Tā Tipene O'Regan at Awarua Marae, 2017. Photo / Courtesy of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Collection, Ngāi Tahu Archive
Tā Tipene O'Regan at Awarua Marae, 2017. Photo / Courtesy of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu Collection, Ngāi Tahu Archive
Tā Tipene O'Regan (Ngāi Tahu) was this week awarded New Zealander of the Year, Te Pou Whakarae o Aotearoa, for his mahi, leadership and legacy as a force for his people in Te Tiriti o Waitangi (Treaty of Waitangi) negotiations. Shane Te Pou (Ngāti Raka, Ngāi Tūhoe) spoke withthe rangatira.
Haea te awa Wahia te awa Puta i tua Puta i waho i te pakiaha o te rākau O maere nuku, o maere raki O maere i te māra whenua I ruka Tāne, i raro Tāne Pakupaku Tāne, rakaihi Tāne Nohohaka nō te āriki Hoatū e Tāne ki uta Ki kā tiritiri O Te Waipounamu e!
Ko te whetū pīataata o Uruao ki te raki tō rite e tā Mōu i haehae i te awa mō tō tātou waka Mōu i wāwahi i te huanui whakamua mō te iwi Kia puta i tua o te pae tata Kia puta i waho o te pae tawhiti Kia tae atu ki te pae o akitū Ki kā pakiaka e iwa o Te Kerēme Ahakoa ko tae te waka ki uta Ko eke koe ki te pae o kā kōrako nui Ko koe tou tērā kei te raki E here ana i kā mahi a te iwi Hei oraka mō te katoa Ko Tā Tipene ki te ao Ko Uruao ki ruka!
Ngāi Tahu are the southernmost inhabitants of Polynesian civilisation, one built by brave and courageous navigators. Never content to stay within the safe boundaries of their known world, they set off traversing the unknown to discover new lands and forge a new destiny for their people. Following in the footsteps of his navigator ancestors, Tā Tipene has led the way in forging a new destiny for Ngāi Tahu, guided by seven generations of our people to address the injustices of the past and to build a better future. This journey was never smooth, like his ancestor Rākaihautū, Tā Tipene had to navigate stormy seas, had to keep the crew committed to the cause, had to secure the vessel to weather the oceans and tides, and carve a path forward for the people to reach a new destiny previously thought unachievable. He has made an indelible mark on Ngāi Tahu today and for our future generations to come. His legacy is one of leading a new destiny for Ngāi Tahu and the nation, teaching us to reclaim our ability to dream and to remember who we are in order to create a new and better future.
Tā Tipene O'Regan at Awarua Marae, 2013. Photo / Courtesy of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu.
When I asked Sir Tipene O'Regan what triggered his consciousness on matters of racial justice, he shared a jarring anecdote that captured the climate pervading the 1950s Wellington of his childhood.
His father, Rolland O'Regan, was in the sights of New Zealand's security services due to his support for striking waterfront workers in 1951. Nine years later, he would spearhead the "No Maoris, No Tour" movement, placing the renowned surgeon, son of a judge, and devout Irish Catholic, on the far radical fringe of New Zealand politics at the time. The prolonged wharf dispute ripped New Zealand apart in a way that remained unparalleled until exactly three decades later, by which time the anti-tour movement Rolland O'Regan willed into existence had evolved into a mass protest movement.
Returning from school one day as the 1951 strike raged on, young Tipene encountered the menacing sight of police officers ransacking his family home in Roseneath, a salubrious Wellington suburb overlooking Oriental Bay.
"These Eliot Ness types gathered in raincoats and felt hats, with Fords and Mercurys parked around our house. I realised they were the police," Sir Tipene recalls.
His Ngāi Tahu mother, Rena, stood at the front door, lamenting "aūe … aūe" at the intrusion, hands in wiri formation, reclaiming her dignity, defending her home, protecting her boy.
"And I remember a man came out whom I recognised from church and he said to his colleagues, 'Don't worry about her going on, she's just a white n*****'. She grabbed my hand, told me not to do anything rash. 'Stay still. Behave yourself.'
"I remember my mother would walk into the church and see that man. She wouldn't say anything, just gave him a look as if to say she forgave him. She was a woman of considerable grace [but] I don't think she really forgave him. She always taught me, 'Forgive thine enemies, my son, but write down their names.'"
It was a truly bicultural upbringing, and Sir Tipene credits the early influence of his maternal grandmother for lighting his path into te ao Māori and towards a life dedicated to seeking justice for Ngāi Tahu.
"She was the keeper of that body of grievance within our broader whānau."
Sir Tipene O'Regan listens to speeches during Te Tiriti o Waitangi commemorations at the Onuku Marae, at Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Meanwhile, Sir Tipene's later reputation as an advocate and negotiator, the breadth of his intellectual interests, his passion for justice, were forged in that same Roseneath home.
