Letter to the Editor, Tuesday September 22, 2015

Sowing division

Congratulations on your article titled "Tuhoronuku critics applaud Waitangi Tribunal's findings", (September 15). The light is beginning to be shone into dark places.

As this nation continues to move forward, redressing wrongs from its past, it is of huge importance that instances of individual selfishness and opportunist greed from members of both cultures, which brought us to this point, are not repeated to perpetuate similar injustice into the future, and to provide the fuel for continuing grievance into the future. This is a process to solve problems, not to add to them.

In the North, Crown treaty negotiators are trying on the old colonial trick of playing hapu against hapu as with the Kaitaia Airport land and Tuhoronuku "mandate". They are, in effect, employing extortion over settlement deadlines, and sowing division as a tactic intended to reduce the overall quantum of settlement.

To this end, if they have any willing takers, they support them to fill the role of "Uncle Toms", referred to where applicable as "kupapa" Maori.

This can be described as the "massage the ego and line the pocket" stratagem, intended to make the individuals in question (or the questionable individuals) more 'amenable' in settlement negotiations. Methods of payment or reward varies, and includes being placed in charge of funds, settlement negotiations.

As your article indicates, these intended beneficiaries have long been trying to manage their own hapu affairs and destinies, while the Crown has tried to foist a "corporate" negotiation and management model on them for its own ends. The Tribunal's finding was wrought at terrific cost of time and energy, but it has finally "cleared the custard" somewhat. We can now hope, as indicated in the article, that northern hapu will negotiate separately while also co-operating collectively to counter some of the slippery tricks, such as by refusing to accept disputed land as part of any Treaty settlements until the dispute is resolved internally.

Also at a hapu level, we can only hope that opportunist individuals will not push themselves forward, purporting to represent collective interests while being primarily focused on personal gain.

While observation would indicate that there have been some willing takers, there appear to be far more kuia and kaumatua who keep the faith and bear the heavy burden of selflessly serving their hapu and iwi interests long into the future. Of course they may require some form of funding to do so, and that is not the issue. The issue is how to discern the collective nest-builders from the individual nest-featherers.

Useful guides are such things as openness, inclusiveness and transparency of decision-making.

Beware of individuals purporting to represent hapu in order to obtain funds for collective good purposes, such as environmental protection, then failing to be transparent about what, where or to whom these funds are (or were) directed.

Further, as your article canvassed in the sub-section titled "Integrity further compromised", beware of anyone with a historic fraud conviction.

This should apply with more force to a recent fraud conviction, and especially to one involving embezzlement of money from the Runanga o Ngapuhi that was intended to feed and cloth needy children.

Never mind the slick korero, look to the integrity. That is a more reliable and lasting quality.

MIKE RASHBROOKE

Opua