‘A Remarkable Confluence Of Events’ – 50 Years On From The Māori Land March

Nine
To Noon

The Māori Land March entered
Parliament grounds on a rainy day 50 years ago this month,
led by then 79 year old Dame Whina Cooper.

The march
left Te Hapua in the Far North a month earlier on 14
September 1975. Over the month, the march grew from 50 to
5000 people, with 60,000 signing a petition protesting the
loss of Māori land.

Historian Jock Phillips witnessed
the arrival of the march at Parliament on 13 October. He
told Nine to Noon the march’s arrival in Wellington
took place during a “remarkable confluence of events” – only
three days earlier the Bill establishing the Waitangi
Tribunal was signed into law.

The Tribunal would become
a major forum for expressing Māori concerns about the loss
of rights to land and sea.

Phillips said Dame
Whina was sparked into action by a proposal for the
compulsory acquisition of land around the Whangārei coast
which belonged to Ngātiwai. Iwi members campaigned against
the acquisition, including a lawyer named Winston
Peters.

“The idea of the march really came about
because of a long-standing sense of grievance within the
Māori community about their loss of land. I mean New
Zealand is 66 million acres in size and by the mid 60s
Māori land was down to about 4 million acres and then in
1967 a Act was passed, the Māori Affairs Amendment Act,
which allowed for compulsory acquisition of uneconomic areas
of Māori land and that was always seen as the last great
land grab and it led to a huge amount of
resentment.”

The iconography of the march was very
clear that it was about the protection of Māori land, he
said.

“They carried a pouwhenua, that had been carved
by Whina’s son-in-law, and the pouwhenua was a traditional
wooden marker of Māori land.”

This was the only thing
the march carried. There were no banners, no slogans, simply
the pouwhenua at the front, he said.

“The pouwhenua
was intended not to ever be put down, that it would be
carried the whole length of the North Island to represent
the fact that there was no land left in the possession of
Māori on the route.”

Phillips said the march covered
about 40 kilometres each day, stopping each night at a marae
where there would be discussions in the wharenui about the
loss of land and the importance of keeping it in Māori
hands.

For Māori at the time, the idea of a march as
an act of protest was a bit unusual, he said, as it had
traditionally taken place when people moved to a new
settlement.

“The fact that a march was used was partly
a reference to what had happened internationally,
particularly in the United States.”

This included the
civil rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, or
the Trail of Broken Treaties, he said.

Once the hīkoi
arrived at Parliament grounds, they were greeted by MPs,
with opposition leader Robert Muldoon the first to
officially speak to the marchers.

The petition –
signed by 60,000 people – was presented to Prime Minister
Bill Rowling.

“Then Whina expected everyone would
disperse but what actually happened was about 50 members of
Te Rōpū Matakite, the group that had organised the march
went and set up a permanent encampment on the steps of
Parliament and their view was that they wanted to continue
at Parliament until their demands had been met and they had
solid assurances that no more Māori land would be
taken.”

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