Editorial: Sir Hugh Kawharu - our loss

A woman at the Orakei marae on the day of the death of Sir Hugh Kawharu this week told the Herald's reporter, "He was our pillar". That described him more adequately than the titles of elder, kaumatua, paramount chief of Ngati Whatua of Orakei, all of which he was. But he stood alone, almost, in his calm and dignity amid the stresses of a small subtribe asserting tangata whenua rights in a big, busy and largely indifferent city.

Sir Hugh's personal quality made him a pillar for his own people and for the whole community of Auckland, more than most citizens may know. To meet him was a privilege and it seems safe to say that everyone who did so, even briefly, would have been struck by his mana.

He was a man of high learning, unfailing grace and conspicuous common sense. Sir Hugh combined a steely commitment to Maori progress with boundless goodwill to the wider community. He knew when to speak and when to stay silent while a storm blew out.

He did not lead the sit-in at Bastion Pt in the 1970s when another slice of that land was marked for subdivision and young Ngati Whatua mounted a resistance. But elders of Orakei were drawn into the claim and the eventual settlement, a happy compromise recognising Ngati Whatua's status and every Aucklander's right of access to the headland, has Sir Hugh's stamp.

During the foreshore and seabed debate a few years ago he was able to present Okahu Bay, too, as a prime exhibit for unfettered public access to a beach reserve where a Maori heritage remains redolent.

He lived just long enough to see the same co-operative principle expressed in a settlement of Ngati Whatua's Treaty claim to most of metropolitan Auckland. The agreement reached with the Government in June will vest the cones of One Tree Hill, Mt Eden and Mt Roskill in Ngati Whatua's nominal ownership and provides for their "co-management" with the Auckland City Council.

The subtribe, with 2000 beneficiaries, has also accepted a modest $10 million in cash, $2 million of which was paid long ago to enable the hapu to acquire Auckland's vacated central railway land, and it also has the right to acquire $80 million of residential land at the Devonport Naval base by waiving the Navy's rent for the next 35 years.

It is Sir Hugh's final legacy and, characteristically, it is more concerned with mana than money.

Professionally he was a scholar of high standing, one of the pioneers of Maori academic studies. He founded the chair in social anthropology and Maori studies at Massey University in 1970 and came to the University of Auckland in 1985 as professor of Maori studies and head of its anthropology department.

By the time he retired in 1993 his academic publications included the country's leading text on Maori land.

Sir Hugh was an authority on the language and his greatest legacy to the nation may be his translation of the Maori version of the Treaty of Waitangi, which manages to remain a reasonable reference point amid today's vexed issues of interpretation.

If there is a regret about Sir Hugh's life it is that he was not more prominent in national affairs. He personified the best qualities we need in those who must command public respect. Like many of his bearing he would have had no taste for the sound bites and squalid behaviour of politics but might have possessed the stature to remain above it and possibly lift debate to his level.

But even silent and out of public sight he was a reassuring presence. He gave New Zealanders an example of the people we can be, combining the good, cultivated, noble qualities of two cultures, educated and dignified. May there be more in his mould.