Aotearoa: Maintaining the mana of Tuuhoe
by - 19.07.2006 15:53
Tame Iti went to court once more at the end of June (Rotorua District Court) to hear the verdict of his firearms case. He was charged with two counts of unlawfully possessing a firearm after a Waitangi Tribunal hearing in January 2005.
Ko Te Manamotuhake Oo Tuuhoe - Maintaining the mana of Tuuhoe
Tame Iti was found guilty. He was fined $300 on each charge and has to pay court costs ($260). He will appeal this decision. The flag and the shotgun shells were being sold on trademe (
http://www.trademe.co.nz) to raise moeny to pay the fine. These were withdrawn by trademe. This of course is absurd considering they allowed the sale of the 'Minto Bar', which is a police baton used to assault people during the protests against Springbok Tour in 1981.
At that powhiri in Ruatoki (Bay of Plenty), Tame Iti ceremonially shot the New Zealand flag "to show the disgust of Tuhoe of the atrocities that happened to Tuhoe."
About the protest Tame Iti says: "We wanted them to feel the heat and smoke, and Tuhoe outrage and disgust at the way we have been treated for 200 years. (The Crown) destroyed people's homes and burned their crops and we wanted them to feel that yesterday. We wanted to demonstrate to them what it feels like being powerless. The confiscation and subsequent colonisation have had a devastating effect on Tuhoe over the past 100 years."
At the hearings last year, Tuuhoe Nation brought its claims forward. The Waitangi Tribunal reports its findings and makes its recommendations in writing to the crown. This report is expected in 2007.
*Tuuhoe Claims*
1. Get back the confiscated land
2. Own these particular lands
3. Be in control of Te Uruwera (currently a Natioanl Park)
4. Control the Hydro-Electric power stations and the lakes
5. A claim about the socio-economic impact on the people and the communities
6. Family claims
7. A claim about the rivers
Tuuhoe, who didn't sign Te Tiriti o Waitangi, was invaded by colonial forces and had land confiscated in the 1800s. One Tuuhoe woman said in 2005: "Our ancestors died fighting against them [colonial soldiers] for the land. We will not settle for anything less and maybe our hope will be realised and our lands will return to us. That is what we must look to."
*Tame Iti - Revolutionary from Ngai Tuuhoe* (text mostly taken from http://aotearoa.wellington.net.nz/he/tame.html)
Tame Iti is no stranger in the Maori protest movement. He became drawn into political struggle against the system at an early age. After growing up in Ruatoki, he moved to Christchurch aged 15 which was a crucial stage in Tame's life, providing him with the political ideology that would lead to more than two decades of direct anti-authority action. He joined in the protests against the Springbok tours, read about communism and went to China in the early 1970s, followed the American Black Panther movement, and helped set up the Maori Liberation Front, before moving north to Auckland where he met up with Syd and Hana Jackson and others who would eventially become key members of Nga Tamatoa.
Over the years Tame has been the brains behind some exceedingly novel protest action. In the 197Os he and some mates decided that Maori were such strangers in this land that thev needed to set up an embassy Borrowing a small tent from his birth father in Huntly, he made his way south. In Wellington he pitched his tent beneath Dick Seddon's statue in Parliament ground, lectured the lunchtime passersby until, feeling bit tuckered out, he stretched out his bedroll, zipped up the tent and had a snooze. A couple of hours later he was politely woken by an elderly policeman. Explaining that he was Tame Iti, the new Maori ambassador, he then wangled his way into the office of the then Maori Affairs Minister, Duncan McIntyre -some say to present his credentials. The episode ended in TV cameras, handcuffs and the "ambassador" being subjected to Her Majesty's hospitality for the night.
Then there was the time when Tame decided to stop an annual jet boat race up the Whakatane river that local kaurnatua had felt powerless to prevent. Getting nowhere by politely phoning the Pakeha race organiser, Tame plunged into the river; watched by nervous whanaunga from a convenient viewing platform. As the first boat approached he closed his eyes to karakia, opening them just in time to eyeball an irate jet boat driven In the split second in which their eves met, the driver swerved and ran into the willows lining the bank. It earnt Tame six months of PD cutting blackberry, though after two weeks he appealed his sentence - but that's another story...
