainly has been that. And by that I
Speaker 3: mean we lost every single acre of our land. We
Speaker 3: became squatters on our own land. Technically and legally, we
Speaker 3: lost all of our native forests in central Isthmus. We
Speaker 3: lost almost all of our shellfish grounds through reclamation and
Speaker 3: the European propensity to discharge their raw surage into the sea.
Speaker 3: We became paupers in our own land where once we
Speaker 3: were the princes and the kings and queens. And so
Speaker 3: only now it feels like the strategy to survive and
Speaker 3: then be around to turn that story around is just
Speaker 3: beginning with far well short of what we need to
Speaker 3: reinvest back into our people in terms of housing, education,
Speaker 3: cultural recovery of our language, stories, genealogies, and the luck.
Speaker 3: So feel very humble to be in a position I
Speaker 3: am and lucky to not have suffered the worst of it,
Speaker 3: but with a lot of weight on our shoulders, myself
Speaker 3: and my cousins to make sure we don't stuff it
Speaker 3: up and that we keep building and that we as
Speaker 3: rapidly as possible turn the fortunes around of each individual
Speaker 3: member who can claim to being Antifa to a key
Speaker 3: timaking Artifa to of Auckland.
Speaker 2: There's a lot to the story of your eway and
Speaker 2: people can read that full story from you at ens
Speaker 2: at Herald dot co dot nz. But what would you
Speaker 2: want people to take away from this, particularly those who
Speaker 2: politically may not care or be interested in these kinds
Speaker 2: of issues.
Speaker 3: Strong Antifa to it is needed for our city and
Speaker 3: for our country. Every person that we can reignite the fire,
Speaker 3: relight the fire in them that is flickering away in
Speaker 3: terms of who they are deep down as anti fat
Speaker 3: to a Ketarmaki citizen. If we can get that flicker
Speaker 3: of a flame going around their culture and identity, their
Speaker 3: contribution to something bigger than themselves, whether that be with
Speaker 3: our Hapu, our subtribes, or in their own communities, whether
Speaker 3: at a rugby club, netball club, or bridge club or
Speaker 3: whatever it is, can only be a great thing for
Speaker 3: our country and mean spirited people who think that we
Speaker 3: are somehow out there being greedy Mary's seeking things we
Speaker 3: don't deserve, well, they simply need to read a basic
Speaker 3: history of New Zealand to understand what our people have
Speaker 3: been through and how humble we are and actually asking
Speaker 3: for reparations of such a minor number in terms of
Speaker 3: what has been across our economy on all sorts of
Speaker 3: crazy hairbrain schemes by our governments and local governments. I mean,
Speaker 3: we've managed to turn an eighteen million dollar cash settlement
Speaker 3: for everything we lost. So it's eighteen million cash into
Speaker 3: as you say, to a one point seven near one
Speaker 3: point seven billion dollar estate today. And what do we
Speaker 3: do with our money? We pour it all back into
Speaker 3: our people. Where the health system fails, where the education
Speaker 3: system fails, where the housing market fails. We are pouring
Speaker 3: our money back into trying to plug those gaps. We're
Speaker 3: not pouring it into our batches and second, third or
Speaker 3: fourth homes in Fiji or south of France. Our money
Speaker 3: is going back into our people. And I don't know
Speaker 3: anyone with some common sense who would think that that's
Speaker 3: a terrible thing.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us Natimo. The release of Benawa this
Speaker 2: week has been a long time coming for The Herald
Speaker 2: to discuss the editorial thinking behind the series and the
Speaker 2: sensitive nature of the topic. We're joined now by Chief
Speaker 2: Content Officer for The Herald and enz ADM Murray Kirkness. Murray,
Speaker 2: what was the thinking behind doing this series originally at all?
Speaker 5: I think it's evolved over time, Chelsea. You know, it's
Speaker 5: been in the making for quite a long time and
Speaker 5: we've had an awful lot of help in doing so.