"I always had books around me and a lot of conversations," Sir Tipene, 83, told me in an interview for Canvas after being honoured with the award, New Zealander of the Year, this week. "My childhood friends who stayed for a meal at our home were sometimes astonished by the way I was permitted at the table to talk to my father. My mother would say, 'I wish you wouldn't be so bolshie' but this was met with silence at the head of the table. 'The boy is debating with me' - and that would excuse just about anything. My father's intellect had a huge shape on me. He was very interested in my personal development."
Sir Tipene O'Regan accepts the Waitangi Tribunal settlement offer of $170 million from then-minister for treaty negotiations Sir Douglas Graham in Wellington, in 1997. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The debating skills and intellectual rigour honed at the dining room table serve Sir Tipene well. His dealings with former National Party Minister of Treaty Negotiations, Chris Finlayson, extends back 30 years, culminating in direct negotiations over the Fisheries Commission Treaty settlement for Ngāi Tahu.
"We always found him to be an honest, robust, good-faith actor," said Finlayson, who later enlisted Sir Tipene to help sell the Tuhoe settlement. "Could not have asked for a better friend and mentor."
Admiration for Sir Tipene enjoys rare bipartisan consensus, with former Prime Minister Helen Clark describing him to me as "a highly credible and rational leader", and current Minister for Māori Development, Willie Jackson, a lifelong advocate for urban Māori and frequent critic of Iwi leadership, offering this generous historical assessment:
"He would be right at the forefront of iwi leaders," Jackson said. "I would rate him, Bob Mahuta, Whata Winiata, Hepi Te Heuheu and Api Mahuika as the leading iwi leaders of the last generation."
Tā Tipene O'Regan at Ōnuku Marae for Ngāi Tahu Waitangi Day Commemorations, 2019. Photo / Courtesy of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu.
Jackson shares with many other younger Māori activists a fairly jaded view of Treaty settlements, which he describes as "peanuts".
"However, our people learned from Ngāi Tahu that you can still create opportunity from peanuts, and you can still make dreams happen. That is one of the legacies of O'Regan.
"Twenty-six years [after the Ngāi Tahu settlement] their $170 million has turned into billions. Tipene was right after all."
It's hard to disagree with Jackson's argument about the inadequacy of Treaty settlements in light of the grievances they seek to address, but no account of the Ngāi Tahu deal can afford to ignore the prevailing political climate from which it emerged.
As then-Prime Minister Jim Bolger sat across the table from Sir Tipene in the 90s, the fate of Treaty settlements was far from assured. Public opinion veered between sceptical and hostile towards the entire endeavour, and some inside the governing National Party believed any deal would doom their electoral fortunes. That Bolger and others stood firm, signing off on the Ngāi Tahu settlement and pursuing a raft of others in its wake, stands in retrospect as an act of impressive political courage. By taking settlements off the red hot stove of day-to-day political combat, by rejecting the allure of demagoguery, political leaders from both sides helped save us from decades of racial strife, perhaps the single best explanation for why New Zealand has so far avoided falling into the destructive populism poisoning democracies elsewhere.
Would this have been possible without the vision, leadership and first-class temperament of Sir Tipene? At the very least, surely it would have been a great deal more perilous without him.
Ta Tipene O'Regan, long-time chair of Ngāi Tahu Trust Board and chief negotiator, and his daughter Hana, who works for Te Runanga o Ngāi Tahu as general manager of oranga (health).
This is not to say race relations are optimal at this or any other time of our shared journey as a nation, let alone to suggest our aspirations as Māori are even close to fully realised. Sir Tipene, having steered the waka from the vanguard, knows that the next phase of his people's journey will fall to others. But the next generation of Ngāi Tahu's leaders are under no illusion about the indispensability of this towering rangatira.
Broadcaster and te reo activist Stacey Morrison (Ngāi Tahu) put it this way: "He is such a pou [the mighty pillar that rises up from the heart of the wharenui] - a true stalwart of knowledge and experience for our iwi. He links us to our old people, he is one of the core negotiators and navigators who fought for our iwi for the benefit of all of our tamariki and mokopuna, and those still to be born, much more than it was ever for themselves."
When I ask what Sir Tipene hopes his legacy will be to his mokopuna, these are the words with which we conclude our kōrero.
"I'd like to think that my mokopuna were educated with a broad and liberal view of life. And they are dealing with the issues of their day fuelled and fired by an understanding of where they've come from, where we've come from. Some of them will be full sailboats. I hope some of them will. Whatever they do, I just hope they feel fulfilled by the fact that they know who they are and where they're from. That they know who their people is. And they know that 'Aoraki Matatū' - Aoraki continues to endure - and as long as that endures, we endure."
In the submissions for Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year, a nominator summed up the mana of Tā Tipene: "While Ngāi Tahu as an iwi and New Zealand as a nation are bigger than any one person, few people think or act in big ways. These people, living taonga, are irreplaceable. Tā Tipene O'Regan is one such person."
