Occupiers at Ihumātao point out the heritage value of the land but New Zealand has no legislative framework to recognise it as such. File photo / Dean Purcell.
Occupiers at Ihumātao point out the heritage value of the land but New Zealand has no legislative framework to recognise it as such. File photo / Dean Purcell.
Opinion
COMMENT
Across the nation, many New Zealanders now appreciate the contested land at Ihumātao is special and deserves heritage protection.
New Zealand's heritage laws should have protected it and the stories it has to tell. So, from a heritage perspective, how did we get here?
SOUL's last chance to stopthe housing development at Ihumātao through heritage avenues was an appeal to the Environment Court in mid-2018. The appeal aimed to invalidate the Archaeological Authority that permitted the development to proceed but failed. This outcome was unsurprising.
The cumulative effects of all these changes meant there was no effective legislative framework to protect the contested land at Ihumātao.
The framework for deciding if heritage places, and particularly Māori heritage places, should be protected, has been steadily eroding over recent decades. Currently less than 20 per cent of the national heritage register includes "Māori heritage" (wāhi tapu, wāhi tupuna) sites.
The capacity of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga (HNZPT), the national body set up to protect our nation's heritage, is significantly constrained by the legislation that created it. The HNZPT Act 2014 sought to make development easier and strengthen private property rights at the expense of public values like Te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations, heritage and environmental protection.
One of the costs of these changes included limiting the ability of HNZPT to do more than "promote" the idea of protecting heritage. Since the introduction of the HNZPT Act, the agency has approved 97 per cent of applications for authorities to modify or destroy archaeology.
Court decisions have reinforced the Crown's position that Māori heritage on private property can only practicably be protected by agreement with the landowner. HNZPT is left to broker the best deal it can, rather than require protection.
Back in 1983, the Historic Places Trust, which preceded HNZPT, played a far more proactive and effective role in protecting heritage places.
In the case of the Ihumātao peninsular, part of this rare heritage landscape was protected, the Ōtuataua Stonefields Historic Reserve. But what makes the contested land so special is it is a contiguous part of this last remnant of stonefields in Auckland but also offers evidence of all the phases of Māori gardening practices. The contested land is part of this story sitting together with the reserve as one contiguous landscape.
Nicola Short. Photo / Supplied
The lack of meaningful protection for Māori heritage, our oldest and rarest, must be seen in light of the much stronger protections for colonial heritage, particularly buildings. The protection of some buildings is an absolute prohibition on demolition.
Heritage landscapes like Ihumātao have no such protection. With more than 80 per cent of our nation's heritage list consisting of built colonial heritage it is difficult to see how our current legislative framework is not at the very least weighted in favour of non-Māori heritage and at worst an example of systemic racism.
The New Zealand Human Rights Commission in its report "International Human Rights Perspectives on Ihumātao" published in August this year which identified the imbalance of heritage protections as a barrier to the rights of Māori to their culture.
It is not only legislative changes that have limited the protection of our nation's heritage, the courts have played their part too.
In a legal precedent set by the 2016 Greymouth Petroleum case, the High Court found HNZPT could only consider specific archaeological sites, not the heritage landscape as a whole.
In New Zealand, the real teeth of heritage protection sits with the local, regional and unitary councils. But Auckland Council does not have Ihumātao as an important heritage place because it is on private land.
In 2016, the Unitary Plan Independent Hearings Panel recommended withdrawal of all Māori heritage sites on private land from the heritage schedule. The intention was to add them at a later date, a recommendation that council accepted but, in the case of Ihumātao, this still hasn't happened.
There is a common belief that New Zealand is good at looking after our heritage. Historic heritage and wāhi tapu are "matters of national importance" according to the Resource Management Act (1991). The struggle to #protectihumatao illustrates how these important treasures fare when placed against private property rights.
It also shows the inequities that are built into the way we protect places that tell the stories of our past.
Changes to heritage protection may reflect broader political agendas, but what is happening at Ihumātao challenges how we do heritage in this country. The cumulative effects of all these changes meant there was no effective legislative framework to protect the contested land at Ihumātao.
The recent announcement that teaching New Zealand history in schools will be compulsory redoubles the value of protecting places that show us how we lived over the entire span of human habitation of this land.
Now is the time for Government and Auckland Council to work constructively together with the ahi kaa to protect what remains of this precious heritage landscape so that future generations can know and respect its rich histories – Māori and Pākehā.
• Nicola Short and Dave Veart are heritage professionals and SOUL supporters
