KEY POINTS:
For Alec Hawke, memories lie thick on the ground at Bastion Point.
On a sparkling May morning, he reflects that every little piece of this Maori oasis and Auckland jewel is priceless.
Hawke is sharing his memories of Bastion Pt because this is an important week for the land, his Ngati Whatua o Orakei people and for relations between Maori and Pakeha in New Zealand.
This week, Hawke's hapu will mark the 30th anniversary of the end of a marathon 506-day occupation by a 500-strong police contingent. On that day - May 25 1978 - hundreds of protesters were forced off Bastion Point, which Ngati Whatua know as Takaparawha. As the occupiers were led away their message - return the land - never faltered.
It was a watershed event with ramifications in race relations, Treaty law, and the Maori protest movement.
The origins of the conflict are straightforward: after leader Apihai Te Kawau gifted huge tracts for Pakeha settlement of Tamaki Makaurau or Auckland in 1840, successive compulsory Crown land acquisitions left the Orakei hapu virtually landless.
By January 1977 when the occupation started, little remained of the 283ha Orakei block. An exception was a waterlogged urupa or burial ground in Okahu Bay and a further24ha of "uncommitted" land at Bastion Point which the then National Government of Prime Minister Robert Muldoon earmarked for high-rise apartments.
Early in 1977, a core group of 20 to 25 moved on to the point, led by the eldest of the Hawke brothers, Joe.
"Joe gave us a talk about the importance of what we were doing," recalls Alec Hawke.
" But it wasn't like we knew the whole plan. It sort of grew. Someone wanted a cup of tea, we needed the first fire for the billy. That fire didn't go out until we were arrested. Later someone else said we needed somewhere to sleep, so we started building. That's kind of how it happened."
While Hawke is telling the story, his dog Tala wants to run. She's straining over the ground where a 186sq m meeting house was erected, gardens for kumara and kamokamo planted, caravans and lean-tos went up and occupiers hacked into the water supply. It was labelled a shanty town.
It all ended in a spectacular display of State force.
On May 25, 1978 a mass of blue encircled hapu members and supporters to rid the point of the occupation.
Aerial pictures illustrate the precision the operation was executed with.
Alec was 25 at the time. The eviction from their ancestral home was to be so final, not even the smallest escaped, he says.
"Funny thing was, even our chickens were arrested. Even our dogs. We loved our dogs and even they were impounded."
Protesters knew for three days trouble was coming and they'd planned their response - there was to be no violence. However, when police arrived with Army support, the sheer weight of numbers was still jarring.
"There were a lot of tears. I remember vividly when they took away this young Maori woman, she was crying all the way, hysterically. Many stayed in the whare [the erected marae]. There were two who decided they'd be on the roof. They were the last arrested."
Officers targeted kaumatua first and it was they who initially greeted the busloads, 222 people in all, who found themselves at Auckland Central. It was the old people who set the tone for chaotic and emotional scenes in the holding cells. As others arrived they were recognised by haka - culminating in a mass effort to welcome the very last.
But with a range of activities planned from Monday, this week isn't about nursing any sense of injustice.
The hapu, members say, has come far too far for that.
It's a chance to thank the thousands of people, organisations, religious leaders - Pakeha, Pacific Island and Maori - who came to the point, stayed, gave time, money or worked to sustain the occupation. It's about recognising the Auckland Trades Council's construction members who participated in a "green ban", which thwarted any work on the proposed development.
It was also about those involved in different ways who had gone on to have public careers: Pat Sneddon, Ripeka Evans, Sue Bradford, Tim Shadbolt, Ben Dalton, musicians such as the Topp Twins and others who played at the point.
There is also the poignant memory of 5-year-old Joann, daughter of Alec and then wife Miro, who died in a fire at the point.
Her life wasn't the only cost Ngati Whatua paid.
Inter-tribal relations also hit rock bottom. Tensions appeared between the young turks from the Orakei Maori Action Committee who were running Bastion Pt and a conservative older grouping who thought the hapu should settle for the government homes they lived in. A carrot which would have cost them $200,000.
Occupation leader Joe Hawke, eloquent at 68, says keeping quiet was never a strong characteristic - conflict was an inherent part of the action.
"I define it as being the protest on to which other Maori issues were launched. It was a learning experience for other campaigns to be mounted on. Whatever we learned, whatever we did on Takaparawha we learned on the run," Joe Hawke says.
Maori and Pakeha eyes were opened.
"I wanted them to look across the fence and look at their neighbours and see what they were about. I wanted them to use their own intellect to understand what we were saying."
"People were hungry for the message, they were hungry for history."
One of the first to put a tent up, Auckland University law lecturer David Williams says while Whina Cooper's 1975 land march bought the issue of land alienation to national consciousness, Bastion Pt's direct action made sure it stayed on the public agenda.
"The world changed. To move that world to the one we're in now, you needed something to push society.
"Everything flowed from Bastion Pt. You had a whole lot of activists who cut their teeth. It wasn't so easy to tell ourselves Maori were the happiest [minority] in the world anymore. The law changed. For the first time it wasn't about petitioning the Government and then waiting."
In its 1987 report, the Waitangi Tribunal recommended Okahu Park and Bastion Pt be returned to Ngati Whatua with the proviso the land be used as public domains. Orakei marae, Okahu church and the urupa were also to be returned, along with a $3 million payment for securing an economic base.
Williams credits the occupation with forcing the Waitangi Tribunal's scope to widen to include historical grievances. Before that change in 1985 there was no chance that any real land issues anywhere could be settled in substantive ways.
Today, Ngati Whatua is a major landlord in the Auckland CBD and once their wider Auckland claim is settled its property portfolio is likely to grow.
Commemorations this week include a reconciliation ceremony. It will be a chance to celebrate how far the iwi has come in three decades.
"It's another step on the mana whenua ladder - Ngati Whatua is here and it's not going away," says Williams.
"It's about saying 'we can invite the police to come and they want to come'. That's what it's all about: Ngati Whatua is in control of its own destiny."
30 YEARS ON:
VETERANS OF THE OCCUPATION
Pat Sneddon
Career in publishing, founding director of Mai FM, Chairman Auckland District Health Board
Tim Shadbolt
Invercargill Mayor
Ripeka Evans
Chief executive Maori Doctors' Association
Hilda Halkyard Harawira
School principal
Ben Dalton
CEO Crown Forestry Rental Trust
Sue Bradford
Green MP
Phil Goff
Senior Labour Party cabinet minister
BASTION POINT EVENTS
MAY 19 TO MAY 30
Bastion Point: The Exhibition - 30 Years On
Level 2, Auckland Central Library
Remembrance and reconciliation ceremony
SUNDAY MAY 25
Orakei Marae
10am: Powhiri
11am: Remembrance & reconciliation ceremony
12am: Whenua walk to memorial
1.30pm: Hakari
THURSDAY MAY 22
10am: Lecture series
University of Auckland, Waipapa Marae
FRIDAY MAY 23
Indigenous Round Table Discussion
Orakei Marae
Bringing together indigenous people from other countries, this event will focus on parks and land management, and will include a presentation on the Bastion Point land occupation.
