88
Maranga Mai!
The ‘Urewera Four,’ Tāme Iti, Te Rangikaiwhiria
Kemara, Urs Signer and Emily Bailey, were convicted
on firearms charges in 2012. Iti and Kemara were
sentenced to two and a half years jail and Signer
and Bailey home detention. None of the four was
convicted of terrorism (Sunday Star Times, 21 October
2007; Keenan, 2008, pp. 17-34, pp. 129-138; Stuff News
14 October 2017).
Hundreds of New Zealanders protested in support
of those arrested and affected by the Police
raids. Other protests were organised against the
Terrorism Suppression Act and Terrorism Suppression
Amendment Bill which some saw as an attack on the
human rights of New Zealand citizens. The NZ Council
of Trade Unions called for the Act’s repeal stating it
“could be used to suppress political expression”.xiii
The paramilitary police response was unfortunately
repeated in 2012 and 2014. In 2012, the Police
deployed the Armed Offenders Squad into Uta, a
small village in the valley, to apprehend a single
individual. Tear gas was fired into the house, windows
were smashed, and bullets fired into cupboards and
walls (Te Kaokao a Takapau, 2012, p. 2). Tamariki
waiting for a school bus witnessed the AOS surround
the area “in their trucks, their guns, their gear”
(Aikman, 2019, p. 269).
Similarly, in 2014, the AOS raided a whānau
homestead suspected of harbouring a suspect
involved in a weapon theft. A helicopter, numerous
vehicles, and dozens of AOS officers were used
in the raid, terrifying the whānau inside (Aikman,
2019, p. 271).
In both incidents, the police raided incorrect
addresses, their information being based on incorrect
or incomplete intelligence (Aikman, 2019, pp. 1–2, 270).
That they proceeded to raid individual homes with
such levels of violence is alarming, and emphasises
the “sledgehammer and walnut tactics” that have
long characterised police violence towards Tūhoe and
Māori (Aikman, 2020).
Together, the raids in 2007, 2012, and 2014 represent
examples of a colonial response that assumes
Māori are dangerous and threatening, regardless
of age. In each instance, the police declined options
for mediation that would have de-escalated each
situation before they began (Aikman, 2019).
In 2014, the Police Commissioner Mike Bush
formally apologised to the Ruatoki community
and Ngāi Tūhoe for police actions during the raids.
He acknowledged that the mana of the Tūhoe
people had been damaged.
In 2012, the government passed the Search
and Surveillance Act, which controls how police
and some other government agencies search
people or property or use surveillance devices for
the purpose of investigating crime, and the Video
Camera Surveillance Temporary Measures Act 2011
which allows for legalised covert video surveillance
by the State.
Ruatoki reminded Tūhoe of the power of white
Crown supremacy and Māori suppression. As Prime
Minister Joseph Ward firmly told Rua in 1908, “There
can be no other Government or king, there can’t be
two suns shining in the sky at one time” (Binney et al,
1996, p. 38).
Ihumātao (2019)
Other justice-based land issues have also seen overpolicing responses. The land at Ihumātao in South
Auckland was confiscated under the Land Settlement
Act (1863), under the pretence that the Māori
inhabitants were in rebellion (Waitangi Tribunal, 1985,
pp. 17–18) and their land was sold to settler farmers:
Applying a scorched earth policy, gunboats,
soldiers, and settlers destroyed canoes across
the Manukau, looted possessions, raided food
stores, burnt houses, and stole and sold Māori
livestock. Māori sought shelter from the mayhem
where they could or hid in the bush. Tony Simpson
wrote that many of the infirm and very young died
of exposure and starvation. On the Great South
Road, some soldiers allowed Māori columns ‘safe
passage’, others plundered their possessions
and livestock. Many Māori were ‘captured’ and
imprisoned without a warrant or charge. More
died. Waiohua leader, Ihaka Takanini and 21
others were imprisoned in Ōtāhuhu. There, Ihaka’s
father and two of his children died. The survivors
were transported to Rākino Island where Ihaka
would also die. Only his wife, Riria, and one son,
Te Wirihana, and four others returned to Pūkaki –
Ihumātao. An 1864 report to Parliament found the