Kilda.
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Altierowa's complicated history of land sales is the focus of a new series from the New Zealand Herald. Fenowa Our Land a History is an interactive map showing how Mauldi Land passed into Pakihart ownership and the stories surrounding it. It confronts questions some of us prefer not to ask because they raise uncomfortable issues about Altieroa's colonial legacy and how those
impacts are still being felt today. Later we'll discuss the decision to make this series with Chief Content Officer for the Herald and ends at me Murray Kirkness. But first on the front Page we get to the story of Yati Batua Urake with their trust's deputy, chech Nari Mubled. Let's start in the early eighteen hundreds. Can you give us an idea of how much land was owned or controlled by Nyati fatua Uraki prior to the Treaty of White Hungi being signed?
Sure?
So?
Our people, more correctly, are made up of three subtribes, the Tatou people, the Najor people and the Turning Nutu people, and between those three subtribes and the various chiefs and leaders, we had a network of major kainga or village complexes on both the northern shores of the Monoco Harbor and the Waa Mata and the White Mata. When we speak of that, we're talking between MoMA Uika which is north Head on the north shore in Takapartafo, boy Kelli, Tultan's
on Tamiki Drive and all parts northwest of that. So we hit our network of major living complexes where all of those three subtribes would be based during the winter months, so about now. One of those was at Onni Hunger and mangade A Mangoda Bridge there he could walk across at low tide in those days not so much mud, and on the Waitamata all around Hodson Bay, which we call Waitatamah in Okahu Bay. So that's where all the
people were living during the colder winter months. But in the summer months from spring onwards really right through to kind of April early May, all of the various leaders of each of the families and clans would be heading out all along those coastlines. Of the northern monuco from Mangade over to Afi to cross to Kadanga Hape which is Cornwallace, out to Fatipu and Huya on the west coast and then all up the way to Mata Harbor.
In those months have just spent fishing and processing fish, mainly smoking them and also collecting seafood cockles to a tour pippy smoking them, preserving them and also going into the naheeded the bush. There's lots of bush then all through our region not so much now getting all of the birds and preserving them in their fats. And they would have done that out on these satellite fishing villages dotted across those coastlines, so we have names left to us.
Way Paper which is in the eastern end of the CBD bottom of Stanley Street is a fishing village au or too at bottom of Queen Street, Fort Street now and over at Tetoor which is at Victoria Park and today who at the back of the zoo. So that all of these villagers teeming with people working industriously out harvesting all of those natural resources through the warmer month and then when winter comes around moving back to those base camps at way to the more Hobson Bay and
over on the Monuco at Orni Hunger and Mangadere. So that really was the extent of the land in our tribal area of those people. Today we called the Nati Pa to Ki, but that's really a reflection of you know, we lost control of all of that area that I
just described. With the fishing circuits and the hunting circuits for birds, we were whittled away down to one quarter of an acre, which was all we had left at Kae, which yeah, it was our name today, but I don't really like that name because it really highlights that we were actually the masters of the holessness and not just the ford of an acre land that we had left
at dark. But acreage was maybe around eighty thousand acres, which isn't that big, probably a small farm or station in South Island.
W oh Yea.
Hits You Hiraki hits You Hiraki.
Nah Naya my Tea it Chiku Dekotu Kuya Deo Cairo Kau katsu Yu.
He Well, it was around eighteen forty when the Ewe made their first sale. Three thousand hectares were sold for fifty pounds in coins and goods amounting to around two hundred and fifteen pounds, which is twenty six thousand dollars in today's money. That's the land we were describing, hey, between Hobson Bay, Cox Bay and Mount Eden. What was the ewei's understandings of this sale.
Yeah, we didn't have a word for sale. The only way you lost your manna, your authority and land forever endeavor was by traditional warfare. And traditional warfare you didn't really want to get into too much unless you had expansion plans, of course, and we didn't experience that here in Auckland with the settlers. There was no war here, and therefore our view of that transaction was just that
a transaction. Our experience and our custom for well I guess five millennia through the Pacific and ultimately an altered or in the South Pacific was to exchange land rights and use rights with partners and parties external to you who you wanted to either maintain a relationship with or start a relationship with. And we had done that with our eastern border neighbors and anti power in the seventeen hundreds.
We wanted to start a relationship with them, so we had a good ally on our eastern border, one to avoid conflict, but also to have an ally in times of need. So land around Pamuir was given to them with the expectation that the underlying manna and title and authority stayed with the givers of the land, and that was us. So that was our custom, and there was certainly what was in our chief's minds. At eighteen forty.
