Maori school playground becomes legal battlefield

Ken Brown says he has the support of his iwi, Ngati Hine, but several elders say Brown should admit defeat. Picture / Richard Robinson

One of Ken Brown's first memories is falling out of the big tree in the playground of Orauta School, at the age of 6. Brown broke his ankle, and he's still convinced it was not an accident.

"One of my relations definitely pushed me," the 35-year-old says with a smile, pointing out the historic tree. "I remember trying to grab the branch as I went down, but I couldn't get my hands on it. Crunch!"

The playground of Orauta School, near Moerewa in Northland, is a precious place to Brown, and now he has made it one of New Zealand's most contentious pieces of land. This proud dad, Maori separatist and self-trained wannabe lawyer is fighting the Ministry of Education's decision to close Orauta School, and together with a band of supporters, he claims to represent the true Maori Government of Aotearoa.

Their beliefs are a mix of royalism and Maori separatism - Brown says the Government in Wellington is merely the "New Zealand Land Company" and the British Crown is the only authority with whom they will negotiate.

"Prince Charles came over in March to sort out Maori affairs and he made [Chief Justice] Sian Elias the Government Administrator," Brown says. "He told Helen Clark to start treating us better."

It might sound like colourful eccentricity, but this group has already cost the other Government, the one in Wellington, a fortune in legal fees, bureaucratic time and patience. Brown and his supporters, who describe themselves as the Nga Tikanga Maori Law Society, say they will never leave Orauta School, which consists of two blue wooden buildings, a schoolhouse, an asphalt playground, two swings and a plastic slippery slide.

The District Court has already upheld the Ministry's decision to close the tiny school but on October 19, Brown will march into the High Court at Whangarei and declare the land and school belong to his whanau.

The ultimate aim is to get to the Supreme Court, where Brown is confident that Chief Justice Sian Elias will support his case - a belief he bases on the 2003 Court of Appeal ruling in which five judges, led by Elias, ruled in favour of iwi attempts to take claims over the seabed and foreshore to the Maori Land Court.

"We need to be standing in front of Sian Elias, but we've got to go through all this legal bullshit process to get there," Brown says.

Maori never relinquished their ownership of land to the colonisers, says Hohepa Murphy, a blind, wheelchair-bound activist who describes himself as Chief Registrar of the Maori Government.

"This is a fight about land, but we are defending Orauta School because it works as part of our community," says Murphy, sitting in the living room of his modest Whangarei home draped in a feathered cloak and clutching a leather-bound copy of the Laws of England.

"The main objective of school is to teach our children to retain the ability to think for themselves, and present-day schools depend far too much on technology and computers. A lot of our Maori children have lost the ability to think and to work practically in the community."

Sitting beneath a framed map of the London legal district and the celebrated 20th-century British judge Alfred Denning, Murphy is surrounded by deferential attendants who obediently read aloud tracts of legislation.

Murphy, who says he is "over 50", displays the classic bush lawyer's ability to recite lengthy legal tracts, including the 1993 Te Turi Whenua Maori Land Act, to support his claim that the Government has no right to occupy any land - least of all Orauta School.

The diabetes which cost Murphy both legs and left him blind requires regular dialysis, but Murphy says his beliefs in Maori sovereignty keep the pain away.

"The Crown of England may have signed a treaty with us, but the Crown has never, ever purchased one inch of soil with the willing consent of te iwi Maori," he says.

Orauta School has been teaching Maori kids since 1910, and has occupied its present site, about 15 minutes' drive east of Kawakawa, since 1940. Ever since, its pupil numbers have been declining. In 2001 a report by the Education Review Office criticised Orauta's financial management and said it was being run "like a large family home", with insufficient attention to formal curricula.

By 2002, the ERO was satisfied the school's performance was slowly improving, but last year Education Minister Trevor Mallard announced Orauta would be one of 18 schools closed in a nationwide review. The Ministry said Orauta's 28 enrolled students would be best to move to nearby schools including Moerewa and Motatau, within 15 minutes' drive of Orauta.

But Brown, with four young children, refused to give up. In November, after refusing Ministry efforts to negotiate, Brown and fellow former members of the school's Trust Board set up a Maori incorporation to manage the school's assets and sent trespass notices to Ministry officials, Mallard and other MPs.

Since then, the dispute has turned into a slow legal battle, with Brown refusing to budge from his playground fiefdom. Former principal Kene Martin, who got a redundancy payout when the school was closed last year, is still teaching what Brown describes as a "kaupapa Maori" curriculum, including te reo Maori language and traditional skills like gardening.

