Maoris Get Property and Fishing Rights, Sparking White Backlash : Land Dispute Highlights Racial Issue in New Zealand

Bastion Point, situated in the rolling hills just outside Auckland, is a rarity.

Unlike other congested areas, where neat, whitewashed homes sprout on the hillsides like autumn mushrooms, Bastion Point is a patch of lush green, an oasis in suburbia, where cows graze with a breathtaking view of sailboats in the bay.

It seems an unlikely place to have become a focal point for the escalating racial struggle between New Zealand’s white majority, descendants of mainly British settlers, and the Maoris, the increasingly vocal minority, descendants of Polynesians who were thriving here when the white man arrived two centuries ago.

Climaxing a long struggle, nearly 80 acres of land around Bastion Point, which had been seized from the Maori tribe called Ngati Whaatua, is now being given back by the New Zealand government, along with $3 million in compensation (about $1.75 million U.S.).

“It wasn’t theirs to hand back; it was ours,” Joe Hawke, a spokesman for the Ngati Whaatua (pronounced Natty Fatoowa), said recently. “But we had to fight over it. Twenty years ago, there was no hope for the Maori.”

Bastion Point is the first land case to be decided by the controversial Waitangi Tribunal, which was set up 14 years ago to hear disputes rising out of a treaty signed by the British and the Maoris.

So far, the tribunal has handed back two parcels of land and taken 150 other claims under consideration. It has also issued a controversial recommendation that the government recognize traditional Maori fishing rights in the rich waters off New Zealand, provoking howls of protest from the nation’s white-owned fishing companies.

These decisions have triggered a sharp backlash in the white community, which is known by the Maori word Pakeha for Europeans. There has been considerable fear that New Zealand’s Labor Party government would compromise Pakeha property rights and return private property to the Maori.

Racial Tensions Higher

“It’s not as bad as the general perception, but racial tensions are certainly greater now than at any time in the past,” said Walter Hirsh, New Zealand’s race relations conciliator, whose office hears complaints about bias in jobs and housing.

Along with the tribunal controversy, the white community has become increasingly alarmed at the rise of Maori gangs. The gangs, with names like “Mongrel Mob,” have introduced violent crimes like gang rape and drug-related murder into New Zealand on a scale without precedent here.

The tribunal decisions have also emboldened the Maoris to demand more attention from the state after a long period of neglect. Among the demands are bilingual education and affirmative action in the job market, both of which have touched off further complaints from the majority.

Sid Jackson, a clerical union leader, is one of a new breed of outspoken Maori leaders who have taken on the white Establishment. Jackson caused alarm in the Pakeha community by visiting Libya as the guest of Col. Moammar Kadafi and by saying that racial conflict is “inevitable in New Zealand.”

“They’ve created a powder keg,” Jackson said in a recent interview. “We didn’t build the powder keg. We didn’t light the fuse. But one day it’s going to blow. The amazing thing is that it hasn’t happened earlier.”

In reaction to all this, the rightist National Party has advanced significantly in recent opinion polls by criticizing the Labor government’s handling of Maori affairs.

Winston Peters, a Maori and a member of Parliament, has rocketed past his party leaders to become one of the most popular politicians in the country by speaking out against what he terms the government’s “sickly white liberal answers.”

“They have heightened Maori expectations beyond any possible level of fulfillment,” Peters said, “and drastically increased European anxiety. The consequences have been disastrous for New Zealand.”

Race a Political Issue

Peters, who visited Los Angeles last year in an effort to learn how to deal with the problem of gang crime, said he expects race relations to be one of two top issues in next year’s national election.

According to Tamati Reedy, New Zealand’s secretary for Maori affairs, Maoris now account for almost 13% of the population of New Zealand--about 410,000 of the total of 3.2 million.

Maoris are only half as likely as whites to own their homes, and Maoris account for 30% to 50% of the unemployment. About 60% of the Maoris leave school with no formal qualifications. A widely quoted statistic is that Maoris make up the majority of inmates in the prisons.

The Maoris maintain that because of a long history of racism and derogation by the white-dominated government, they have been systematically alienated from society. They say this has caused young Maoris to drop out of school without skills, and that this has kept them from finding good jobs and has contributed to the rising crime rate.

In attempting to address the Maoris’ needs, the government has budgeted $260 million this year for Maori affairs, up from $65 million four years ago. There are bilingual education programs in the schools and a government-backed Maori radio station went on the air in Auckland in June.

