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(Photos: Getty / Image: Archi Banal)
(Photos: Getty / Image: Archi Banal)

OPINIONĀteaSeptember 21, 2022

The real reason Māori are on both sides of the tangled pine forest debate

(Photos: Getty / Image: Archi Banal)
(Photos: Getty / Image: Archi Banal)

The complex pine forest debate is a chance for the media to pit Māori against each other and ignore the far deeper issue of climate change and its direct connection to colonisation. 

If you’ve been following the news recently you might have heard the government announce it was planning to exclude pine trees from earning credits under the permanent forest category of the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). 

Loosely translated, it meant landowners who plant pine forests with the intention of leaving them in the ground forever couldn’t profit from doing so. But a number of Māori were upset and warned that this move could potentially breach the Treaty

In response, the government – tentatively at least – appeared to backtrack. Then it was suggested by opposing voices that keeping pine in the ETS could also constitute a Treaty breach. (A very good one-stop analysis of both sides of the debate can be found here).

I’m not sure about you, but I was sitting there scratching my head. Surely Māori would be united in fighting for native regeneration?

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The first thing to understand when it comes to reporting of “Māori issues” in the media is that conflict and confusion is the daily bread (fyi, Pākehā have issues too). Journalism is an industry that has inherited (and still operates within) a culture that has a long tradition of racism and hostility towards Māori. Racism has always sold newspapers, led headlines, and provided fodder for cartoonists, and it still does.  

People might bristle at the suggestion that coverage of climate change is racist, but analysis of things like the ETS controversy suggests otherwise. 

Reports of climate change rarely look past the most obvious environmental indicators (global warming and extreme weather events) in order to accurately represent the causes of climate change. Without deep and critical analysis of colonisation and its impact on climate change, it’s all too easy to misrepresent where the conflict around solutions really lies. Whether this is deliberate, ignorant or just slack, the result is, Māori are portrayed negatively. And that’s pretty racist. 

That box of useless cords

When it comes to climate change, Māori are caught between a rock, a hard place and a cliff face falling into a rising tide.

As a population, Māori contributed little to global warming. The land that was turned from native forest into pasture was stolen. Here’s an interactive to see just how aggressive and quick that transition was. (Fun fact, “colony” comes from the Latin colonia meaning farm or settlement).

Now that scientists and politicians and pretty much everyone agrees that the decimation of native forests and draining of wetlands to make way for intensive agriculture was a foolish idea, the plan (or one part of it) is to put the forests back. It’s still farming, but instead of livestock or forestry, what is being traded is carbon – in other words, Tāne Māhuta’s potential to sequester carbon.

Māori, on every side of the ETS, are trying to make decisions for the long-term collective benefit of whenua and mokopuna, with only tiny portions of often vulnerable and marginal land remaining to them. There is disagreement about the best way to do this (more on that in a bit). But the conflict is caused not by a difference of opinion, but by the mechanisms the government is using to reduce carbon emissions.

Picture a box of old cords and wires for defunct 90s technology that you’ve either lost or no longer works. You don’t even know what half the cords are for. You pull one and it drags all of them. You might think you’re making progress untangling one knot, but you’re really just tightening an invisible chokehold somewhere else in the system.

The cords and wires for the machinery of Government, picture not to scale. (Photo: Nadine Hura)

This box is government policy. Climate change affects every single cord in the box, from health, to education, to housing – everything. The ETS is just one cord in a very chaotic tangle. 

The critical point is that Māori did not want this box. Māori wanted nothing to do with these cords for machines and government departments that we didn’t ask for. This box is the same box that Māori said “yeah, nah, we’re all good bro,” when presented with the Treaty.

But the Treaty was very badly translated, Māori got swindled for their land and the government set up its equipment and machinery, much of which is now defunct, and here we are. At the mercy of chaos.

And it’s complicated.

On the one hand, carbon farming is extremely lucrative because the cost of polluting is going up. The more expensive it is to offset emissions, the more likely companies are to reduce them, and this is good because it means New Zealand might have a chance at meeting its net zero targets by 2050.