Undeterred, the following year Tame was back in the river again, on horseback this time and with a few rnates for company There were more arrests - but no more jet boat races.
source: http://indymedia.org.nz/feature/display/47136/index.php
see also: Feature: http://indymedia.org.nz/newswire/display_any/28216
http://www.aotearoa.maori.nz/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2855&highlight=&bdd8b331df0203e581ca961b6b21cc08=dca0c5ff35bc10fa1db5cde115b61cb5
Tame Iti was found guilty. He was fined $300 on each charge and has to pay court costs ($260). He will appeal this decision. The flag and the shotgun shells were being sold on trademe (
http://www.trademe.co.nz) to raise moeny to pay the fine. These were withdrawn by trademe. This of course is absurd considering they allowed the sale of the 'Minto Bar', which is a police baton used to assault people during the protests against Springbok Tour in 1981.
At that powhiri in Ruatoki (Bay of Plenty), Tame Iti ceremonially shot the New Zealand flag "to show the disgust of Tuhoe of the atrocities that happened to Tuhoe."
About the protest Tame Iti says: "We wanted them to feel the heat and smoke, and Tuhoe outrage and disgust at the way we have been treated for 200 years. (The Crown) destroyed people's homes and burned their crops and we wanted them to feel that yesterday. We wanted to demonstrate to them what it feels like being powerless. The confiscation and subsequent colonisation have had a devastating effect on Tuhoe over the past 100 years."
At the hearings last year, Tuuhoe Nation brought its claims forward. The Waitangi Tribunal reports its findings and makes its recommendations in writing to the crown. This report is expected in 2007.
*Tuuhoe Claims*
1. Get back the confiscated land
2. Own these particular lands
3. Be in control of Te Uruwera (currently a Natioanl Park)
4. Control the Hydro-Electric power stations and the lakes
5. A claim about the socio-economic impact on the people and the communities
6. Family claims
7. A claim about the rivers
Tuuhoe, who didn't sign Te Tiriti o Waitangi, was invaded by colonial forces and had land confiscated in the 1800s. One Tuuhoe woman said in 2005: "Our ancestors died fighting against them [colonial soldiers] for the land. We will not settle for anything less and maybe our hope will be realised and our lands will return to us. That is what we must look to."
*Tame Iti - Revolutionary from Ngai Tuuhoe* (text mostly taken from
http://aotearoa.wellington.net.nz/he/tame.html)
Tame Iti is no stranger in the Maori protest movement. He became drawn into political struggle against the system at an early age. After growing up in Ruatoki, he moved to Christchurch aged 15 which was a crucial stage in Tame's life, providing him with the political ideology that would lead to more than two decades of direct anti-authority action. He joined in the protests against the Springbok tours, read about communism and went to China in the early 1970s, followed the American Black Panther movement, and helped set up the Maori Liberation Front, before moving north to Auckland where he met up with Syd and Hana Jackson and others who would eventially become key members of Nga Tamatoa.
Over the years Tame has been the brains behind some exceedingly novel protest action. In the 197Os he and some mates decided that Maori were such strangers in this land that thev needed to set up an embassy Borrowing a small tent from his birth father in Huntly, he made his way south. In Wellington he pitched his tent beneath Dick Seddon's statue in Parliament ground, lectured the lunchtime passersby until, feeling bit tuckered out, he stretched out his bedroll, zipped up the tent and had a snooze. A couple of hours later he was politely woken by an elderly policeman. Explaining that he was Tame Iti, the new Maori ambassador, he then wangled his way into the office of the then Maori Affairs Minister, Duncan McIntyre -some say to present his credentials. The episode ended in TV cameras, handcuffs and the "ambassador" being subjected to Her Majesty's hospitality for the night.
Then there was the time when Tame decided to stop an annual jet boat race up the Whakatane river that local kaurnatua had felt powerless to prevent. Getting nowhere by politely phoning the Pakeha race organiser, Tame plunged into the river; watched by nervous whanaunga from a convenient viewing platform. As the first boat approached he closed his eyes to karakia, opening them just in time to eyeball an irate jet boat driven In the split second in which their eves met, the driver swerved and ran into the willows lining the bank. It earnt Tame six months of PD cutting blackberry, though after two weeks he appealed his sentence - but that's another story...
Undeterred, the following year Tame was back in the river again, on horseback this time and with a few rnates for company There were more arrests - but no more jet boat races.
source:
http://indymedia.org.nz/feature/display/47136/index.php
see also: Feature:
http://indymedia.org.nz/newswire/display_any/28216
http://www.aotearoa.maori.nz/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2855&highlight=&bdd8b331df0203e581ca961b6b21cc08=dca0c5ff35bc10fa1db5cde115b61cb5