Matariki Film Show - Friday 13/Saturday 14 June

The NZ Film Archive and the Wellington Indymedia collective present:

Tuhoe - a history of resistance
and
The Tide is Turning

Friday 13 and Saturday 14 June
7 pm
The NZ Film Archive, corner of Ghuznee and Taranaki Streets, Wellington
Entry $8/$6 waged/unwaged

Further details:

The Tide is Turning (2005)
Director & producer Matthew Donaldson 10 min.

In 2004, Prime Minister Helen Clark and the New Zealand Labour government
passed legislation declaring Crown ownership of the New Zealand foreshore
and seabed. The indigenous people of Aotearoa / New Zealand - The Maori
people - having suffered the effects of land confiscation for over 150
years, recognised this legislation for what it was - land confiscation. A
nationwide call to action saw 30,000 people from all over the country
converging in the parliament grounds to challenge the prime minister to
reconsider passing the legislation.

Tuhoe: A history of resistance (2005) 60 min. Director & producer
Robert Pouwhare

The Tuhoe people of the Urewera region have suffered since a Crown invasion
and persecution from the 1860s. It is 16 January 2005, Sunday in the
Ruatoki valley. A Waitangi Tribunal hearing has been called. Tuhoe are
waiting to meet the visitors; many are on horseback. Determined to remind
the Crown of these many wrongdoings, Tuhoe have come out in force.

A young Tuhoe tribesman, tino rangatiratanga flag in hand, riding a horse
bareback, gallops down the valley to where the Crown is waiting. It is
reminiscent of times of when prophet-warrior Te Kooti rode through these
tribal lands during his armed-guerilla campaign to save Maori lands from an
increasingly greedy British settler population. The flag flutters, a symbol
of resistance against colonisation and the Crown-sponsored theft of
indigenous lands.

Dozens of Tuhoe on horses follow behind him. The Crown is carried by
horse-drawn cart across the 'aukati line' or confiscation line toward
Tauarau Marae at Ruatoki, where they are greeted by 600 chanting Tuhoe.
Those on horseback have begun a tirade of insults and curses.

Another tribesman appears from the sidelines. He has a burning banner in
his hand. He yells "Haere mai! Kei te hiakai a Tuhoe!" -which roughly
translates as- "Come here! Tuhoe is hungry"

Five cars lying on their sides about 100m apart on alternate sides of the
road are set alight as the horse-drawn procession approaches the line.
Bonfires are lit between the cars. These ahi-cars symbolise a re-enactment
of when the Crown practised a scorched earth policy in the area during the
1860s, a policy which saw an invasion of Tuhoe where many were killed,
exiled, arrested, with villages razed to the ground.

There is graffiti on the cars with slogans like - 'Return stolen lands' and
'Ropata Wahawaha scumbag' a reference to Ropata Wahawaha, a Maori who
fought on the side of the crown against Maori during the 1860s Land Wars.

It is obvious to all that the tribe, Tuhoe, is angry and rightly so.

Kaiwero - challengers - are gathered at the confiscation line smeared with
mud. Many of these naked male warriors and semi-naked warrior women are
adorned with ta-moko. The hated confiscation line was established after the
1865 killings of the Reverend Carl Volkner at Opotiki and government agent
James Fulloon at Whakatane, but was said at the time to be in response to
rebellion. This resulted in the 200,000 hectare Urewera National park and
other parts of the eastern Bay of Plenty being illegally confiscated by the
Crown.

Gunshots reverberate around the gathering, adding to the atmosphere of this
highly charged crowd. Manawa-wera and other types of haka also boom down
the Ruatoki valley from the confiscation line. The authorities frown on the
use of guns at traditional gatherings but this is Tuhoe country. The gun is
not an uncommon addition at traditional gatherings in these parts.

Well known Tuhoe figure Tame Iti steps before the Haka party and delivers a
whakapohane, a baring of the buttocks. A number of the haka party make
further gestures of defiance.

The procession continues and there are traditional challenges issued from
every marae on the way to Tauarau Marae. There Tame Iti ceremonially shoots
the New Zealand flag. The rituals of encounter continue for some time and
then are over.

Later Tame Iti elaborates "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."

On reflection bystander Iri Akarana-Rewi of Ngapuhi said, "Maori culture
has lost something, it has become catalogued and contained on performance
stages at kapa haka festivals, Tuhoe have taken it off the stage and used
it to challenge the powers that be and here it is where it should be in all
its honest intensity, in the valleys, on the roads and streets a
functioning part of everyday life.

“My uncle once said that the struggle of people against power was the
same as the struggle of remembering against forgetting.

“Today Tuhoe has chosen not to forget, today Tuhoe has shown us the way."