At the heart of the present tension is the Treaty of Waitangi, signed in 1840 by Capt. William Hobson of the Royal Navy and 50 Maori chiefs. Essentially, it provides that the Crown, in exchange for Maori recognition of British sovereignty over New Zealand, will extend to the tribes “full, exclusive and undisturbed possession of their lands and estates, forests, fisheries and other properties.”

But in the colonizing zeal of the 19th Century, the treaty was widely ignored, and there was widespread fighting between whites and Maoris until 1870. An estimated 3.2 million acres of Maori land was confiscated.

By the turn of the century, a British governor had described the treaty as a “nullity,” an echo of the legal predicament American Indians were caught up in at the time. Although the Maoris made several appeals to the British government to respect the treaty, London turned a deaf ear.

Nearly 40 years ago, Bastion Point was taken over by the New Zealand government for use by the army. The area’s 300 residents, all Maoris with tribal claims to the land dating back a century, were ordered off and their homes were burned to the ground.

In the 1970s, Bastion Point became a focal point of nationwide Maori demonstrations demanding the return of all lands appropriated by the government since the signing of the Waitangi Treaty. The Maoris held a sit-in on Bastion Point for 508 days. Hundreds of them were arrested.

In 1975, the government set up the Waitangi Tribunal to consider claims against the government, but the key decision on how far back they would go was not made until 10 years later, when the government said the tribunal should adjudicate claims dating back to 1840.

Claims flooded in, not only for land but for fisheries, along with efforts to halt pollution. One tribe said that because the treaty’s Maori wording gave it a right to unspecified “treasures,” it owned the airwaves and wanted a fee from broadcasters.

Promise by Government

The government promised repeatedly that none of the claims would be allowed to displace people from land now in private hands. But a myth evolved that the government was giving land cultivated and nurtured by Europeans to undeserving Maori farmers.

“The government is asking the grandchildren to compensate for the sins and errors and omissions of their grandparents,” the National Party’s Peters said. “That cannot be done in a real way.”

The hottest dispute is over fishing rights. Because the waters around New Zealand have limited stocks of fish, the government sells quotas to private fishing companies. But the Waitangi Tribunal has recognized a “customary Maori fishing right” and has called on the government to sit down with its treaty partner to discuss an equitable sharing of this resource.

Three years later, the negotiations are still going on, with the government offering to give the Maoris 10% of the fishing quota over four years and $10 million ($6 million U.S.) for a fishing fleet.

“That decision has created massive indecision in the fishing industry,” Peter Stevens, president of the New Zealand Federation of Commercial Fishermen, said. “People are turning down investments. Everybody’s fence-sitting, and a lot of people simply want to get out of the industry.”

With New Zealand’s economy in the doldrums, such talk has sharply polarized the country.

“The heat is really coming from five big companies, but the public perception is that the little white fisherman is going to the wall as a result of these Maori claims,” said Ranginui Walker, a professor of Maori studies at Auckland University. “That’s what’s raised the racial temperature in this country--the land claims and the fisheries claims.”

The government appears to be caught in a crossfire between the Maoris, who see the law as on their side and are in no mood to compromise, and the Europeans, who constitute a majority of the voters. Perhaps because of the Labor Party’s recent slide in the polls, the government has been accused by the Maoris of equivocating on a settlement to the fishing dispute.

“It’s just keeping the hegemonic domination of colonization going,” Walker said. “It just shows there has been no change.”

Joe Hawke of the Ngati Whaatua tribe is one of the few winners in the controversy, but he is still bitter about the fight for Bastion Point.

“I was carrying on the work my parents handed down to me,” he said recently. “I have been labeled an agitator and a Communist, but I now see my work fulfilled.”

Hawke said he planned to use the compensation to build about 60 houses on the recovered land, although all but 20 acres must remain public parkland under the agreement with the government.

On the Bastion Point meadow stands a small memorial of carved stone blocks in the primitive style of the South Seas. The memorial is for Hawke’s niece, who died in a fire on the land during one of the land disputes.

Overlooking the Anglican church that stands primly on the Bastion Point headland is the Ngati Whaatua Marae, a Maori meeting house that is also a house of worship. It is a striking A-frame building, with a huge hawk--hence the family name--poised for takeoff from a hand-carved totem pole in front.

“The can of worms hasn’t been reopened,” Walker, the university professor, said. “It’s never been closed as far as the Maori people are concerned. They have protested their grievances from 1843 up until the present day. There is a continuous history of the Maori people trying to redress their grievances and having been fobbed off.”