The Ministry of Education says it does not know how many children remain at Orauta, although it says seven students have been re-enrolled in other local schools. Ken Brown refuses to say how many children remain, but has previously claimed to have the support of 15 families. Other members of the community, many of whom who don't wish to be publicly critical of Brown, say the number is much lower.

With school holidays in swing, it was not surprising to find Orauta empty this week when the Herald visited, apart from Brown's own high-spirited children Kirihi, 6, Tuuriri, 4 and Tamatu, 3.

"Uncle's taking a photo of me on my bike," Tamatu boasted to his sisters as Herald photographer Richard Robinson photographed him pedalling a tiny tricycle.

On the school's twin flagpoles fly the Union Jack and the United Tribes flag, an ensign chosen by Northland Maori in 1835 to mark their declaration of independence.

"Those flags tell the whole story. We've taken a stand here. It's not because we're trying to grandstand, there's history involved," Brown says.

Brown says he has the support of the "silent majority" of his iwi, Ngati Hine, but several elders and runanga members say Brown should admit defeat and allow the school to close and the land to return to Ngati Hine.

The whole business is bringing shame on the Orauta community, says elder Tamati Paraone, 89, one of the school's earliest - and naughtiest - students.

At the age of 11, Paraone was standing in the back row of a school choir practice with a safety-pin in his hand. Paraone waited until the girl in front hit a high note, then stuck a pin in her backside. He was promptly sent home by the teacher and never returned, instead staying at home to help his uncle run the family farm before joining the Maori Battalion in 1939.

Paraone, now the national president of the 28 Maori Battalion Association and a Ngati Hine kaumatua, says Brown must "go with the times and work with the Government to do the best thing for our children".

"It's a terrible shame that he is dragging Orauta through the courts and the newspapers," Paraone says, adding when he was at school, Orauta had 110 students and two teachers.

"It's too small now and Ken Brown is not doing the right thing. The time has come now to forget all that old stuff and work with the Ministry of Education."

Another Ngati Hine kaumatua, Louis Tana Te Ahuahu, was one of several locals objecting to Brown's action earlier this year. "It is sad for our tupuna [ancestors] and our grandchildren," Te Ahuahu told Herald reporter Tony Gee outside Kaikohe Court at one of the hearings of Brown's case. "If they hang in there and the boys in blue move in [to evict the occupiers] it will be my tupuna who are hurt," he said.

Pita Paraone, a member of the Ngati Hine runanga and MP for New Zealand First, says Brown should give up the fight.

"Ken Brown is a relative of mine but I have to question whether all this is for the benefit of the children," says the MP, son of Tamati Paraone.

"If these actions are not providing for their educational needs, they should give up and send them to other schools in the area."

The Ministry is prosecuting Ken Brown and his wife Teena Brown for operating an unregistered school, and has charged another four parents with failing to enrol their children in a registered school, says national operations manager Jim Matheson.

"The illegal unregistered 'schooling' operation on the former Orauta School site is not a school registered under the Education Act and the quality of the children's education cannot be guaranteed," Matheson says.

In July one parent, Jane Turner, was fined $200 for refusing to remove her two children from Orauta but all other defendants have refused to appear in court.

In the review, which the Ministry estimates will save nearly $29 million over four years, another 76 schools were merged and six new schools opened around the country.

The savings are creating new Maori language and literacy programmes at schools across the Far North, Matheson says.

National education spokesman Bill English says the government mismanaged the review and axed some well-performing schools, but he has little sympathy for the parents.

"I don't think they've got a chance of winning this case in the courts, because the legislation clearly gives the Minister power to close a school if he wants to," English says.

"The Orauta parents must accept that there comes a time when you have to focus on the children and move on."

Ngati Hine educator Pepi Walker supports Orauta staying open, even though she admits some locals are turned off by Brown's sovereignty theories.

The best way to improve Maori language schools is allowing children to be educated within their own communities, where parents can be actively involved, says Walker.

Talking to Ken Brown and his supporters, it's clear this fight is a mix of spirituality, sovereignty, history, and general disgruntlement about the way society works.

The symbolism is irresistible for these activists.

To them, Orauta's asphalt playground represents the land of the ancestors. They see the Ministry of Education as the colonial oppressor, and the court case as a chance to finally take a stand.

Brown seems to be enjoying himself. "We are going to carry on as though nothing is happening. We teach the children our kaupapa, our Maori ways. We're planting a garden to teach them how to grow food. Even though all this pressure's on, we still tend the gardens."

He points back to the trees near the swing set.

"Since all this stuff began, we've had so many birds visiting us. There are two ruru owls over there. They're our guardians, our kaitiaki. There's a tui been hanging around the gate since all this began. There's a couple of peacocks. We've even had doves."