For investors, pine is the best way to get into carbon farming, largely because it grows quickly (that earlier link has some graphs). As for natives, no one’s really sure how much carbon they’re capable of sequestering, because they got felled into oblivion before anyone could properly study them. Unlike pine, which has heaps of research (the ETS has multiple formulas – kind of like price lists – to assess the level of carbon sequestration by exotic trees, versus only one for natives.)

Some, however, think these calculations could be inaccurate. Or at least misleading. There are a few projects underway to investigate, like this one in Tāmaki (featuring two semi-retired Pākehā gangstas championing indigenous forests under what could become a catchy slogan Give The Natives a Chance) – but it’s slow, and the government is running out of time. 

More to the point, trees do so much more than just suck up carbon. Forests support and sustain the well-being of countless other living species, not just humans. 

But under the ETS, the government has narrowly distorted the value of Tāne Māhuta to something that can be weighed, traded and profited from: carbon. 

For those in favour of keeping pine in the ETS, it’s largely with the hope of a long-term vision of native regeneration. The early cash returns from pine can be redistributed in the short term to support better health, housing, employment and social outcomes, and for most, this is not a question of wealth generation. It’s a question of survival against the odds in an environment exacerbated by the much less visible, historical impacts of climate change (i.e. colonisation). 

With the income from carbon farming generated almost immediately, the much more complex project of native regeneration can get underway sooner, if not simultaneously.

But if leaving pine in the ground forever sounds disastrous, it’s probably because there’s a good chance it will be. Predictions are that transitioning to native from pine will be tricky, expensive and risky. Even on paper, it seems wild to think that exotic forests are the solution to indigenous survival.

A pine plantation in the Wairau valley, Marlborough (Photo: Getty Images)

When you boil it down, practically speaking, carbon farming and the ETS looks a lot like gambling. And there is very little support for Māori to study the odds and assess the risks. The government isn’t neutral, or “caught in the middle,” either. The government flip-flopping on pine is about demand and supply. Too many pine forests flooding the market will push the price of carbon down, and then it’ll be ineffective as a tool to reduce emissions. In other words, the government’s policy is not actually about cutting harmful climate gases, it’s about Planting Trees and Carrying On.

So what’s the key message?

In short, Māori are faced with absolutely crapshit “climate” decisions every day of the week, on every front.

As a layperson, what’s important to understand is that the more pressure the government comes under as climate change intensifies – the more it pulls those cords – the tighter the knot becomes on Māori communities, many of whom will remain invisible to the media covering the issues.

Just look at that box of tangled cords: Māori have borne the brunt of responsibility for past excesses environmentally, socially and economically. These excesses have disproportionately benefited Pākehā on every indicator you care to look at.

While the government fusses around with the cords, making sure powerful lobby groups are happy, Māori communities are sitting in the environment court trying to prevent ongoing exploitation and extraction, just in an effort to protect what little remains.

As Māori, we have no choice but to get our hands in that box too, but we’re disadvantaged by a lack of power, access to resources and autonomy. This is not an equal situation, it isn’t just, and it’s a far cry from the partnership that was promised in 1840.

If the ETS reveals anything, it’s that the government still hasn’t relinquished its unwavering faith in the market as a mechanism to deliver positive outcomes for Papatūānuku, even though it never has before, without any great sacrifice or radical shift away from the core values that caused the environmental destruction we urgently need to reverse. 

Whereas whānau and hapū, on the other hand, want the same thing our ancestors who signed the Treaty wanted: to protect, serve, sustain, and be sustained by, our own land – now, and for future generations. 

It is a mission at the best of times, let alone in a system that is suddenly panicking because it has only just realised that the climate is changing and its values are completely unsustainable. 

Let’s get rid of the box

Climate Change continues to be a tool of colonisation because it constantly shifts the conversation back to the box. The mess of cords and what to do about it. The dominance of these conversations in the media, and oversimplification of them, deflect responsibility and attention away from the Crown. 

