Issue 95 - Editorial

Shut the door I'm in now.

Tena ano tatou

I nearly choked the other day.

I was at home at Mahia having a cup of tea and listening to the morning news when I heard a senior politician saying that the government should introduce a law stopping foreigners from buying land in Aotearoa.

Boy why didn't we do that in 1840? We could have been like the Cook Islands and still own all our whenua.

Mind you not a lot of 'buying' went on in the 1800s. As the Waitangi Tribunal tells us, there was a lot of cheating, stealing and making war on people so their land could be stolen.

And now the beneficiaries of those activities want to stop 'other foreigners' from buying in. Gee that's rich.

To make matters worse the person doing the whining on the wireless was an Aussie immigrant - Russel Norman, co-leader of the Green Party.

Equally deluded was Police Commissioner Howard Broad who said he hoped that before his term expires next year the Tuhoe people might kiss and make up with the Police and forgive them for invading their territory.

You may recall that cops arrived looking like an expeditionary force to Iraq – hunting non-existent terrorists and intimidating old people and kohanga reo kids. Within weeks of the Rambo-style raid, the Solicitor-General ruled that the unprecedented police action had amounted to nought. There was no case to answer under the anti-terrorist laws hastily passed by the New Zealand Parliament.

Rather than admitting defeat there and then, Howard Broad and his men have soldiered on another three years pressing firearms charges against the people they arrested for the fewer than half a dozen firearms they recovered in their massive raid.

Stupid.

But I guess Broad is following in the steps of another pig-headed Commissioner called Cullen who led a raid on Tuhoe territory nearly a hundred years ago. Cullen had been a lowly constable in the Irish Constabulary before seeking his fortune in this country – rising from humble beginnings to the top of the heap.

It was Cullen who ordered heads cracked in the struggle between mine owners and miners in Waihi. A miner was killed. Cullen also had a snitch on Rua Kenana - Rua the Prophet. And again more death and destruction resulted from his ill-fated raid on Rua's community at Maungapohatu.

Just as Broad's terrorism charges were tossed out – Cullen's arrest of Rua should have been thrown out too because he arrested him on a Sunday, and the law of the land at the time said you couldn't do that. But as has often happened where Maori are concerned, the police and the courts got around that and Rua was convicted and jailed, and his model community withered and died.

Tuhoe have never forgotten the Cullen raid, so Broad is dreaming if he thinks he's going to be able to retire with a clear conscience.

Tuhoe will not forget either, that despite many months of negotiation for the return of 'their' Urewera territory stolen last century – and with an agreement in principle in hand –Prime Minister John Key killed the deal at the last minute.

Urewera will return to Tuhoe – all Key has done is delay that and add his name to the list of people who don't know the history of these matters and who failed to act justly and honourably when they had the chance.

This is Mana's 95th issue – five more to our 100th. That's a history we're pretty proud of as a small, independently funded magazine. The Maori All Blacks made a good showing too with their centenary game tally of three wins from three games. To celebrate that we have scored a limited edition Maori All Black jersey to give away.

And we look at changing times in sporting codes with a focus on young Maori who play football – or soccer as we used to call it. There are four Maori in the current All Whites team including our cover 'star' Winston Reid, and many thousands of young Maori playing in the junior grades.

You'll find plenty more meaty reading in this issue including a challenge to the oft repeated claim that our ancestors were cannibals.