Russell Stone: This city's future can't be built on myths

Auckland in 1852, 12 years after the site was purchased from Ngati Whatua o Orakei.

I read with some concern the article written by Susan Healy headed "Let's acknowledge the gift of land that became Auckland". In it she upheld the right of Ngati Whatua o Orakei to automatic representation on the proposed Auckland Super City Council on the grounds that iwi should be considered the sole tangata whenua of the large region under the council's administration.

As she made clear, she largely based her claim on the argument presented by the late Sir Hugh Kawharu during his 2001 Hillary lecture at the Auckland Museum, in which he emphasised not only that tribe's claim to mana whenua status on the Auckland isthmus, but also its positive role in the establishment of the first government settlement there.

I was present at the lecture and heard with some misgiving what Professor Kawharu had to say, although mollified somewhat by his admission that what he was presenting was a version of the past from "a Ngati Whatua perspective".

Dr Healy and later apologists, however, have moved to convert what some could consider a partisan viewpoint into incontestable fact.

Dr Healy in common with Ngati Whatua advocates has put forward the notion that in 1840 the paramount chief Apihai Te Kawau "gave" to the Crown the "three thousand acres more or less" on which the heart of the city of Auckland now stands. That the consideration for the transfer in the form of gold sovereigns and goods was scandalously low - in keeping incidentally with most land dealings between Maori and Pakeha buyers in those times - cannot be denied.

And I am sure that Apihai was sufficiently anxious for the governor to come to Tamaki that he would have been prepared, if pressed, actually to give the land. But he wasn't asked to do that. So he sold it.

In his book of the early days, Poenamo, John Logan Campbell recounts how when he met Apihai in late 1840, the chief jingled in a blanket of the sovereigns he had received from the Crown agent as a result of the initial sale and said "te utu mo te whenua" (The payment for the land). I am concerned that the myth that Apihai actually gave ("tuku") that land has been so often repeated that the legend is likely to become established fact.

Dr Healy goes on to argue that since the Ngati Whatua people of Orakei were, in her words, "the original, most substantial and ongoing benefactors to the city" they should have an entrenched right in the governance of the Super City. This is highly questionable.

Far from being the benefactors in the founding of Auckland, Ngati Whatua took the initiative that they did because they anticipated that they would be the beneficiaries of Hobson's choice of Tamaki as the site of his capital.

Never a numerous tribe, Ngati Whatua had become, by 1840, after the constant migration and social dislocation of the musket wars, a battered remnant under threat of attack from Ngati Paoa and Nga Puhi. The Tamaki isthmus remained substantially a population void, because between 1832 and 1839 it had been, in modern parlance, "a fight zone" to be entered and occupied only if you had a commanding military force.

Having the governor settled in their midst, Ngati Whatua believed, would provide that security from attack with the added bonus of the certainty of trade. Or so they calculated.

But if Ngati Whatua expectations of a mutually beneficial relationship with Pakeha over the next 20 years were not realised in Maoridom as a whole, it must be admitted Ngati Whatua did as well as any tribe.

What I have said reflects on the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance. The commissioners proposed that in a council of 23, three seats should be reserved for councillors elected by Maori alone. The rationale behind this is clear enough. Accepting as they have that the founding document of our country is the Treaty of Waitangi, and that this implies partnership, the commissioners submitted that the indigenous people should share in governance at local no less than national level.

If this principle is indeed valid, then reserving three out of 23 seats to Maori voters is a modest allocation about which few would complain.

But to whom should those three seats be given? Should Ngati Whatua of Orakei have an entrenched right to have a seat voted for by members of their tribe alone? Judge Carrie Wainwright of the Maori Land Court, while speaking on related matters, has very properly drawn attention to the need to take into account "all tangata whenua groups in Tamaki Makaurau" so that "appropriate redress ... is offered not only to Ngati Whatua o Orakei, but to all the tangata whenua groups in Tamaki Makaurau.

"Then the mana of all would be upheld, relationships would be restored, and reconciliation would be possible."

What makes this observation particularly pertinent to the present discussion is that the boundaries of the Auckland region extend far beyond the urban isthmus and take in a greater number of tribes than those enclosed in the old Tamaki Makaurau. And among those iwi are people like Ngai Tai, Ngati Paoa, Te Kawerau a Maki and Te Taou whose rights have often been overlooked when race relations in Auckland have been discussed.

Natural justice suggests that the third seat, like the other two, should be contested for by all Maori in the melting pot of iwi that the Auckland region has become today.

Certain myths, Maori and Pakeha, have too long stood in our way of a right understanding of Auckland's past. Myths are like dud money.

George Bernard Shaw once said false coins should always be nailed to the counter. In that way their falsity is exposed for all to see; in that way they are kept out of circulation.

And only then can we prevent unexamined myth from being converted into what is imagined to be delivered truth.

* Historian and author Russell Stone is an emeritus professor at the University of Auckland. He wrote From Tamaki-Makau-Rau to Auckland, published in 2001