The day that the government admits defeat and chucks out its chaotic, immoral, and illogical box of wires and starts over – i.e. constitutional transformation – is probably a long way off, but we have to hold fast to the future vision that Moana Jackson never let us lose faith in. 

If Moana believes we can chuck out the box and start over, I know we can and will. 

We just can’t put it in landfill. 


Follow our te ao Māori podcast Nē? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider. 

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This month, artworks celebrating te reo Māori have been sprinkled around Wellington as part of Te Hui Ahurei o Te Whanganui-a-Tara. (Photo: Matt Grace/ Additional design: Archi Banal)
This month, artworks celebrating te reo Māori have been sprinkled around Wellington as part of Te Hui Ahurei o Te Whanganui-a-Tara. (Photo: Matt Grace/ Additional design: Archi Banal)

ĀteaSeptember 19, 2022

What does a te reo Māori city look like?

This month, artworks celebrating te reo Māori have been sprinkled around Wellington as part of Te Hui Ahurei o Te Whanganui-a-Tara. (Photo: Matt Grace/ Additional design: Archi Banal)
This month, artworks celebrating te reo Māori have been sprinkled around Wellington as part of Te Hui Ahurei o Te Whanganui-a-Tara. (Photo: Matt Grace/ Additional design: Archi Banal)

Four years ago, Wellington City Council voted unanimously to make Wellington a te reo Māori city by 2040. How will it meet that promise?

It’s a story that will resonate with Māori around the country. When Tūhoe activist Tame Iti was at school in Ruātoki, he was forced to write the phrase “I will not speak Māori” hundreds of times on the blackboard for speaking his own language. 

He chose that line as the central theme for his collection of art works dotted around Wellington this month in celebration of Te Wiki o te reo Māori. Iti even painted the line in heavy, black font onto a scrim-lined fence on the city’s waterfront. 

The installation marked 50 years since the Māori language petition, delivered by Iti and Māori activist group Ngā Tamatoa from Tāmaki Makaurau, Victoria University’s Te Reo Māori Society and the New Zealand Māori Students Association to Parliament in 1972.

Our capital city was central to the historical suppression of the Māori language, and now, it’s a city that’s made a commitment to being a te reo Māori city by 2040 – a year that will mark 200 years since Te Tiriti o Waitangi/ The Treaty of Waitangi was signed and since the first meeting of Wellington’s Town Committee .

The anniversary of the delivery of the petition offers a moment to reflect on the changing face of te reo Māori revitalisation. That moment led to the Māori Language Claim in which the Waitangi Tribunal decided that te reo Māori was a taonga and that the Crown was required to take active steps to ensure Māori have “the full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their language and culture”. Bringing back our indigenous language is an everyday activity. To progress from Iti facing punishment in school for speaking te reo Māori to having that theme officially adorned throughout the city has required a huge collaborative effort.

Tame Iti with steel Ira Tumatuma sculptures as part of the Wellington exhibition. (Image: Supplied)

What this means in a practical and everyday sense might not be immediately clear. The journey Te Whanganui-a-Tara is on to become a te reo Māori city offers a glimpse at this. 

“I tēnei rā i whakaae ana e ngā kaikaunihera kia tū a Pōneke hei tāone reo Māori,” then Wellington mayor Justin Lester announced to media on June 14, 2018. In a meeting that morning, the councillors of Wellington had unanimously agreed that Wellington should become a te reo Māori city. But what does that look like?

Driven by Justin Lester and then-deputy mayor Jill Day, alongside local iwi, the official strategy is called Te Tauihu. Tauihu are the ornately carved figureheads affixed tightly to waka to join and support the body of the waka. 

Essentially, Te Tauihu is an agreement between Wellington City Council and the Māori Language Commission, with the purpose of holding the status of te reo Māori as a taonga of iwi Māori and to create a framework to help guide the actions of the council – to celebrate te reo Māori and support the revitalisation of the language.

It’s a “policy that puts a stake in the ground to really tell the world that we are serious about te reo maori in the city, and that we have ambitions to be a te reo Māori city,” says Karepa Wall, chief Māori officer at Wellington City Council. 