Speaker 5: I guess though from our perspective, we're trying to provide
Speaker 5: answers to some questions that some New Zealanders would probably
Speaker 5: prefer we not even ask. You know, they do raise
Speaker 5: some uncomfortable issues about our legacy, the country's legacy and
Speaker 5: at the moment topics discussions. Opinions on treaty principles, for instance,
Speaker 5: are obviously front and center for a great many people,
Speaker 5: and it's an area that can be easily inflamed. It's
Speaker 5: a place where there are strongly held opinion. From our
Speaker 5: point of view, we're just trying to present the facts
Speaker 5: of New Zealand's history. We would argue that, you know,
Speaker 5: to face what's ahead, we have to know our past,
Speaker 5: and so that's the reason for this project.
Speaker 1: The main body of the New Zealand Wars took place
Speaker 1: between eighteen forty three and eighteen seventy two. My generation
Speaker 1: didn't learn much about them at school. What we did
Speaker 1: learn was a sanitized version supporting New Zealand's reputation as
Speaker 1: a paradise of racial harmony.
Speaker 2: Because they're not really trying to be provocative at all,
Speaker 2: but just laying out the facts, speaking to those involved
Speaker 2: in experts and the audience can come to any conclusions
Speaker 2: that they come to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's correct. As it says in the piece published today,
Speaker 5: we hope the project will provide useful context for the
Speaker 5: current political and social debates that we see going in.
Speaker 5: We hope it can fill in some knowledge gaps for
Speaker 5: some New Zealanders. We'd also hope it will spark a
Speaker 5: few much needed conversations. Ideally they would be conversations though,
Speaker 5: rather than rhetoric and yelling. Quite frankly, I think we
Speaker 5: do suffer a little bit from the inflammatory nature of
Speaker 5: the way topics like this are discussed. It's a very
Speaker 5: easy subject to throw around labels like racists or colonial
Speaker 5: or you know, and they often very charged terms. But
Speaker 5: the reality is I think that you know, there's a
Speaker 5: great many New Zealanders who don't necessarily know the country's
Speaker 5: own past. It's not necessarily taught in our schools, and
Speaker 5: we're hoping that Fenowa will help redress some of that balance.
Speaker 2: Is there a concern about how the audience will respond
Speaker 2: to this series?
Speaker 5: I did about concerns. I think it has got the potential.
Speaker 5: We all know that often a person's own worldview will
Speaker 5: influence the way they react to any piece of journalism
Speaker 5: or information. But we hope that most thinking people will
Speaker 5: see it for what it actually is, which is a
Speaker 5: fairly straightforward, but nevertheless in depth examination of our land,
Speaker 5: our past, what happened in our history. As I said,
Speaker 5: it's not taking a view on that, it's not taking
Speaker 5: any political side, or it is literally saying this is
Speaker 5: what happened. It's a nice piece from Simon Wilson as
Speaker 5: part of this package, in which he quotes historian Michael
Speaker 5: King in his book The Penguin History of New Zealand,
Speaker 5: who wrote, most New Zealanders, whatever their cultural backgrounds, are
Speaker 5: good hearted, practical, common sensical, and tolerant. I'd like to
Speaker 5: think that's still the case, despite the fact that we
Speaker 5: know on occasion we can be.
Speaker 3: Quick to judge.
Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Murray and to read more about
Speaker 2: how these land sales impacted all eWeek around alti Adowa
Speaker 2: and the stories by ENZED Herald journalists including Julia Gable
Speaker 2: and Chris Knox. Head to enzet Herold dot co dot zed.
Speaker 2: Fenwa is a New Zealand Herald data led project supported
Speaker 2: by ENZED on air in association with Mauldi Land legal
Speaker 2: expert Adrian Paul. That said, for this episode of the
Speaker 2: Front Page, you can read more about today's stories and
Speaker 2: extensive news coverage at enzet herold dot co dot zed.
Speaker 2: The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sells with sound
Speaker 2: engineer Patty Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front
Speaker 2: Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 2: tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.