We had very little experience with Europeans. They were all based in the Bay of Islands in the South Island, hunting whales and seals and the light. We did have one visit from Samuel Marsden, Reverend Samuel Marsden in eighteen twenty. He had a look around. We tried our best to
keep him here, but he ultimately left. So, yeah, we didn't have paker around here, a lot of them, so we didn't know what a cash economy was, and we certainly didn't know what you know, if he gave someone a use rights to something, that bit of paper with some ink on it written in Pakiha meant that you lost your authority and monere in it forever. So the first three thousand acres, the transaction We certainly don't call
it a sale. We call it a takura or a taku fenoma, which is the traditional giving of land for someone to use whilst you were in a mutually beneficial relationship. And that was in our minds. We wanted pakiha here, and we wanted to trade, and we wanted to buy their good stuff, and in the early days we turned down their bad stuff like whiskey and beer. They would provide a market for us, and they would get to use the land unmolested and free to use as long
as they wanted it. And that was certainly the early understanding, and obviously as time went on, our understanding of European thoughts of land tenure and ownership were quite different. By the close of the eighteen fifty we were definitely selling land by then with a greater understanding that we needed to get a good price because in the parker her eyes, it was their land forever and ever to do with whatever they so choose and wishful.
I think some people reading this series or listening to this podcast will ask if the EWE knew or got the understanding of what those sales really meant. That the settlers were going to go on to sell that land to someone else. Why do you think that EWE kept engaging in these kind of deals. Was it a real effort to try and understand and live as one?
I guess well, we were implementing our own survival strategy. Someone armed the northern tribes to the teeth with a huge arsenal of muskets and guns, gained in Sydney, but funded somehow through England. So we were ravaged by wars in the eighteen twenties and early eighteen thirties. War swept up from the south as well, every now and then again with the introduction of muskets, which had been around for a few generations but at that period really took
on a life of its own. So the whole island was in a state of calamity really just before the treaty was signed, and I guess when the Empire decided to officially annex the country. Noting also before the treaty there were a lot of entrepreneurs coming out of Europe down here looking to make their fortunes in the entipities. And so yeah, really it was a very unsettled period.
We're looking for new allies, old allies and Martydom had become less so given the musket wars that had just happened, And so we were definitely an ew that sought a new future and one with a new great power to British Empire, the greatest empire the earth is known, really, and how best could we engage with it to ensure our survival And part of that was to treat with them as much as we could as equals and to
open up our lands for European settlement. Who knows what our ancestors were thinking, but perhaps they saw the riding on the wall that if we didn't engage the way we did, perhaps we'd be wiped off the face of the planet, as I'm sure they were hearing by then stories of other indigenous peoples across the world suffering that kind of fate. So yeah, glass half full. We wanted to make people feel welcome, of course, but we wanted
to trade. We can see that our chiefs of that era being very proactive in terms of trading, trying to drive an income that they could then plow back into the future of their people. Noting that these ships kept arriving and people kept pouring off them and moving into the lands that we had given, gifted, transacted and and later sold some of the blocks.
If you had to put a figure on it, how much do you think the land sold in the nineteenth century is worth today?
Well, I actually did a calculation recently. The first transaction in September eighteen forty. The boundaries we actually agreed on went from Cox's Bay to Saint George's Bay. Now that's all po to Kicker to Matajade Judde St George's Bay along where the Staratzi's building is, and both of those points into mona Pho Mount Eden the summit. That's three
thousand acres. However, when the deed was finally drafted up nearly a year later, the officials of the crown had said that Matahudi Hudder was further east over at the bottom of air Street and New Market, and with the stroke of a pen we lost five hundred acres through that clerical era, it would be the nice way to put it, so that five hundred acres three thousand and
four thousand dollars a square meter. Today my rudimentary calculator on my phone, it only came up with letters, so it must be a big number.
So that was what twenty six thousand dollars today. I mean, it's just astronomical how much it would cost today.
Yeah, and so you know it's a big number. We all know, everyone knows it, but we won't dwell on it, otherwise we might cry too much. Well, Bestian Point was sleeping this morning. The police were on the move.
And by this time next week they'll be off Bastian Point.
I promise you that that.
Rob Muldoon, who was Prime Minister at the time, had plans to develop the Fenua for the purpose of housing the wealthy, had nothing to do with housing mighty people.
Nazi fast through it.
The aim was to maintain the last peas of land in Naeti fat for the people of Auraki. It led to the tribunal, It led to the treaty settlement claims process.
Nati Phatua Uraki has turned their fortunes around in recent decades. Right, I believe the EWE had around one point six billion dollars in assets as of twenty twenty two. How do you feel about this reversal of four watunes in the context of what has actually happened to your eat Wee in the past.
Feels like the strategy employed seven generations ago, which was to survive as best we could, knowing the onslaught about to come, to make the best of it that we could. That there will be a lot of suffering and pain, and there certainly has been that. And by that I mean we lost every single acre of our land. We became squatters on our own land. Technically and legally, we
lost all of our native forests in central Isthmus. We lost almost all of our shellfish grounds through reclamation and the European propensity to discharge their raw surage into the sea. We became paupers in our own land where once we
were the princes and the kings and queens. And so only now it feels like the strategy to survive and then be around to turn that story around is just beginning with far well short of what we need to reinvest back into our people in terms of housing, education, cultural recovery of our language, stories, genealogies, and the luck.