Aspirations for the language in the city are threefold: for the language to be seen, to be heard and to be felt.

Installations on Wellington’s waterfront as part of Te Hui Ahurei Reo Māori Festival. (Image: Matt Grace)

As you’re arriving in the city or wandering about, the hope is that you will be able to see the language. That could be through bilingual signage at council-owned venues like pools, recreation centres and libraries. Or, that may be in the naming of buildings. “Anything we’re going to name we’ll consider a Māori name, or at least a bilingual name,” Wall says. You see it already in newer libraries like Waitohi, a library and community hub opened in Johnsonville in 2020. Or, in Northern Wellington’s Newlands Park, which adopted the name Pukehuia Park following a vote by councillors in 2021.

Next month, the ASB sports centre in Kilbirnie will adopt a Māori name that will be gifted by iwi. “We want people to be able to hear it as well,” says Wall. There are opportunities for the council to encourage that through incorporating te reo Māori in events like Christmas parades, summer festivals or holiday programmes. “Te reo Māori is not just for the marae, te reo Māori is not just a formal language that you use in ceremonies,” he says. “Te reo Māori should be heard in our parks, should be heard in the playgrounds.”

The third aspect is about feeling the language in the city, through a contribution toward actual revitalisation of the language. “That’s about embracing, supporting and empowering other people to pick up the language,” says Wall. “As if it’s a part of our everyday furniture”. Rather than council taking it upon themselves to teach everyone in the city te reo Māori, they want to create spaces where people are able to do that. This week, they’re releasing a free app to make learning te reo Māori in local iwi dialects more accessible to Wellingtonians.

Karepa Wall (Image: Supplied)

Tame Iti’s exhibition, along with the variety of te reo Māori informed artworks currently spread around the city as part of the Te Ahurei te reo Māori festival, is in many ways an all-encompassing expression of this bilingual vision for the city. “The thing with te reo Māori,” says Wall, is “it’s not just a written language, it was predominantly oral, it was predominantly visual”.

“What the core of this exhibition is about is to get people engaged,” says Iti. The history of te reo Māori from suppression to resistance “is a really important part of our history, that we need to talk about, it should not be put aside,” he says. “It’s our history that affects a hell of a lot of people over a long period of time, and people are still mamae about that.” 

For festival organiser Mere Boynton, art holds a special place in meeting these aspirations in Wellington. While Iti’s work was funded outside the Te Ahurei te reo Māori, it’s been embraced by and given a platform under the festival.

“Tame Iti’s work is important, because what he’s saying is, we can celebrate and commemorate the 50th anniversary, but there’s still a lot of work to be done,” says Boynton. Seeing these themes around te reo Māori expressed in public spaces through art, is transformative in its accessibility for everyday New Zealanders. “There’s still a lot of mamae, and trauma experienced by Māori. And what we need is for New Zealanders to advocate for Māori and to advocate for te reo Māori.” 

There’s also value for young people who have attended kōhanga reo or kura kaupapa to to see and hear art in their own language. When “children and tamariki see themselves or hear themselves, within their environment around them, they feel they feel part of the community, they feel that they are being seen,” she says.

Te Hui Ahurei Reo Māori Festival director Mere Boynton. (Photo: Mark Tantrum Photography)

Tame Iti, Wall says, “wants to ensure that people see the language in the middle of a city, that people walk down the waterfront, and they get smacked over the head with te reo Māori.” 

There are ongoing challenges around resourcing and to ensure Wellingtonians are onboard with the strategy. As well, there’s a constant need to reassess and review whether those aspirations remain aligned with where mana whenua are at, and where the country is at with goals surrounding language revitalisation.

The hope is that by 2040, the city won’t need a Māori language strategy. Instead, enough momentum will be built for the language to flourish naturally. That rather than revitalisation, the ambitions will be centred around raising people up. By then, the hope is that reo Māori will be commonly heard in the majority of people’s homes in Wellington, a taken-for granted sight, and heard all over the city. “If we got to that point,” says Wall, “we’ve succeeded”.


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