62
Maranga Mai!
he had organised the Armed Offenders Squad to
prepare for Māori violence only to have his men
met by tears, songs, and prayers (Hawke, 1999). On
Millennium Day 2000, 40,000 Aucklanders gathered
at Ōkahu Bay to welcome the tribes' canoe, Māhuhuki-te-rangi, into the bay where 50 years before Ngāti
Whātua had been evicted. These were lessons that
patience and perseverance can unlock the doors of all
prejudice (New Zealand Herald, 6 January 2000).
Stop the celebrations – honour the Treaty
(1979)
The land rights movement yielded a younger, more
militant, ideologically sophisticated, and confident
leadership that broadened activism in new directions,
extended the boundaries of elders, redefined
race relations, and fought to stop annual Treaty
celebrations until the Treaty was honoured.
Groups now included Ngā Tamatoa, Te Matakite o
Aotearoa, the Waitangi Action Committee (WAC),
Waitangi Action Alliance (WAA), He Taua, the Māori
People’s Liber¬ation Movement of Aotearoa, and a
Black Women’s Movement. Each had specific regional,
tribal, or ideological take (causes), focuses and goals
with overlapping memberships that came together as
larger groups for specific national-level campaigns.
Collectively and individually, these groups challenged
the core of racist mainstream white supremacy
(Walker, 2004, pp. 220-221).
In 1979, WAC and Te Matakite began leading annual
protests on the treaty grounds each Waitangi Day
under the banners of: ‘Stop the Celebrations’, ‘The
Treaty is a Fraud’, and ‘The Cheaty of Waitangi’ and
‘Honour the Treaty’.
In a repeat of Parihaka, the Tent Embassy, Raglan and
Takaparawhā, the government responded with force.
In 1981, activists disrupted government plans to invest
the knighthoods of Sir Graham Latimer and Dame
Whina Cooper on the marae at Waitangi. Police
stormed the group, made eight arrests, demonised
the protesters as rioters and outcasts, changed the
charges several times, and surreptitiously obtained
defence documents. The judge dismissed the case for
lack of evidence.
The following year, the Police ‘batoned’ 150 protesters
off Auckland Harbour Bridge. Protesters responded at
Waitangi throwing sticks and stones, setting off smoke
bombs and an egg which, striking the GovernorGeneral, delivered a wake-up call that not all was
well. Thirty-two protestors were arrested.
In 1983, police in full riot gear intercepted and
arrested 50 protesters on the Waitangi Bridge before
making another 49 arrests on the Treaty grounds
including Pākehā protesters from different Churches,
HART and ACORD. They also arrested some nonprotesting Pākehā because, in the act of wielding
long-batons, all Pākehā look the same (Walker, 2004,
pp. 221, 229-234).
In an aside, Dun Mihaka delivered an artful
whakapōhane (a customary showing of the buttocks
asking visitors to leave) to the passing limousine of
Prince Charles and Princess Diana leaving Wellington
Airport. When asked, Buckingham Palace declined to
confirm whether they had waved back (Mihaka and
Prince, 1984).
Maranga Mai! (1979)
In 1979, Maranga Mai!, a raw street-level protest
drama performed at Māngere College, questioned
the mainstream Pākehā myth that Aotearoa
comprised ‘one people’ united in racial harmony.
Many Pākehā were horrified. The Minister of
Education attempted to ban the play, the Manukau
City Council called for an investigation, the
Department of Internal Affairs conducted one, parents
lodged complaints with the police, and members of
the white public lodged others with the Race Relations
Conciliator’s Office. When performed in the Beehive,
some MPs were disgusted, others left (Walker, 2004,
pp. 225-226).
The play was therefore a tremendous success
because it provoked debate, highlighted a racist
myth, and exposed the racism that could split
Pākehā into equal but opposite reactions of horror
or greater awareness. Reactions from conservatives
and liberals alike, demonised protesters as separatist,
discriminatory, ungrateful, personally motivated, and
dysfunctional outcasts of Māori society. The degree
of condemnation was directly proportional to the
racism that underpinned it. Another reaction was an
acceptance of the key message that Aotearoa was not
as united as New Zealanders had thought.