So feel very humble to be in a position I am and lucky to not have suffered the worst of it, but with a lot of weight on our shoulders, myself and my cousins to make sure we don't stuff it up and that we keep building and that we as rapidly as possible turn the fortunes around of each individual member who can claim to being Antifa to a key timaking Artifa to of Auckland.
There's a lot to the story of your eway and people can read that full story from you at ens at Herald dot co dot nz. But what would you want people to take away from this, particularly those who politically may not care or be interested in these kinds of issues.
Strong Antifa to it is needed for our city and for our country. Every person that we can reignite the fire, relight the fire in them that is flickering away in terms of who they are deep down as anti fat
to a Ketarmaki citizen. If we can get that flicker of a flame going around their culture and identity, their contribution to something bigger than themselves, whether that be with our Hapu, our subtribes, or in their own communities, whether at a rugby club, netball club, or bridge club or whatever it is, can only be a great thing for our country and mean spirited people who think that we are somehow out there being greedy Mary's seeking things we
don't deserve, well, they simply need to read a basic history of New Zealand to understand what our people have been through and how humble we are and actually asking for reparations of such a minor number in terms of what has been across our economy on all sorts of crazy hairbrain schemes by our governments and local governments. I mean, we've managed to turn an eighteen million dollar cash settlement
for everything we lost. So it's eighteen million cash into as you say, to a one point seven near one point seven billion dollar estate today. And what do we do with our money? We pour it all back into our people. Where the health system fails, where the education system fails, where the housing market fails. We are pouring our money back into trying to plug those gaps. We're not pouring it into our batches and second, third or fourth homes in Fiji or south of France. Our money
is going back into our people. And I don't know anyone with some common sense who would think that that's a terrible thing.
Thanks for joining us Natimo. The release of Benawa this week has been a long time coming for The Herald to discuss the editorial thinking behind the series and the sensitive nature of the topic. We're joined now by Chief Content Officer for The Herald and enz ADM Murray Kirkness. Murray, what was the thinking behind doing this series originally at all?
I think it's evolved over time, Chelsea. You know, it's been in the making for quite a long time and we've had an awful lot of help in doing so. I guess though from our perspective, we're trying to provide answers to some questions that some New Zealanders would probably prefer we not even ask. You know, they do raise some uncomfortable issues about our legacy, the country's legacy and
at the moment topics discussions. Opinions on treaty principles, for instance, are obviously front and center for a great many people, and it's an area that can be easily inflamed. It's a place where there are strongly held opinion. From our point of view, we're just trying to present the facts of New Zealand's history. We would argue that, you know, to face what's ahead, we have to know our past, and so that's the reason for this project.
The main body of the New Zealand Wars took place between eighteen forty three and eighteen seventy two. My generation didn't learn much about them at school. What we did learn was a sanitized version supporting New Zealand's reputation as a paradise of racial harmony.
Because they're not really trying to be provocative at all, but just laying out the facts, speaking to those involved in experts and the audience can come to any conclusions that they come to.
Yeah, that's correct. As it says in the piece published today, we hope the project will provide useful context for the current political and social debates that we see going in. We hope it can fill in some knowledge gaps for some New Zealanders. We'd also hope it will spark a few much needed conversations. Ideally they would be conversations though, rather than rhetoric and yelling. Quite frankly, I think we do suffer a little bit from the inflammatory nature of
the way topics like this are discussed. It's a very easy subject to throw around labels like racists or colonial or you know, and they often very charged terms. But the reality is I think that you know, there's a great many New Zealanders who don't necessarily know the country's own past. It's not necessarily taught in our schools, and we're hoping that Fenowa will help redress some of that balance.
Is there a concern about how the audience will respond to this series?
I did about concerns. I think it has got the potential. We all know that often a person's own worldview will influence the way they react to any piece of journalism or information. But we hope that most thinking people will see it for what it actually is, which is a fairly straightforward, but nevertheless in depth examination of our land, our past, what happened in our history. As I said, it's not taking a view on that, it's not taking any political side, or it is literally saying this is
what happened. It's a nice piece from Simon Wilson as part of this package, in which he quotes historian Michael King in his book The Penguin History of New Zealand, who wrote, most New Zealanders, whatever their cultural backgrounds, are good hearted, practical, common sensical, and tolerant. I'd like to think that's still the case, despite the fact that we know on occasion we can be.
Quick to judge.
Thanks for joining us, Murray and to read more about how these land sales impacted all eWeek around alti Adowa and the stories by ENZED Herald journalists including Julia Gable and Chris Knox. Head to enzet Herold dot co dot zed. Fenwa is a New Zealand Herald data led project supported by ENZED on air in association with Mauldi Land legal
expert Adrian Paul. That said, for this episode of the Front Page, you can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at enzet herold dot co dot zed. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Sells with sound engineer Patty Fox. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.